+horizon It is incredibly excitement when you listen to a person who can visualize big picture applications evolving from systems we have already mastered in the past but using them in a more efficient way! I absolutely LUV the idea of the standard of Living world wide raising......
Wow! Some great insights here for possible future economies. Shifting from a focus on profits and GDP to the social commons and human wellbeing while instilling biospheric consciousness. Definitely a future I want to be a part of.
Bryan Hardy Marx identified this in 1850... Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin describes how the emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism.
Absolutely love this guy, what an amazing thinker. It gives me so much hope over this current dystonia neo-capitalism brutality we are currently experiencing.
Eye opening and super inspiring talk about the story we might want to inform our thoughts with regarding the future (next 20-30 years). Among the points i liked best: Collaborative commons as the engine for development. A new economic model emerging that is characterized as distributed, collaborative, peer directed, and that scales through lateral economies of scale. I really appreciate how he underlines the need to change the narrative/mindsets. For all the logistics/supply chain experts out there, there's also a very interesting and transforming view of the business that deserves pondering upon. He also mentions threats to that emerging narrative (big business, if they can, and climate change), which makes it very realistic. I think i am part of that movement, and hope to do my share of the work to create that world civilization.
"The worker feels vaguely that our present technical power could give abundance to all, but he also perceives how the capitalistic system and the State hinder the conquest of this well-being in every way." -- Peter Kropotkin, _Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal_ (1896)
If people listen carefully to these ideas they may get to the point in realizing, this is brilliant. This audience uses the word "never" too much and seems to be looking behind instead of ahead.
Brillant speach Mr Rifkin, as well as your seminar talk to the European Central Bank in Germany on 27 Jan 2017 and I agree with you fully. Comgratulations! I am a American-Brazilian with 4o years of a multi- displinary scientific and comercial experience, deligently built up studying ( MSc + MBA ) and working in 7 countries ( including USA, Japan and China) and visiting/ dealing, academically and commercially, with about 50 other countries. Have book and scientific papers published and am very hands-on familiar with the cultures and decisions-making thinking minds of the "developed" West, Asia, Australasia and Latin America. I am very conscious of the actual dramatic climate change and have an urge to help changing our current "blind egotistic business-as-usual" track and mind sect. I wouuld love to be in touch with you and hopefully join your team in help carrying your very important and civilization-saving objectives/ teachings, worldwide. Can I communicate with you and share my thougths and 40-year global hands-on experience with you and you team? Kindly contact me @ bluesky10x@aol.com or provide me your contact information. Thank-you kindly.
I find Rifkin's work immensely stimulating and important. I think his ideas become even more useful when tempered by rational skepticism. I found this commentary disturbing but also important to consider- especially for those who are not fortunate enough to be working in one of the fledgling co-operations of the collaborative commons such as Google. The push-back David Appelbaum • 9 days ago I believe Mr. Rifkin is absurdly over optimistic! The amount of political will to implement the level of infrastructure improvements required is not remotely feasible in our polarized political climate. Plus the notion of the Social Commons assumes a highly educated and entrepreneurial population. Given the appalling state of our educational system how are the majority of our people going to achieve the level of self sufficiency required to participate effectively? Moreover under a social commons system the means for truly complex goods and services and the associated wages concentrates wealth and power even further at the top leaving a culture of barter serfs gleaning the digital fields of the mega corporations. Mr. Rifkin's ideas are dangerous in the extreme and do absolutely nothing to correct the extreme social imbalance and dislocation we're seeing now. Whenever prophets speak of the shining city on the hill they never talk about how the plumbing works. We need real practical solutions for bringing dignity, self sufficiency, and security for the majority of our people. Mr. Rifkin does not advance that with his glorious digital future.
Mr David Appelbaum position is one that is bogged down by today's level of engineering. He simply does not understand that technology is exponential because it is feed by ever increasing technology.
Thanks for that comment. No criticism but nobody is actually questioning his speech. I think at certain point he contradicts himself. He says Economics and physics are intertwined and then debunks the "more machines, more productivity" approach, and then he brings the same economic philosophy and just tweaks the algorithm with a third sentence. Adding a third line to machines, productivity and now 'aggregation' isn't going to solve anything, His debunking of physics was followed by bringing in the laws of the universe, which is basically physics, imho, and 2 mins later declaring the problem solved -- the problem that he himself set up mind you! But what I am asking is why go down the same road? Why use the same aggregation framework to move the economy if that has not worked. So will his plan stop the global crisis? To that my answer is that it won't and no amount of grandstanding & showmanship can stop this sinking issue.
