Das Intellectual Kapital
In an ironic twist on Karl Marx’s idea of the proletarian revolution, in today’s capitalist society, labor trumps capital as the chief source of all wealth. According to The World Bank, 80% of the developed world’s wealth lies in human capital. Today, knowledge workers themselves own the firm’s means of production, in their heads. This is a seismic shift in our economy, the ramifications of which we are still trying to comprehend. Thinking in terms of human capital investors lends dignity and respect to the value of each person. The word “human” comes from the Latin Hominem, for man, and the word “capital” from the Latin caput, meaning head. In a strict sense, a company’s knowledge is created only by individuals, albeit some are outside of the firm’s employ, and thus no knowledge can be created without people. Join Ed and Ron as they explore why Wealth equals Knowledge and Growth equals Learning, or Das Intellectual Kapital, as Karl Marx might have written.