Post-Capitalism: Rise of the Collaborative Commons
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If rent-seeking accounts for an increasing fraction of economic activity (a big IF, but let's assume it's true for the sake of figuring out consequences) then it will eventually surpass the inefficiencies of small-scale generalist production and we'll break into "communes." Scare quotes because there's no reason they have to be anti-technology, anti-capitalism, anti-trade, anti-government, or any of the other scary associations that follow the word around.
Especially for "unskilled" (or otherwise marginalized) labor, this sort of a model would seem to make sense. Employers would be forced to beat the value proposition of "work x days a month, do whatever you want with the remainder, your ability to secure food and shelter is guaranteed unless you screw up big time."
There's a ton of work to be done before it's a viable alternative. Hell, I bet it's even going to get VC funding someday (better to sell the shovels, right?). Neat stuff, but right now I'll just watch from the sidelines. Robotic farming (GVCS), DIY circuit board / chip manufacture, DIY chemical industry (stock up on popcorn when they get to Haber or Frank-Caro), 3D printing of structures... am I missing anything? Is there a mailing list I should be on (FBI forgive me)?
EDIT: We should talk about the big sticking point, which will be "how would one replace or compensate specialists that haven't been marginalized by capitalism yet and don't contain bunches of 'hippies,' for lack of a better word"? In other words: doctors. This is why I'm on the sidelines for now ;)
Is this really a big IF? Software revenue is technically rent (since the cost of production is 0), and that's definitely growing as a fraction of economic activity.
You are aware software developers are paid, you know, money for services, right?
To be honest, your argument, here, is exactly the trouble economists have trying to understand economic rent. Rent is to economists what pornography is to a supreme court justice: they know it when they see it.
There simply is no concrete theory to define rent, and so it's extremely difficult to provide any kind of proof of increased rent seeking in modern economies without relying on personal judgment, and therefore bringing to bear personal bias.
Which is, of course, why you think software is rent while someone else might not: it's in the eye of the beholder.
The cost of production [software engineers] is not 0.
The labor of maintaining software products [sysadmins] on the internet to perform the distribution is not 0
The cost of distribution [bandwidth] requires extensive infrastructure that the owners charge for. The power, hardware, etc. for the machine is non-0 as well.
> rent-seeking is expending resources on political activity to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating wealth.
That is the definition I'm used to.
So I'm not sure if you can really classify that as a "rent".
Actually, it should be rent seeking + costs of competition. Some things are marginally important not because they serve a consumer need but because they still provide an advantage in the eternal tug-of-war. Advertising is the typical example. A DIY economy would save on some of those costs too.
It's human nature to want more.
If that were true, hunter-gatherers wouldn't have developed agriculture and/or husbandry as ways to get more, leading to civilization, leading to a state where, for the vast majority of the planet, knowing about hunter-gatherer society was something that came through anthropological studies rather than life experience.
I would also like to point out that studies show early agricultural societies had notably worse health than hunter-gatherers. This would make it unlikely that a successful, happy tribe would adopt agriculture just so they could "get more".
So did early industrial societies compared to previous societies. In both cases, however, there were individuals who benefited immensely and got more; its the individual desire to get more, that is relevant in this discussion.
(Anyhow, the negative health impacts of the change would not have been obvious in advance, so would not have played a role in whether the motive to get more would have advocated in favor of driving adoption of the techniques.)
I don't see a whole lot of people wanted to go from their current lives to hunter-gathers.
You're also talking to someone who has a large library of homesteading books and is interested in permaculture and sustainable living. I love technology and would never want to sacrifice my standard of living.
More than likely, the first tribes that started becoming farmers did so because the area they lived in become bad for obtaining food (whether due to the extinction of big game events, or moving to a naturally inhospitable area). Because of the nature of agriculture, this gave them a lot more power, and they started conquering tribes.
When your choice is between "get slaughtered by the farmers", "have your food supply diminished by the farmers", or "become a farmer", guess which choice you pick?
This is all speculation, though. I'm merely trying to get you to realize that there are many reasons for technological progress (esp. the adoption of agriculture), the least of all being that "it's human nature to want more".
We know where early agriculture and husbandry developed, and it wasn't in "naturally inhospitable areas" in either case. Even if so, making an area with poor food into one with better food is quite obviously an example of acting based on a desire to get more than you can as a hunter-gatherer, so accepting your own argument here disproves your claim that hunter-gatherers were content with what they got and didn't seek to get more.