Isn’t the deal with 3D printing (last question) that even though it’s a higher marginal cost than traditional manufacturing, you don’t have to completely reconfigure the manufacturing line to produce a different product? I thought that was the main driver of marginal cost reduction for an entire plant.
Cooperation is the way of nature. Competition is an expensive, man-made delusion. for example: The big players on the Tech market are spending twice as much money for the lawyers and others soldiers of their patent wars than in the technical development of their products. Competition is a waste of energy and talent. What seems to be competition in nature is in reality a cooperation. But it's too complicated for those who do not want to look 2 steps ahead.
+Alfred Mayer Competition is part of nature, too. We all experience it at least in intrasexual competition, which all other competition in society is just proxy for. Men wouldn’t persue a high salary, a successful business if not to raise their sexual market value. Everything and all comes down to this. Competition is very real and very natural. And very useful.
perliva as I said. its only there for people who are unable think two steps ahead :) what you define as competition is a freudian falassy. competition in nature doesnt exist. what exists is elimination and territorial boundaries. there are no 2 male deers fucking the female deers of the same herd together to compete for who will have the bigger number of descendants. but this is analog to what microsoft and apple are doing since 40 years.
The only thing I know is that competition sucks when you're on the losing side. And there's always a loser. You should not try to get secure under government or conformity umbrella to be afraid of the loss. You should not be afraid of suffering. It's educational, but also traumatising. However, cooperating eliminates the suffering and trauma part and gets only the education.
Mr. Rifkin does a great job of explaining how our exponential growth of technology has enabled us to move out of the economic systems we've known in the past. Socialism, Capitalism, the Marketplace... NO LONGER NECESSARY. And guess what. Neither is the Monetary System! And this is what now stands in the way of our progression into a sustainable future. How do we create a system that's designed to meet human needs and a healthy environment? What does our natural world demand of us? A "real economy" means to economize, to maximize efficiency. And to get there, we'll need collaboration, not competition. Access, not ownership. Intelligent management of our resources, not perpetual growth and consumption in a fictional money game. Time to let go of the game and focus on what's real. The banking institutions, Wall Street, financial advisers, stock brokers, investment bankers, and on and on... this entire Financial Industry -- which is just an elaborate contrivance, based solely on the movement of money, and contributes NOTHING to what people really need -- is NO LONGER NECESSARY. It has nothing to do with the natural world. It thrives on manipulated scarcity and inefficiency, on consumption and waste. And it will hinder our progress every step of the way. Until people realize this, we may just be fighting a losing battle.
"Monetary System! And this is what now stands in the way of our progression " This is not true. It is the only system that is viable today that enables trade and innovation and what Rifkin proposes as a future will need the monetary system to occur.
bighands69 This is "the only system that is viable today that enables trade and innovation..." Well... this may have been the case in the past. But with our advancements in technology over the past few decades, it is simply no longer true. Especially with innovation. There are many recent studies which have shown that our monetary system, based on competition and financial-incentive, is actually detrimental to innovation and progress. However, when people are put into situations where they can collaborate rather than compete, the result is an increase in creativity and performance. Corporations hoard scientific knowledge for the sake of advantage. And researchers are often made to work on projects where profits take precedence over true scientific intent, another example of how our monetary system impedes progress. If we could only take advantage of our current communication technology, and work in collaboration with EVERYONE who has something to contribute, imagine the speed at which scientific breakthroughs and innovation might occur... free from the restrictions of the monetary system. And trade? The emerging reality of "zero-marginal cost", our ability to make more with less, automated production systems, 3-D printing, etc... these might transform the act of "trade", as we've known it, into something we might call "localized production and distribution". And anyway, trade is just another corrupt mechanism of the money game, where Governments and Corporations collude to rig the game for the benefit of a few. They can manipulate scarcity in order to maximize profits. And they do. They'll take food from poor countries where it's grown (and where people are starving), and ship it to where people have the most money to buy it. In fact, starvation, human suffering, environmental degradation... these consequences are never even taken into account in our monetary economy. They're just an unfortunate result, a "negative externality", inherent to the system.. along with growing inequality, escalating conflicts, the destruction of our ecosystems, and all the rest. Sorry to ramble. But these issues are important. Crucial. Potentially catastrophic. I mean, does anyone really believe -- in a monetary economy built around endless growth and consumption -- that we can pass along a healthy, sustainable planet to our future generations? I don't think there's any way that's possible. Which leaves us no choice...
