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Bees don't just make honey

French economist Yann Moulier-Boutang focused on the 'pollination' of bees when explaining modern capitalism. What beekeepers sell in the market is honey, but the value bees create is not limited to honey. The pollination bees perform as they move between flowers enables agricultural production and the reproduction of ecosystems. The honey priced in the market is only a part of that vast process. Bringing this analogy to today's economy reveals an interesting scene.

Wealth in the digital age is not created solely by factories and machines. It is created by the connection of resources scattered throughout society, such as the education and knowledge of countless people, language and culture, relationships and trust, data and open source, universities and public research, roads and communication networks, which together create new value. Businesses operate in that flower garden. The problem is that while the market meticulously calculates the price of the output, it does not adequately calculate the value of the flower garden that made that output possible. Honey goes into the accounting books, but pollination remains outside the books. So the question arises: Whose is the immense wealth of today?

Anatomy of three bears, or rather, let's open three ledgers

Let's look at the three giants of our time through this lens: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. However, it is not accurate to define them as 'those who plundered common wealth' from the outset. These three clearly possessed entrepreneurial ability, technological innovation, massive capital investment, and risk-taking. The services and industrial changes they created are also social values. Therefore, the question is not, 'Are they bad?' It is whether we can calculate both the social contributions that enabled their success and the contributions they returned to society. The problem is that such a ledger has not existed until now.

Bezos's Flower Garden

Beneath Jeff Bezos's feet lies a layered flower garden for which he has not paid. The internet was born from a long historical accumulation, including public research by the U.S. Department of Defense and universities, and Amazon's logistics utilize the roads, ports, and communication infrastructure built by the state. AWS was also built upon the open-source ecosystem and internet technologies accumulated by countless developers and researchers.

Amazon's recommendation system and platform become more sophisticated through the searches, clicks, purchases, and reviews left by hundreds of millions of consumers. While millions of merchants create products and markets, the platform earns commissions and data at the center of those transactions. However, we should not simply conclude that “Amazon took what belonged to others.” Amazon also invested enormous capital and labor. It built logistics centers, delivery networks, and data centers, and created the standard for the cloud industry. So the real question is this: How much did Amazon receive from society, and how much did it newly create for society? In current accounting books, these two are not recorded in the same way.

What Zuckerberg privatized is the network of relationships.

Mark Zuckerberg is even more interesting. If Bezos has the tangible reality of logistics, the most important means of production Zuckerberg deals with is the relationship between people. Most of the content on Facebook and Instagram is created by users. Users create content, users view it, and the network of relationships among users increases the platform's value. What is ultimately sold to advertisers is people's attention and behavior, and the data generated from that network of relationships.

The social network, one of the oldest commons cultivated by humanity for thousands of years, has entered the digital platform. However, this also cannot be explained as simple plunder. Zuckerberg connected and expanded relationships that people already had in the digital space, and created a platform where billions of people can communicate for free. The problem is how much of the economic value generated from that network of relationships goes to whom. Is that network of relationships entirely the private property of the platform? This is the core question posed by today's data economy.

Musk's Paradox

Elon Musk is the most paradoxical case. He has criticized government inefficiency and built an image as an 'entrepreneur who can succeed without government,' but it is also inaccurate to explain his success without acknowledging the contributions of the government and public sector. Tesla was greatly influenced by US electric vehicle policies, tax incentives, environmental regulations, and emission trading schemes. SpaceX is also a significant beneficiary of NASA and the US government's long-term investment in space development, technological accumulation, and government contracts. However, it would also be wrong to simply say that SpaceX is a company that made money by taking government technology. The commercialization of reusable rockets and the reduction of launch costs were significant technological innovations, and the investment of private capital, which took on the risk of failure, was also clear.

Therefore, in Musk's case, public wealth and private innovation should be calculated together in a single ledger. What did the government provide? What did the company add? And as a result, how much benefit was generated for society as a whole?

There are three types, but one question.

