The Digital Gilded Age: Be convex, unswap!: Towards a new cottage capitalism

"History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes" as Mark Twain is reputed to have said. 

There once was a so-called cottage capitalism. The emblematic tools of this cottage capitalism were the spinner's wheel, the weaver's loom, the nail-maker's forge..., and its home country 19th century Great Britain. From a 1861 census, England and Wales more than a million people were one way or the other cottage entrepreneurs, or cottage workers to be more precise. They were sewing clothes, shirts, hats, ties, gloves or forging nails from home. Most of them lived in the countryside. With the rise of the factory and its machines, cottage workers could not compete with factory workers, and they gradually disappeared. Physical capital was expensive, and only robber barons could afford to fund it.

Today, history rhymes. In reverse. Cottage capitalism is back, as, unlike its physical counterpart, digital capital is cheap and affordable. This is a true opportunity, and as long as we manage to keep robber robot lords at bay we may indeed see a move back from the factory to the cottage.