To everyone wondering how people whose jobs are displaced by the technology, you must realize companies can't simply keep producing even at very low marginal costs of there is no demand for their product. It will all balance out
The robots that these companies use will also enable everyday people and communities to build more robots and so on. What this will lead to is a world of abundance. This will not balance out because simply will not just let things rest they will move onward and up.
I'm sorry to say that but now in 2021 weekend see that E. ON has been investing in battery storage systems around the world for a number of years, which means when in 2014 video, you said that E-on is going to go yet they do not leave the market but Rise Up in the new Horizons business because they have already be capital and great people behind their business. So Mr Jeremy Rifkin don't make statements we have deep thinking and use your intuition. Anyway altogether you had a great talk delivered thank you very much.
+Ron Knox Rifkin's work is contradictory from the very start. I think its on page 7 or 8 he states that entropy cannot be avoided and then on the next page states that sustainability can bring abundance. The rest of the book goes back and forth from there with the contradictions abounding. My book The Singularity and Socialism shows exactly how to get to "utopia" without violating any valid economics or having contradictions abound. www.amazon.com/Singularity-Socialism-Complexity-Techno-Optimism-Abundance/dp/1503034739
Information and technology are negatively entropic. Entropy is the dissolution of heat and order. Information takes post-entropic materials imbues them with order. We do this on a small scale now, but our creation of anti-matter particles using large watt lasers fired over bodies of water, and the forward momentum being made on fusion energy reactors are examples of what our future contributions to the universal entropy balance might look like.
E.ON SE is a European electric utility company based in Essen, Germany. It runs one of the world's largest investor-owned electric utility service providers.
I'm replying to your post a year later but I think it's important to say that blockchain technology and the innovations that are developed from it (i.e. Ethereum) will get us ever closer to a post-capitalist, collaborative commons society. I'm excited to be living in one of the greatest transition periods of human history so far. Lets see where the future takes us.
+Bryce How are you defining capitalism? All economic systems are a set of rules. The rules of capitalism are: don't steal or damage other people's private property, and don't break a contract you agree to. It's that simple. All of the spontaneous order that emerges from those rules is a product of those rules. Non-profits are capitalist. Co-ops are capitalist. Open source is capitalist. If it's not owned by the government it's private, and if it's private it's capitalist. Ethereum is especially capitalist thanks to their smart contracts.
The elephant in the room isn't Climate Change. That's a topic that is out in the open and spoken about all the time by almost everyone. The elephant in the room is the root cause of Climate Change, something that nobody ever talks about - Human overpopulation. If we could tackle that problem through legislated human cap and trade, subsidies, HOV lanes for childless people, etc., we wouldn't have a child asking, "Mommy, is a rainforest being destroyed so I can eat my hamburger?" The question he or she should be asking is, "Mommy, why did you bring me into a planet being destroyed by human overpopulation?" That's the real question.
+Patricia Leary This may not be what you would want to hear, but some people use way more resources than others. Just think about it. It is obvious, that a self-sustaining farmer in a third world country, who's only producing for self use, does not have a car, has never been near an airplane, has never bought food from the other side of the world, doesn't have to heat his house (because it's near the equator), and doesn't buy a lot of cheap plastic or electronic goods will not have the same greenhouse gas emissions as an average citizen in Europe or the US, where all these things are more or less normal to do and have. If you are interested in some actual numbers on the topic, just google something like "greenhouse gas emissions per capita". The short story here is, that some regions in the world produce 10x, 20x or even 50x more than others. But the real story is even a bit more complicated. First, some of these statistics include emissions from vegetation. So if a country burns a lot of it's forests, in order to get agricultural land, its per capita emissions will rise accordingly. Another aspect that often is missing in those sort of statistics is that some countries produce a lot for export. So for example the Chinese have a large industry base that's basically producing goods for US, EU, etc consumption. Chinese domestic consumption is still very low. So is it fair, if those factories contribute to Chinese emissions in those sort of statistics? Or what about the Amazon rainforest, and the bovine and soya agriculture that has been built there for export. Should that count as Brazilian emissions, if the real consumers are mostly not Brazilian? And some of those stats are even based on weak assumptions. Up until recently, the CO2 emissions of a type of coal that's widely used in China had been overestimated. Which means that a lot of the statistics on Chinese emissions of the last few years were a few percent too high. As you can see, the details matter a great deal. Have a nice day.