The businesses of the three people are different. Bezos is in logistics and cloud, Zuckerberg in social networking and data, and Musk in electric vehicles and the space industry. However, there is one commonality: wealth was not created solely by individual entrepreneurial capabilities. At the same time, their success cannot be explained solely by social common wealth. Wealth is created from the combination of the two.

However, current economic accounting does not adequately show this combination. While a company's sales and profits are accurately recorded, the non-market resources a company receives from society and the non-market value it returns to society are scattered across various ledgers. This is why debates become emotional battles. One side talks about the 'genius of the entrepreneur,' and the other says, 'they privatized what society created.' Both might be partially correct. This is because there is no ledger.

Imagine a new economic indicator, the 'Moisture Index'.

A question immediately follows Jan Mulier Boutang's critical awareness: “If the value of moisture is so important, how on earth do we measure it?” This is where it gets difficult. A value that cannot be measured is difficult to make the subject of policy. Taxation is difficult, compensation is difficult, and comparison between companies is difficult. So, I would like to imagine an index. It is called the 'Pollination Index.' It is not the pollen concentration index that weather forecasts talk about. It is a commons settlement index that records how much value economic agents have received from society's commons and, at the same time, how much value they have returned to society. In English, it would be something like Commons Contribution Balance Index (CCBI) or Net Pollination Index (NPI).

A virtual 'commons account' is created for all economic agents. Contributions to society are deposited. Uses of the commons are withdrawn. And the final net balance is calculated. However, there is an important principle. The use of public resources should not be entirely calculated as debt. If the government has provided 100 in support to a company, it should not automatically record 100 as a withdrawal. If that 100 has created 1,000 in tax revenue, employment, technological innovation, and consumer benefits, then those social effects must also be calculated. Therefore, the Pollination Index should not be a moral score that determines 'who exploited society,' but an accounting ledger that measures the net contribution between society and economic agents.

What to withdraw and what to deposit

Withdrawal items can include the utilization of public research and technology, government subsidies and tax support, the use of public infrastructure such as roads, ports, power grids, communication networks, frequencies, and satellite orbits, user content and data, and external costs such as environmental pollution or social costs. However, deposit items are equally important. Employment and wages, taxes, technology disclosure, open-source contributions, creation of industrial ecosystems, regional economic ripple effects, consumer benefits, and productivity improvements must be recorded. Consumer surplus is particularly important.

A company's revenue only shows the price consumers pay. However, the benefits consumers gain from using that product or service can be much greater than the price. The value of free search services and social media, affordable cloud services, and the space industry with reduced launch costs cannot be explained by a company's revenue alone. Therefore, the Moisture Index is not just a metric that calculates a company's social costs. It is also a metric that calculates the benefits a company creates for society. Only then can it be a fair ledger.

Wikipedia and the Accounts of the Three Tycoons

Viewed this way, Wikipedia is an interesting case. Countless people produce and edit knowledge, but that knowledge is provided to all of humanity for free. The same goes for the open-source ecosystem. Countless companies and services are born on top of the code released by developers. The economic value of these activities is enormous, but it is not adequately reflected in traditional accounting ledgers.

Conversely, while the accounts of Amazon, Meta, and SpaceX record the use of social resources such as public research, infrastructure, and user data, they should also record logistics innovation, cloud infrastructure, free communication services, space industry innovation, employment, taxes, and consumer benefits. So, are the accounts of these three individuals in surplus or deficit? We don't know yet. Nor do I want to prejudge it. The important thing is that we have never properly calculated it until now.

The Moisture Index is not a 'Rich Punishment Index'

For this indicator to succeed, there is a pitfall that must be avoided. The Moisture Index should not be an indicator to seize the wealth of the rich. Nor should it be an indicator that demonizes corporate success. The same standard must be applied to everyone. Large corporations calculate it, and small and medium-sized enterprises calculate it. The government calculates it, and public institutions calculate it. Platforms calculate it, and civic organizations calculate it. Universities calculate it, and individuals calculate it. If one receives little from society and gives back a lot, they will be highly regarded.

Conversely, if a company utilizes a vast common good but its social contribution is relatively small, then a settlement can be demanded to that extent. In this way, digital taxes or common good dividends can be re-designed not merely as a 'tax increase for the rich' but as a settlement for the use of common assets.

