General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe End of the Capitalist Era, and What Comes Next
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/collaborative-commons-zero-marginal-cost-society_b_5064767.htmlAlthough the indicators of the great transformation to a new economic system are still soft and largely anecdotal, the Collaborative Commons is ascendant and, by 2050, it will likely settle in as the primary arbiter of economic life in most of the world. An increasingly streamlined and savvy capitalist system will continue to soldier on at the edges of the new economy, finding sufficient vulnerabilities to exploit, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a powerful niche player in the new economic era, but it will no longer reign.
What's undermining the capitalist system is the dramatic success of the very operating assumptions that govern it. At the heart of capitalism there lies a contradiction in the driving mechanism that has propelled it ever upward to commanding heights, but now is speeding it to its death: the inherent dynamism of competitive markets that drives productivity up and marginal costs down, enabling businesses to reduce the price of their goods and services in order to win over consumers and market share. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing additional units of a good or service, if fixed costs are not counted.) While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring marginal costs to near zero, making goods and services priceless, nearly free, and abundant, and no longer subject to market forces.
The near zero marginal cost phenomenon has already wreaked havoc on the entertainment, communications, and publishing industries, as more and more information is being made available nearly free to billions of people. Today, more than forty percent of the human race is producing its own music, videos, news, and knowledge on relatively cheap cellphones and computers and sharing it at near zero marginal cost in a collaborative networked world. And now the zero marginal cost revolution is beginning to affect other commercial sectors, including renewable energy, 3D printing in manufacturing, and online higher education. There are already millions of "prosumers" -- consumers who have become their own producers -- generating their own green electricity at near zero marginal cost around the world. It's estimated that around 100,000 hobbyists are using open source software and recycled plastic feedstock to manufacture their own 3D printed goods at nearly zero marginal cost. Meanwhile, six million students are currently enrolled in free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that operate at near zero marginal cost and are taught by some of the most distinguished professors in the world, and receiving college credits.
Hmmmm. I would not have expected this from Jeremy Rifkin.
brush
(53,924 posts)They work within a larger system (see link). To go full-scale for our whole economy would need much study and adaptation.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19704-mondragon-and-the-system-problem
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)brush
(53,924 posts)dog-eat-dog, every person for him/herself barbarism.
daredtowork
(3,732 posts)is the middlemen keep trying to transfer savings in marginal costs to themselves instead of allocating that back to the author. Thus you see traditional publishers still trying to charge a mind-boggling $12 for an ebook that costs pennies to generate. The production costs were primarily creative (author), packaging (perhaps include editor here, cover), and publicity. If the consumer is actually willing to pay $12 (doubtful), the profits should be divided fairly with regard to how the ebook was produced. But instead there seems to be this enormous Robber Baron grift going on: "We can charge $12 for an ebook? Ho ho ho!"
And then when no one wants to pay $12 there's a lot of hand-wringing about the end of publishing, books, literacy, and civilization as we know it.
I think time and tools for creativity should be democratized, and people would probably start creating art to give meaning to their lives, to win prestige, to claim a their place in history. Society can always establish prizes and other incentives to encourage quality work.
There's no reason why we can't continue to commercially fund "big" projects at the same time. And we can alternatively fund projects through subscribers or "crowd-funding" or finding a rich patron (people actually still do that). Motives for producing art are expressive, they aren't fundamentally commercial. Artists just feel resentful when society fails to provide them with a living and makes them desperate.
So society should provide people with a living in other ways and not make that living contingent on the art that people produce. I think we should come at art more with the fundamental assumption that everyone has art within them, and we will only find the great art if everyone has a chance to produce. So, give everyone the space to be an artist if that's what they want to be.
On the flip side of that, there should be a guaranteed minimum income. Guaranteed food, housing (with utilities), transportation, and basic necessities. People should compete to work for the luxuries, not the basics. 20 hrs/wk should be seen as a work-a-holic who is wasting their life when they could be creating or building something of their own.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)next time I'm up in civilization.
Don't expect me to be terribly articulate on this topic, though. My education was weak in economics/politics. I'm mainly fueled by determination, hahahaha.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)daredtowork
(3,732 posts)For that one, I have some ideas!