+Patricia Leary We are well on the way to ascertaining big data of population, food, water, and other essential resources with the amounts for sustainable pops, at what standards too. So relax and enjoy, you won't even notice it happening.
+Patricia Leary _the root cause of Climate Change_ We don’t know what that is. Could be anything. And we shouldn’t look into it that much. It’s better to prepare for the consequences and a new reality. Like we did for the last million years. We’re good at that.
+perliva What do you mean by "we"? You are probably talking about humans, because you wrote "like we did for the last million years". Sure, humans might survive for a while. But our modern civilization is not millions of years old. As a matter of fact, most of it is less than 200 years old. And some argue, that most of it is still in creation. What we have is very new. We still need to learn how to make it last. Let me ask you this: When you drive on a road, do you care about what is ahead? I do, because it is much cheaper to prevent a disaster than to clean up afterwards. Besides, I can't clean up my own remains very well I think. ;) And what do you do on a misty day with low visibility? Do you slow down, or do you become another statistic? Climate change is much like that. It is about how we deal with uncertainty. Because it is true, we haven't fully understood everything about it yet. The models of how it works are not perfect. Every serious scientist will tell you that. But does that mean that we shouldn't act? Can these models ever be perfect? When is good enough, good enough? While we have not understood everything, we do know parts of it. The greenhouse gas effect of certain gasses for example has been discovered over 150 years ago. So we do know that very well. We know where the brakes, or at least some them, are. If you think the Syrian crisis is a problem, with maybe 10 million refugees, think about what could happen from climate change in 50-200 years. We have at least 4 big problems: 1. Most larger cities (3/4) are at the ocean. So they're gonna be under water, should the ice of Antarctica ever melt. We don't need that. 2. Extreme weather events, like long droughts, become more likely. Many people could die from starvation or migrate because of that. 3. Europe has a radiator that keeps it warm, called the Gulf Stream. Basically a particular pattern of water movements in the ocean. If that stops working, or get's changed in a significant way, Europe has a big problem. And 4. there are several major countries that get their water from the Himalayas, including China, India, etc. Half of the worlds population. The glaciers on those mountains are a natural buffer for water. They grow in the winter, and melt in the summer, giving necessary water to the rivers that run through those countries. I've just done some reading on this myself, and it seem like those glaciers are receding fast. And honestly, I'm most worried about that. Because if the people that rely on that water don't get what they need to survive, they will have to move somewhere else. And that effort could cause instability, which could cause the collapse of the current global economic system. And even if that doesn't occur, it would still take up a lot of resources that could be spent on better things than cleaning up after the fact. Anyway. In the end you can only find out what makes sense to you by your self. And you can only do that by listening to the arguments that are brought forward and by thinking about them. So, since you seem to speak German, which I gather from the videos you have on your channel, I recommend to you "Der Klimawandel" by Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber. It's a very small book that gives you a good overview of the essentials. The best book I know on the subject. Have a nice day. :)
InfoSopher Never said we shouldn’t act. Of course we should. What I am saying is: doesn’t matter what the reasons behind climate change are, it is important that we adapt. That is where our resources should go. Adapting to changing conditions is what we are doing very well. Since ages.
Rifkin reminds me of the late Jacque Fresco, who developed a social system alternative called a Resource Based Economy. It is the ONLY well-thought out, detailed alternative social system that can provide a high standard of living for ALL humans and maintain environmental sustainability via intellgent resource management, which is grossly not done in today's capitalist system.
I have done Marxist political economy and Marx identified this in 1850... Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
It crazy listening to lectures and reading comments to see just how much money is slowing the growth of technology. The need to monetize everything is acting like brakes on our culture. And somehow the vast majority of people think this makes any sense.
