ABSTRACT
Chapter 7, the Epilogue, leaves behind the narrow scope and timeframe of the previous chapters to explore connections with similar ideas. The chapter starts with discussing the relevant economic ideas of figures like Leopold Kohr, Ernst Schumacher, Ivan Illich and Lee Felsenstein. It shows that addressing personal, moral and spiritual aspects in the economy was common in their otherwise diverse accounts. The chapter continues with comparing these ideas to Polanyi’s postmodern economics, and ends with explaining the contemporary relevance of Polanyi’s lessons in the case of big data. The Polanyian lesson is that an economics not based on the personal aspects of knowing can be an ally to dictatorial régimes. But an economics based on the personal aspects of knowing ipso facto cannot be an ally to non-democratic systems.