> I'm merely trying to get you to realize that there are many reasons for technological progress (esp. the adoption of agriculture), the least of all being that "it's human nature to want more".
But your own defense of that position has been to present an argument that boils down to the motivation being exactly to get more.
(food > no food) == more
http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Marginal-Cost-Society-Collaborati...
Book, which is by the way very good.
We only live in a post scarcity world if you believe that humans have a limited capacity for consumption. Everyone who has bet on that thus far in history has been proved wrong, so capitalism or no, we need to deal with scarcity.
I think that depends on how you define "satisfying the demands of society".
If that means everyone is essentially comfortable (ie, all essential needs are met, including things like basic recreation... I consider "play" a basic human need), I'd say that qualifies.
Will there always be people with ambitions that outstrip their resources? I'd certainly think so. But there's an awful lot of people out there who don't share your ambitions for space travel.
There's considerable evidence that "comfort" is driven largely by perceived relative economic conditions, not absolute conditions, so as long as most people aren't doing above average compared to what they perceive around them, we won't achieve that.
> Will there always be people with ambitions that outstrip their resources? I'd certainly think so. But there's an awful lot of people out there who don't share your ambitions for space travel.
Even if only some people had unmet needs, the society would still fail to be post-scarcity, since post-scarcity means rationing is not necessary because there isn't contention for resources. Even if there are only a few people who will always want more (though there is no reason grounded in the reality of actual human behavior to believe that there will only be a few, no matter the objective conditions), they will eventually place other people into a deprived position without a social system for allocating scarce resources, hence, no post-scarcity.
I would suggest reading the second half of "road to wigan pier" which will both provide history and an excellent critique of this style of thinking.
Great read. And the predecessor as well. https://medium.com/@cjdew/the-obsolescence-of-capitalism-340...
As it should. If it weren't for capitalism we would not enjoy any of the abundance we have become accustomed to having in the past century. Capitalism, as limited as it is in the current world, has provided such that royalty of past centuries would envy certain aspects of a poor person's life today (I'm talking first world country poor).
The main problem with this article, and many like it, is it identifies problems existing in today's world, and then completely misattributes them. For example, the problem with food distribution has very little to do with businesses, or individuals, desiring profit. Neither does inequality (if we can even call that a problem) stem from capitalism.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit...
The problem with inequality is that the 20th century middle class was specifically what made America great, by providing a consumer base to buy all the wonderful things people wanted to make. You can only sell so many jeans to the richest one percent.
No, it isn't the "capitalist" incentives, it the the damn foolish politicians setting incentives that are not generating a proper outcome. It has nothing to do with capitalism.
You can bet if the private prisons were paid on capacity instead of occupancy and incentivized a bonus for non-returning prisoners after 5 years, you would get totally different results.
Crappy incentives will destroy any economic system by generating bad actors. Look at the actions of the prison guards union in California and see the same behavior from a public perspective.
You don't think the war on drugs has anything to do with the higher incarceration rates?
There are other things rich people buy besides jeans. Buying yachts requires much more fabric and seamstresses than jeans do. It also employs more people and a greater diversity of people than making jeans do; lumber workers, software engineers, nautical engineers, construction workers, seamstresses, welders, interior designers, architects, plumbers, and the list goes on.
Buying a $30mil yacht results in a much greater economic stimulus than buying a million jeans ever would. There are a greater diversity of jobs required for luxury goods. This means people can work on what they want rather than all doing low skilled labor.
(b) How is it possible to say inequality does not stem from capitalism? Where else could it stem from.
I am not advocating the abolition of capitalism, I advocate a mixed economy.
There is a disconnect between the colloquial form of capitalism which is conflated with 'free markets' and a generous reading of marx's concept of capitalism: as in "capital -ism", or the idea that accruing capital is a social good in and of itself. Note that capital-ism in the most general sense does include the concept of 'crony capitalism' whereas free-market-ism shuns 'crony capitalism'.
Crony capitalism aside, it is unclear if capitalism necessarily creates (more) inequality, although it does underpin a philosophical motive to drive individuals to extract the most from their competitive advantage, that doesn't mean they will be successful at it.
'Mixed economies', while they sound nice and centrist, I think, tend to be the worst. Ultimately, it creates a vehicle by which political comparative advantage, which is zero-sum, and coercive (if you don't follow the law you can be thrown in jail) to economic advantage, which more easily compounds.
