I want to be the first to advocate the ignorance-based economy. Exhortations by public officials everywhere to build knowledge-based economies have skyrocketed in popularity since the OECD first published its manifesto in 1996, accruing a whopping 40,000 articles on Google scholar alone. Unfortunately, like many sound bites, this one has more flavor than nutrition. As I help societies around the world increase their levels of entrepreneurship, I’ve found the “knowledge-based economy” mantra, ubiquitous as it is among public leaders everywhere, has become empty for three reasons.
1. All economic activity is knowledge-based. What is not knowledge-based? The term’s original intention was to describe an alternative to economic activity based on resource extraction, commodity sales and rent-seeking. However, these activities also require and generate tremendous amounts of knowledge. Today, diamond sales require complex regulations and tracking processes, oil production must rapidly invent unique solutions to unforeseen problems, and cement pricing and distribution must be optimized with complex algorithms. Knowledge infuses all economic activity everywhere, and when something is everything, it is nothing.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The myth of the knowledge economy | The Ideas Economy
Author: Daniel Isenberg