The reason for germanys energy companys to go down is not just the self-energy-providing homes. But mainly because of germanys crazy energy reform program, causing nuclear power stations to shut down, in favor of coal and renewable energy production. Since this energy reform started more and more energy is bought from neighbor countrys, which lead to an extreme increase of energy costs. Most of the energy isn t used by homes anyway but by the industry. (Sorry for language mistakes i am german)
03:20 So he is an intellectual. Intellectual’s end products are ideas. Normally they don’t get tested, often enough ending in catastrophes. He is also active for some time now, luckily. In order to value his ideas: *how have his other, older ideas turned out to be? Were they accurate?* Does anyone know?
perliva good question. He has a book about Hydrogen fuel cells and that vision is a bust...they wont work to scale because of physics. The book the End of Work is faring better and in part the UBI crew is banking on it. A book about beef I think is not getting any traction. So 1 for 3 off the top of my head
perliva to be fair I did havs a state of the art beef substitute a couple weeks ago that was pure plant based and it was good. If costs go down or beef goes up then I can see beef use declining - so the jury may is still out on that one
Ok so a quick read on amazon and just based on the book subject matter I say 3 hits, 3 misses and 3 the jury is still out, about a 33% ratio. Not bad but not good
@18:45 - Hmm... that prediction about "all the major automakers" coming out with fuel cell vehicles "in the next few years" didn't age well. OTOH, the EV revolution is well underway in December 2019, so the larger point about the changing economy still stands. Interesting talk. EDIT: Btw, it's interesting to note that 2014, the year of this talk, is also when Tony Seba's "Clean Disruption" was published.
So.. how do we move ahead with all this technology in the so called "developing countries".. when some seems to be goind the other way, towards "underdeveloping countries"?
Hi guys, I have to say that I have enjoyed reading this book and think it settles many strong ideas that will bring down the current economic system to its knees. However, as a reader, I wanna warn others that in Chapter 14, there is a piece of misinformation regarding Bitcoin creation. In the book is stated that Amir Taaki and Donald Norman are the creators of Bitcoin. But it is not true. As a simple Google search can show you, the creator of this protocol is Satoshi Nakamoto, which is a pseudonym for an anonymous person or group of people. Amir Taaki and Donald Norman created Britcoin, which is based on Bitcoin. I think this misconception must be corrected or demonstrated through the sources listing. Please, share your thoughts.
Javier Martínez Marx identified this in 1850... Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
Anticipar que el costo marginal podría ser cero, gratis, abundante y distribuido en la nueva economía. Ejemplo: 1) industria de la música, economía compartida, consumidores productores de su propio contenido. 2) modelo fremium no motiva lo suficiente a premium por lo que el costo marginal no se acerca a cero.
So if nobody has jobs to purchase the things hes talking about that will be produced at zero marginal cost how can the companies profit? How can society continue on, unless everything that we buy and sell is free?
***** How? They car itself doesn't do it. And if the car doesn't do it then you will need additional equipment, which I assure you, will be either cost prohibitive or made illegal.
the problem with 'zero marginal cost' is that it's temporary until a premium is incurred to as for something that is invented to redefine quality rather than quantity. The object is scaling is to equalize the burden of production across the broader market size.. This theory is all burdened by the fact that the more people, the more demanding consumption, which competes with the Gates Foundation school of thought and recent dissertation from Michael Moore.
Assuming a future where we have all embraced the collective commons and we are living in the new economy, who will be living in the waterfront houses? Who has to live where the breeze wafts off a sewerage plant? Not being cynical, just wondering...
JR inspired many persons here to comment. Is it possible that we self-organize through Google ourselves. Google could be the best firm in the world if people with best heart and mind become creators. In every institution everywhere on the top position are uncapable persons. Human resource management can help and I will try in my country ( Croatia) prove it. At least in my town, Osijek. Soon we will demonstrate it.
