In (Part 1) I wrote that capitalists could consider the following.
Model:
1. Shareholders would lead, by setting financial mandates.
2. Strategists would design and own product economics: from aesthetics, to microeconomics, to macroeconomic contexts.
One may view "microeconomics" and "macroaesthetics" as the same thing, if we may borrow the turn of phrase from economics - in which case perhaps we should just flip and refer to aesthetics as "nanoeconomics" (again, to be clear, not Mr. Arrow's semantics).
3. Operators and strategists would collaborate daily on execution, as execution is a burden shared between both roles.
Likewise, one might imagine that strategists and shareholders would also collaborate daily (perhaps weekly) on design, as design is a burden shared between both roles. (I'm really fucking with the traditional binary roles here.)
Qualification:
I guess it might seem by identifying "shareholders" with "financiers", i.e. "the money contributors", that I meant that "this is a guide written for the financier's point of view", and to a certain degree that is indeed what I had in mind.
But then I changed my mind a bit, and that's why (Part 2) is being written. I don't think (the view described in the previous paragraph) is the best way to approach (the title, the sum of both its Parts 1 and 2). A better way to think about capitalism is to consider that each of the following are independently capitalists:
1. contributors of money
2. contributors of design / architectural / strategic insight
3. contributors of time / meat / labour
... and that the agents who play each role are themselves capitalists regardless of which role they play in this model.
So here we're really just fucking with Marx's semantics. Marx says, you know "capital is the factor of production which is non-human, so owners of such are 'capitalists', and non-owners are 'labour', and so we have this dialectic between capital(ists) and labour(ers)," or something like that.
But of course, I beg to differ. Capital is best understood as the factors of production in general, and so good capitalism doesn't try to make capitalism all about money (1). Capitalism is equally about intellectual property (2) and meat (3). Capitalism therefore is well regulated when all factors of production are viewed as fungible, such that you can turn more of one thing into some of the other, etc. Neither tangible goods, nor cash, nor labour, nor intellectual property should get special protections denied to the other factors - after all, they all just result from the same thing.(And I guess personally, I only have that view because I think everything is an information system. At this point in writing, I'm a bit concerned that given my ignorance of the history of Marxist thought, I'm reinventing parts of some other tradition, but no matter.)
This probably happens most often, when (dumb?) money meets competent operators ... operators get things off the ground, but eventually evolve meta-operations for efficiency.
This appears to happen when a founder with strategic insight dominates a co-founder with a greater inclination towards implementation. The former charges ahead while the latter scramble to locate traditional financing, and things kinda just move at a feasible pace.
This appears to happen when you have founders with no talent management capability (whether for lack of interest, or ability, that is irrelevant) ... who find financiers to work for them in setting up downstream operations.
This appears to happen when founders lack strategic capabilities, thereby outsourcing the work of hiring strategists to the money.
I'm not exactly sure what this looks like - I guess an operations-oriented founder would have hired managers who eventually grew the shop via professional money.
Hm. Droll.
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