Financial Freedom in the Information Age: The New Rules of Wealth

If you want to gain financial freedom in the age of information, you have to start with understanding the new rules of wealth. Thousands of financial experts and advisers have lost the trust of the public because of investment advice which caused people to lose a lot of their money. Many of these strategies were based on leveraging debt in order to acquire assets which would increase people’s wealth. Why isn’t this working anymore? One of the most important reasons for this is that the definition of wealth is changing...

What the Age of Information Has Done to Wealth

The emerging age of information is changing the definition of wealth, and those who understand how this is happening are leaving those who don’t out in the cold. To illustrate what I mean by this, just think about what happened as a result of the transition from the hunter gatherer age to that of the agricultural age: physical strength was considered to be a form of wealth, but as the cultivation of land become important for one’s survival, land become the new form of wealth.

Next, came the transition from the agricultural age to the industrial age when production equipment and production capability become the new form of wealth.
So is it any surprise today that the transition from the industrial age to the industrial age is causing the definition of wealth to change again? Those who are investing in assets which are attached to companies seeking to apply the old wealth building strategies of the information age are losing wealth quickly. Wealth is no longer a commodity like gold, we went off that standard a long time ago...so what is it that gives money its value now?

Wealth in The Age of Information

Social Capital is the wealth of the information age. What is social capital? Very simply put, it’s trust. Do you think a company would be better off with one hundred million dollars in the bank or a company who had the trust of one million consumers? As you are reading this, there are companies who have only a few people working for them and who are making millions of dollars a year. These are companies who have managed to build trust with their customers by delivering information which adds value to the lives of their customers.

Building wealth in the information age is done by investing in assets which build trust with people, and one of the most important assets of the information is information which positions that company as a thought leader. If you can do this, as a business owner or service provider, you can gain enough social capital to accomplish financial security which will last you for years to come.