Issue The Ideas Economy

Summary

The Ideas Economy asks what would happen if intellectual property rights could be divided up and traded in fine-grained pieces. Securitising IP as a source of income would let many more people create, own and trade those rights, using tools such as distributed ledgers, tokenisation, IP bonds, IP-NFTs and smart contracts. The case rests on the state of work, since global unemployment is at 4.9%, its lowest since 1991, while youth unemployment edged up to 12.4% in 2025 and stagnant wages, informal work and poor conditions are spreading as AI and automation threaten traditional jobs. Interest in entrepreneurship is high but access to finance remains difficult. The promised benefit is smoother income across working and non-working periods, freeing time for education, care and community, while the risks include larger economies rejecting the model, criminal misuse of securitisation and the hijacking of innovation.