Although the long cycle of the greatest economic and financial crisis of modern times seems to be considered over, incomes continue to stagnate, the expected growth in terms of Gross Domestic Product of the main industrialized countries is too slow, the middle class does not seem to have the strength to recovery and the increase in inequalities, with the consequent social tensions and the advance of populism, unchallengeable despite the good intentions and efforts made. Obviously, something is just wrong. In reality, already during the crisis, many had predicted it: "nothing can be as before". Now that omen is coming true and it's starting to get scary. There are those who, in the United States, the country of capitalism par excellence, even go so far as to affirm – and we are not talking about old Marxists – that capitalism is dying precisely in consideration of the fact that profits are growing while inequality is increasing.
The theme of the end of capitalism, which has been debated for almost two hundred years, is certainly not new. But today – and this is the novelty – it is tackled and related to another, much more original theme, that of the effects of the ongoing technological revolution. For example, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge do it with an essay that is having some success not only in the United States, Rand invent capitalism in the age of big data. According to the two authors, in fact, the phenomenon of the fusion between big data and artificial intelligence is added to the crisis of capitalism, and it is typical of our era, which can only lead to a new type of capitalism. Unlike the system we know, based on the centrality of the market which functions as a stage on which entrepreneurs and workers are the protagonists of the production and consumption of money and wealth, the new capitalism is based on the centrality of data. The system, the one we have known so far, is based on the "price" element, a yardstick considered natural and, for this reason, accepted and shared, to evaluate the goods at the moment of the encounter between the supply and demand of each product .
It is based on companies that coordinate, centralizing the decision-making process and controlling the flow of information, complex activities in order to produce goods and services, while guaranteeing, at the same time, a profit for the invested capital and a more or less expected level of employment . The so-called “data capitalism” is another matter. The paradigm shift underway is clear and the new system is based on all the data that everyone generates. An enormous amount of heterogeneous data, structured and unstructured, that technology and new analysis methodologies are able to extrapolate, analyze and relate to discover links between different phenomena and predict future ones. These are data which, processed through special algorithms, allow buyers and sellers to be connected in a much more efficient and rapid way compared to the classic market based on the price system. But such a structured system makes the rigid control of information no longer necessary, allowing increasingly smaller groups to coordinate effectively and directly without having to resort to an elaborate central infrastructure. Thus, the hypothesis of a data-centric capitalism could mean, together with the end of big business, the beginning of a more equitable and therefore more sustainable economy.
The discussion on these issues is no longer only of an academic nature but is also gaining ground in the industrial world. The American Deloitte, the first company in the world in the field of services, consultancy and auditing, a global giant, one of the so-called big four, the four largest auditing firms, recently published a study on the trend of human capital to the point of arguing that companies would no longer be evaluated only by economic results and the quality of what they produce but also, and increasingly, by from their impact on the community and the social role they would have in various areas including the territories of reference which would once again assume a central function.
Therefore, reinventing capitalism in the era of big data means rethinking the technological revolution as the engine of a profound change in the capitalist system which will no longer be the one we have known so far. But it also means returning to where we started, to smaller economic realities but closely connected to various social and territorial areas in which they exercise and will exercise a definite and precious social function. We are no longer alone in maintaining this, it is no longer a question of seductive impressions aimed at the past. It is a matter of looking at the future of the economy in a conscious and non-ideological way.
°°°° The author is the Secretary General of the National Association of Popular Banks
