Ed Fowkes

Property occupies a unique place in society. It underpins family wealth, institutional investment and national economies alike. Yet unlike businesses or shares, property has remained remarkably difficult to divide. It is steeped in historical and legal red tape, and unpeeling that is a challenge. If you wanted to own a building, commercial or residential, or even a development site, you still needed substantial capital or access to those who had it. Today, that too is beginning to change.

This week we’ll dive into effort, and why most activity feels like a waste of time and effort, and why life feels, generally, unfair. Vilfredo Pareto was among the first to observe and document an uneven distribution pattern in economic systems. Roughly 80% of outcomes, he noted, tend to come from 20% of causes. The exact ratio shifts but the asymmetry persists. Once you begin to look for it, it appears everywhere. And most of us will know of and see the 80-20 rule at work. Derek de Solla P...

Prefer to watch the video? I’ve been examining how we tend to misread reality. Specifically we miss how the systems we build move and change over time. We expect linear change, but we get a series of curves. First we looked at growth, and how these are already complex wave forms. Then we looked at distribution and how both value and effort tends to form clusters rather than show up evenly. Today I embark on Part 3 of the series and I look at The Game we play and the effect our and its...