Person A is an upper class CEO living in the U.S. in the 1930s. He has a large mansion, a paid cook and other staff which care for the "menial stuff." It's likely his bank account will never drop below seven digits. Martian A is an explorer who travels the universe in the year 2430. When he's hungry he commands his computer to make him some food. Other of his needs are met with similar ease. Is Person A inequal from Martian A? Yes. Is one of their lifestyle's more desirable than the other? Perhaps, that's for the individual to say. Is it a problem? No.
(b) -
>Where else could it stem from
How about the fascist system of government which partners with businesses to provide them special perks? How about the Federal Reserve which creates new money which becomes first available to connected businesses and in turn they benefit the most? How about any number of regulations, including minimum wage which makes it unprofitable to hire low-skilled workers?
>How is it possible to say inequality does not stem from capitalism?
Prove that it does.
I didn't liked your point A. Your comparison doesn't make any sense.
Campaigners against inequality (who are xampaigners for economic and social justice by and large) do not campaign to make every one "equal", but to make the spread smaller and the lives of those with the least less bleak.
I live in New Zealand which is a modern industrialised democracy and is quite wealthy. We have large sections of our population that are malnourished, inadequately housed, poorly educated and cut off from main stream society. The proportion of our population suffering so was much less in the years between the depression and the 1980s, during which a conscious effort was made by the state to maintain a high wage full employment economy.
The policies that worked then will not work now, but what we have is not working and is generating large costs and inefficiencies.
So it is irrelevant that "inequality stems from the fact that people aren't equal in their strengths and weaknesses". The conditions of the weakest and the degree to which the strongest can corral the resources is what counts
W
I see no evidence this is true.
For me economic inequality isn't a problem as long as people are equal under the law.
That argument can't be directly applied to the future. Just because a system worked in the past, doesn't mean that it will work in a future world with different constraints. Hence why many think that today's capitalism is not a good political model for the envisioned future of mass automation.
And of course we can't hold on to an idea out of reverence and respect, i.e. "be grateful for what it has done for you, you privileged first-world dweller, you".
Well then I'm confused, since I was just going by what you seemed to refer to. And I assumed that you were talking about a contemporary (now, + recent history) capitalistic system. What kind of capitalism were you talking about? Something that existed before but doesn't anymore?
So yeah, my bayesian filter is going to shun anything but free market capitalism. Especially because for many it has become a political stop-word, even though we sit in the greatest luxury in history. For me, any article that wants to replace capitalism first has to explain how it rolf-stomp every system that came before it, and how their new proposed system will augment capitalism.
We also sit in the greatest state incarceration of individuals in the history of the world, thanks largely to the privatization of prisons (ie, Capitalist incentives turned onto a societal function where they don't belong)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit...
http://smile.amazon.com/Why-Not-Capitalism-Jason-Brennan/dp/...
Is one of them. It made a totally convincing argument for why socialism should rofl-stomp capitalism for production efficiency (which is quite something in that capitalism strength is rofl-stomping every other system in production efficiency).
The other I have forgotten, but it basically proved that poor peoples minds worked differently (as a function of their environment) and so they really couldn't pull themselves up.
PS: Post-capitalism implies capitalism was or is present and unless the author wrote this piece in Hong Kong or Singapore he should not even remotely apply that word any present or past "economic system"
PPS: Much like democracy.
Here's what I mean:
Capitalism is (as democracy) not a yes/no thing. Instead, it is one extreme of a scale and every state has a value on that scale and can can be more or less capitalistic (democratic). Less capitalistic in this context means more centrally planned, typically by an actor of the state (government, council for economic planning, ...).
The problem I see in the typical use of the word "capitalism" is that many flaws of the current system are blamed on the "too capitalistic" side while I'm convinced the reason lies on the "too centrally planned side", i.e., we have too little capitalism.
Hence my reaction to the word "post-capitalism" which sounds to me as if someone against torture wrote an article about "post-humanism" as a follow-up to "the obsolescence of human dignity" (where clearly humanism and dignity aren't the problem, rather it is the lack thereof).
So, yes, we had and have capitalism to some extent everywhere (including Soviet Russia) but plain capitalism is very hard to find and even more so in the last 50 years. In fact, even Singapore has a central bank and I bet HK has one, too.
But, while that has in some cases mitigated or showed the growth rate of the problems that caused poor capitalism to be rejected, it hasn't chef them, and those same problems are often the things that provoke criticism of the current system.
I don't think that the problems that were mitigated by a retreat from pure capitalism will be further mitigated by a return to it.