Ante Lauc google are parasites and hes tole the idea from Das Kapital Marx identified this in 1850... Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
“Rifkin cites me in his book, but it is evident that he almost completely misunderstood my arguments in two different ways, both of which bear on the premises of his book.” - Eric Raymond
He is right for sure, being that global economics coupled with internet commerce has not yet taken full effect. However, he missed a few points- we can not know when the majority of the world will actually begin to buy online, and what corporations will gain power from it, or what they will do. He also missed the fact that china is the worlds superpower at the moment, and who knows what they will do as they ally themselves with places like russia, another massive power. There is also the great cyber wall of china to be considered- there is control over internet communications and buying to a great degree. lastly, look at the fact that the american dollar is the basis for all currency, and the idea that all three superpowers i just mentioned have plenty of monkeys with guns who can control the people practically on any level. They will still build bombs, too. Nothing I can think of will deter any of those country's from keeping the 12k nukes the world can boast currently- you have to consider the power of companies that cannot sell online, like arms dealers and pharm companies.
We already do! Then why is there so much hunger and desperation in many parts of the world? We obviously do not either produce enough or distribute it effectively. For a start much of what we produce is perishable.. It's rotten before it can be distributed. To say "we do" is no answer, merely avoids an answer.
The problems that you talk about isn't a result of ability, but an issue with will. We have the ability to produce and distribute. We don't because a lack of empathy for poor people.
this makes only sense, if you have all ressources in unlimmited values available for no costs - including work. Else: you need an "orientation point" a "baseline" for calculating the optimal allokation of ressources for maximizing the output based on ... whatever: in a free market economy the demand of the people and their organizations. In a war economy the targeted output is different, but still a measurement is required to optimize the allocation of ressources. Digitalization and the transparency that lives in it will be the killer of capitalism. And CBDC will be the main pillar of the data-driven, ai-controlled new system with optimization of resource allocation and contribution-based gratification. ... as an altrenative we still do have the option of a totalitarian tyranny as a new order ... we will figure it out pretty soon, I guess ... Since the liquidity trap in 2019 things accelarate ...
my father is a retired electronic engineer and he gets angry with electrically illiterate people missing the fact that we cant just put solar panels in the desert and power the world. Electrical energy does not travel easily over distance. This is a major problem with the idea of an internet of energy. localised hydrogen may be a solution but then it still needs to be transported. Information flows a lot easier than electricity.
ross carruthers That's a good point Ross, when he talks about shuffling electricity from west to east Europe it doesn't sound realistic But if every building across the continent is a mini solar power station feeding a grid and storage system the electricity is not being shipped over long distances. No?
Solid state battery technology will partly solve this problem, firstly because energy will be preserved in solid state batteries and secondly because they will charge up much quicker. Perhaps energy will be shipped from one place to another in driverless cars using zero marginal cost energy. In distant future, Quantum entangled electrons may also be used to transport electricity over infinite distances at zero cost. I.e. no need for cables.
The reason we have come this far i.e. zero marginal cost society is because of capitalism and capitalism will continue to take us forward as it has done since the beginning of human activity. We have always traded goods and services with each other. It is part of human nature.
It annoys me that this guy is talking about socialism but doesn't seem to realize it because he thinks socialism is when the state does things. I mean for fucks sake the paradox of capitalism he talks about isn't previously undisclosed, it's literally what Marx talked about.
Pawel Magnowski He said near zero margin cost. When a robot is putting together most all intricate parts of a device and assembling a vast majority of it through Automation and mechanization. That item has virtually no cost to produce that item.
Great for the Consultant, but sentences such as " even if we get only half of the Internet of Things done" and " .... marginal cost may be (high) but we need to get the cost down ... otherwise why do it " Sadly Ayn Rand has commented famously on University professors leading the charge using Altruism ... Rifkind's ideas are very very poorly formulated here ... maybe it can improve... let's hope so.
Young people like sharing because their asses are broke as fvck. I hardly find a sentence in this whole talk to agree even a little. Energy internet? Jesus christ, the guy has no clue about the things he's saying, Transporting energy is a huge waste of power, it requiers a lot of metal and those distances are totally impractical, and with no solutions in sights. Recycled plastic is cheap? So why does it need so much government propaganda to get people to recycle it and why there is still literal mountains of plastic garbage near every city and town, that businesses do not see fit to recycle and rather pull more oil out of the ground to package and manufacture their goods with.
How is he defining capitalism? All economic systems are a set of rules. The rules of capitalism are: don't steal or damage other people's private property, and don't break a contract you agree to. It's that simple. All of the spontaneous order that emerges from those rules is a product of those rules. Non-profits are capitalist. Co-ops are capitalist. Open source is capitalist. If it's not owned by the government it's private, and if it's private it's capitalist.
