Babbitt column | The general economics will subvert the company system?

The pass-through economy is a very important concept in the field of blockchain. There are many big rumors that are very optimistic about the CIS economy. They think that the most important thing that the blockchain ultimately contributes to society is the pass-through economy. Providing people with a strong collaboration model that accurately quantifies the contribution of everyone in the system, thereby greatly stimulating the enthusiasm of each participant, greatly improving work efficiency, and the Compulsory Economy will eventually subvert the existing Company policy.

For example, Teacher Meng Yan said in "My Blockchain First Principles":

Today, we have a new means based on economic incentives, which is a trustworthy value and consensus carrier based on the value of the Internet. It can carry out network-wide, large-scale human collaboration. This is the former human society. Something that has not been experienced and seen. If we build a new model based on the certificate, it may mean that the company system that is familiar to everyone and has been popular for nearly five hundred years will face transformation, even being subverted and disintegrated.

Because blockchain, especially the public chain technology is not helping companies solve problems. The blockchain is a deconstruction and subversion of the traditional corporate system and even the traditional corporate thinking. It is unlikely that the current corporate collaboration model will be well applied in the blockchain. From the actual development situation, the current project in the blockchain field is indeed the so-called pass-through economy. More specifically, it is the traditional centralized organization plus the certificate based on blockchain issuance.

I personally are very optimistic about the general economics. I also think that the quantitative incentive effect of the general public will play a very important role, but I have some further thoughts on whether the certification will subvert the traditional corporate system.

First, why does the company exist?

As for why the company exists, this is a big problem. Many economists have studied it. Some people have won the Nobel Prize. Generally speaking, there are several explanations:

A company is a specialized production unit that produces (including services) externally, so it is also called a specialization theory. The reason why enterprises exist is because it is efficient to produce for others compared with self-sufficiency. This efficiency comes from the advantages of enterprises in economies of scale and specialization activities.

Coase used the concept of transaction costs when explaining the problems of the company. He believed that if the cost of coordinating resources through the market arrangement (ie transaction costs) exceeds the cost of internal management resources, the resource allocation of internal management is very necessary and reasonable. of. That is to reduce the cost of market coordination through management coordination. The final enterprise will tend to expand to the cost of organizing an additional transaction within the enterprise equal to the cost of completing the same transaction on the open market or the cost of organizing the same transaction in another enterprise.

Second, the premise that the company was replaced

To sum up, that is to say, if the certificate is to replace the company, the following premise is generally required:

1. The efficiency of cooperation in the form of a certificate is higher than the efficiency of cooperation in the form of a company; for example, the network effect of cooperation in the form of a certificate exceeds the scale effect in the form of a company.

2. Organizational internal management costs < External market transaction costs.

When it comes to efficiency, the finer the division of labor, the higher the efficiency, which is one of the underlying foundations of economic theory. The professional division of labor efficiency is definitely greater than one's big package. Although the full stack engineer can make a website efficiently, only a professional division of labor and cooperation can make an operating system. Therefore, for the very fine work of division of labor, the company is very necessary and cannot be replaced.

Industrial enterprises and agricultural enterprises with economies of scale are also difficult to be certified. The scale effect is the foundation of many industrial companies. Many farmers have also been personalized, and they are now centralized because they facilitate large-scale mechanized production.

As for transaction costs, in the early stage of blockchain development, transaction costs may not be low, so it is certainly inseparable from the company; at the end of the blockchain development, external transaction costs will be greatly reduced, and may be far Below the company's organizational costs, there may be new forms of organization at that time, such as self-organization, the new organization has no cost, and the cost is currently uncertain.

My personal opinion is that after the large-scale use of the certificate, it will indeed become a new form of mainstream value transfer. However, the organization of the company will still exist, and it will continue to exist for a long time. Maybe the company system will still exist after many years, and the company system will not disappear because of the development of the certificate.

Third, organization and incentives

In a deeper way, if the traditional company is simply broken down into such a formula:

Company = organization + incentive

At the incentive level, the existing incentives will be replaced by the pass. I don't doubt this, but whether the existing organizational structure will be replaced by a pass is still open to question. I tend to think that it will not happen in the short term.

In terms of incentives: Most of the incentives are now in the form of wages + funds. Wages are paid in RMB. Funds are generally issued in RMB, but there are other equity, options, in-kind rewards, and so on. After the future pass, the wages and bonuses can be issued in the form of “pass-through” and “digital currency”. If there is a reasonable algorithm and even control through smart contracts, this piece is completely achievable.

For example, the currency has long accepted the payment of wages by BNB. The reward of Babbitt's article is also distributed in the form of BTM. At the same time, like the content platform of this currency, the income of your article is completely quantified in the form of KEY.

Although their traditional incentive model of wages and bonuses can be replaced by a pass, their management is still in the form of a company and is still centrally managed.

The economic incentive itself is of course a strong cooperative relationship. The strong collaboration here refers to the fact that many people want to go all the way, to go to a place, brainstorm and contribute their own strength to complete a certain task. The pass is a quantitative incentive for meritorious deeds.

From the organizational level: the economy after the pass is not because there is no organizational contradiction because of the existence of the certificate, there is no intrigue, there is no internal loss between the teams. For example, the currency-based economy is currently operating relatively well, but there are also many problems within it, such as sales and praise, such as the big V group, for example, a lot of hydrology can also be popular, such as the water army Malicious stepping, if you offend someone or someone doesn't like your point of view, they can even step your income to zero.