After ESG, common good accounting is needed.

Today, ESG is the representative framework for evaluating corporate social responsibility. If ESG asks companies, “How responsibly do you act regarding the environment, society, and governance?”, the 'subun index' asks, “What have you exchanged with society?”

How much public research has been utilized? How much citizen data has been utilized? How much public infrastructure has been used? How much technology, employment, tax revenue, and consumer benefit has been returned to society? What costs have been left to the environment and society? The idea is to put all of this on a single ledger. If ESG is 'accounting for responsibility,' then the 'subun index' can be called 'settlement accounting for common goods.'

Of course, there are many challenges.

The most difficult part is measurement. How should the contributions of open-source developers be valued? What is the value of user data? How can public research be distinguished from a company's independent innovation? What is the social benefit created by government subsidies? How should consumer surplus be calculated? And the moment an indicator is created, people will try to manipulate it. Therefore, the idea of creating one perfect number from the start must be abandoned. We must begin by disclosing items, disclosing calculation methods, and undergoing independent verification. The transparency of the calculation process is as important as the accuracy of the numbers.

GDP was not perfect from the beginning either. There was continuous debate and revision about what should be considered production. The same applies to common goods. Rather than waiting for a perfect measurement method to emerge, it is better to start measuring, even if imperfectly, and continuously improve. There are values that were not visible because they were not measured.

Korea can create the first ledger.

I believe Korea is a good country to start this experiment. It has a high level of administrative computerization and data infrastructure, and a large scale of public R&D investment. There are also many industries where the combination of public and private sectors is strong, such as semiconductors, automobiles, batteries, shipbuilding, and platforms. There's no need to calculate the entire economy from the start. We can begin with a few industries.

For the semiconductor industry, we can record public R&D, industrial power and water, human resource development, infrastructure, and tax support on one side, and exports, employment, tax revenue, technological innovation, and industrial ripple effects on the other side.

For the platform industry, we can record user content and data, and the use of public communication infrastructure, along with consumer benefits, employment, taxes, and service provision. By repeating such industry-specific experiments, we will eventually be able to create a ledger of the shared wealth of companies and industries.

A ledger for the flower garden too

Economics has long meticulously measured production and consumption, income and profit. However, the social foundations that made this production and consumption possible have relatively remained outside the ledger. Who created education? Who created the internet? Who created open source? Who bore the cost of public research?

Who accumulated social trust, language, and culture over hundreds and thousands of years? Whose data is used by platform companies today? There are not yet sufficient accounting ledgers for these questions.

So, on one side, people only talk about the genius of entrepreneurs, and on the other side, they say that companies took everything society created. However, neither is sufficient. The contributions of entrepreneurs must be calculated, and the contributions of society must also be calculated. What companies received must be recorded, and what companies gave back must also be recorded. That is a fair ledger.

There's no need to immediately determine whether Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are bears or bulls. Let's start by creating a ledger. Let's calculate how much of their success came from individual genius and risk-taking, and how much came from the shared wealth that society has cultivated over a long period. And let's also calculate what they have given back to society. If the result is a surplus, we can acknowledge it. If it's a deficit, we can settle it. This is not a rejection of the market economy. Rather, it is a more accurate representation of the conditions of production that the market has not been able to capture in its pricing until now. According to an old adage in economics, only what is measured gets managed.

So, let's add one more sentence. How much value has gone unseen because it wasn't measured? If the economics of the last century focused on weighing the honey pot, the economics of the 21st century must also calculate the value of the flower garden. We cannot tell bees to only make honey. If pollination disappears, so does honey. The same applies to businesses. The moment we think that businesses create value alone, we miss half of the economy. Conversely, if we think that only society creates value, we miss the other half.

Wealth comes from the combination of the flower garden, the bees, and the honey extractor. Now, let's put all of that on the ledger. Let's not just weigh the honey pot. Let's also record who created the flower garden, who transported the pollen, who produced the fruit, and who took how much. Imagining opening the first page of that ledger – that is the 'Pollination Index'.