  • As long as there are places of interest, there will be struggles, the greater the benefits, the more serious the struggle;
  • As long as there is a place for struggle, management is needed. The more serious the struggle, the more urgent the need for management.

What can be done in the pass is the fine quantitative effect, which can maximize the role of incentives, but the simple incentives are not enough to make people have strong cooperation. Excessive incentives will cause the system within the Friction, which of course can be alleviated by algorithm optimization, but it is impossible to eradicate, or need organizational coordination.

Under this circumstance, the generalized economy is inseparable from centralized management, and the generalized economy cannot temporarily replace the centralized organizational form of the company.

Fourth, self-organization

Just since we talked about self-organization, we also specifically look at self-organization, according to the definition of time-stamp capital "blockchain self-organization research report":

Self-organization is an organizational form that operates with self-will. It pursues bottom-up logic of power and can stimulate the enthusiasm of individuals within the organization. Self-organization of human society is the third organizational form outside the hierarchical system and market. It is based on trust and can reduce the management costs and transaction costs within the organization, which is sufficient for cost advantage. However, due to the establishment of mechanisms and the form of governance close to their own democracy, the self-organization of human society in the physical world has bottlenecks in terms of space and population size.

Blockchain self-organization is an innovative form of organization that breaks through the physical world's self-organizing space and population size constraints and mobilizes greater human collaboration. If the company = organization + incentives, is it possible that the part of the company's "incentives" will be certified in the future, and the "organization" part will be "self-organized"?

In my opinion, "self-organization" and "decentralization" are the descriptions of a process. There is no self-organization in the absolute sense, just as there is no decentralization in the absolute sense. We can only work hard to make the project more decentralized, just as we strive to make the centralized company's power more dispersed and more inclined to self-organize.

After all, self-organization is also an organization. As long as it involves decision-making, some people in the organization must have the final say. Even if there is no clear leadership, there will always be people with greater influence. Some people have less influence, so those with greater influence will It has become the de facto center of self-organization.

The more average the influence of most people, the more slowly the company self-organizes; the more extreme the influence of a few people, the more corporate. I believe that most of the blockchain projects in the future will be between the company system and the self-organization, depending on the nature of the project, and have some choices.

5. Under what circumstances does the company disappear?

From a historical point of view, although new things come out, although all aspects are advanced, but old things still often have a place, sometimes it will exist for a long time.

Nowadays, it is the era of market economy, and it is the era of large-scale social cooperation. The new organizational form of joint-stock system and listed companies can maximize the integration of human resources and capital, and maximize the integration of various production factors. A form of restriction forms a good corporate governance. It is reasonable to say that the shareholding system is obviously superior to other forms of organization, but now the joint-stock company is still a minority, and other forms of organization still occupy the vast majority.

For example, self-employed. At present, most startups still exist in the form of self-employed households, such as express stores, Taobao stores, garment factories, etc., all of which are opened by a boss. One person has the final say, although the scale is small, but the number is still large. The main form of organization of the enterprise.

For example, partnership. For companies with a slightly larger scale, many companies with higher capital requirements use partnerships. Several friends pay for each other and divide the work, so they can get a company up. Moreover, some large accounting firms and investment institutions also adopt a partner model.

On the contrary, the number of companies in the form of modern enterprises such as listed companies and joint-stock companies is limited. The number of listed companies in China's A-shares has been explosively increased in the past few years, and only a few thousand. Although the influence is large, the quantity is It is not the mainstream.

What I mean is that even if the new organizational structure of joint-stock companies and listed companies has been around for a long time, there are many excellent characteristics, but individual proprietorship and partnership still exist. Similarly, after the certificate is issued, although it has many advantages, the certificate will quickly become popular, but at the same time the original company system will be retained for a long time, and at the same time it will be developed and improved.

6. Which industries are suitable for certification?

Judging from the current situation of the CIS economy, the content industry is the most suitable industry for the CIS economy, such as news media, writing, etc., because writing does not require too much specialization of subdivision, it can be based on individual production. Units, so that through the generalization of the word can be widely gathered together.

In addition to news and writing, games, live broadcasts, and even code-writing programming are all related to brain activity. Individuals can be used as basic production units. They can all be distributed and can exist in the form of communities. They are very suitable for generalization.

However, you can't expect the workers in the factory to create a car without the existence of a company organization through the incentives of the certificate. You can't even hope to rely solely on the incentives of the CSI to create a car without the existence of a company organization. A high-quality ballpoint pen, not to mention those cutting-edge biotech technologies that require a lot of research and development.

If a large amount of fixed assets is needed, the generalized economy is not suitable and can only rely on the company form.

The experience economy of shopping malls, entertainment venues, and sports fields, all of which require people to manage, requires the management costs of Dali, and they are inseparable from the company form.

The goal to be completed is complicated, one cannot complete, the task that must be multi-person cooperation, or the target time attribute of the completion is very strong, and needs to be made in a very short period of time, with high professional requirements and efficiency requirements. High industries are more suitable for centralized companies.

simply put:

  • Mental work is easier to pass, and physical work is more suitable for company system;
  • A person can make a work of a work, and it is easier to pass the certificate; a job that requires multiple people to work together is more suitable for the company system;
  • The work on the pure line is easier to pass the certification, and the work under the cable is more suitable for the company system;
  • The professional division of labor is extremely fine, and it is more suitable for the company system;
  • Work with very high complexity is more suitable for company system.

In addition, the connection and transaction between things and things are more easily clarified, and the connection and transaction between robots and robots are more easily clarified.

Author: Monte Carlo