Rifkin's work is contradictory from the very start. I think its on page 7 or 8 he states that entropy cannot be avoided and then on the next page states that sustainability can bring abundance. The rest of the book goes back and forth from there with the contradictions abounding. He basically greened Keynesian ideas on how to reach the socialist utopia by bringing about the zero marginal productivity of capital. My book The Singularity and Socialism shows exactly how to get to "utopia" without violating any valid economics or having contradictions abound. www.amazon.com/Singularity-Socialism-Complexity-Techno-Optimism-Abundance/dp/1503034739
Mr. Ritkin's analysis is compelling certainly. However, Anybody can work for free, that does not take brains. Any thing that threatens human survival can't be good or 'successful', as the purpose of physical economics is not merely to come to near zero costs, in providing goods and services or near free labor. Low wage labor inhibits family formation and is the cause of societal, political and government destabilization. Our existential system, the physical economy, must increase employment, the standard of living, new scientific discoveries, that are employed to optimize the rate of increase of the potential population density. I don't know why Mr. Ritkin is so grim on Climate Change. 70% of the Earth is water. Using less energy has never increased the population's standard of living; we're offered 'ways', survival measures, to deal with Wall St. and corporate imposed and induced austerity. The metrics of our 'footprint' on the environment is not helpful if all we're doing is finding the system of compliance, providing the ideology that justifies submission to and enforcement of an fascist economic and population contraction policy. Solar is overrated and we have nuclear 'waste' that can be transformed into nuclear treasure, able to power our economy for the next 1,000 years. Actually we should be in the Fusion economy by now, the Hydrogen Economy at least. The ocean is the source and engine of all natural power, processes and life on our planet and we haven't scratched the surface of knowledge of our oceans. It's the immediate frontier. Man, because of mind and creativity, is the most powerful life force on and in the Universe; actually necessary to all since Man is the only power of development, the planets are depending on. The human population is not a great unsustainable burden on the planet Earth. Human population must grow to increase the population's brain power, facilitating our immediate great endeavor, the Universal Development Plan, planet Earth must be developed by Man, in a symbiotic organization and relationship to the planet, eventually launching the inter-planetary economy within our Solar System, and on to realizing mankind's destiny which is to distribute humanity beyond the Solar System, into the Milky Way Galaxy, throughout the Universe. I just think we're thinking in the small here.
It's proven that a child brings unhappiness to married couples everywhere regardless of class. Not having children is a net promoter of quality of life. Stop spreading inflammatory bullshit
Human population must not grow, we are more than enough people. Automation is stagnant because we don't know what we'll do with so many people who didn't, don't and won't have a job. Ever. And this is the majority of the world population
The only true thing you're saying is that Earth must be developed by Man. Correct. Problem is nowadays the earth is developed by a system of nation states which are captured entirely or mostly by military, secret service, police and corrupt judiciary. This coercive system is armed and will not go away by simply giving up willingly the power. We need to destroy all this system of coercion, educate people to master level and build earth by untraumatised man and woman
Lots of accolades below - but he got the basics of peak oil totally wrong. The rest is hot air and has not stood the test of time: flywheels! H2 is part of the answer but there is still a long way to go and Russias despotism will hold us back for a decade.
What will people do as technology continues to destroy more than create jobs? If the vast majority of jobs are done by technology how will those people displaced buy anything? Hence a new economic paradigm evolving beyond capitalism and beyond money.
Good question, different locations will always have value irregardless of the cost of making a home. I don't think anyone can know what this means in advance. Im Hoping, the solutions will simply emerge as they are needed.
This new revolution as people call it will involve automation in other words robotics. The robotic system will be able to build other robotics systems and so on. What will happen is that most of the things you today consider as costing money will in the not so distant future cost pennies. After that products will cost nothing to produce.
The entire concept of a "job," while not referenced in this piece, will probably see a dramatic shift as well. If goods are so cheap, and these are ALL GOODS, then what will a job mean in 10, 20, or 50 years? It's an interesting idea and lends itself to the "eclipsing capitalism" ideal....I'm all for it. I suspect, though, that we will struggle for a number of years with inequality and low jobs...until the collaborative commons eventually becomes ubiquitous.
social commons, human narrative, low cynicism, things can be done. i love this guy so much.
+horizon It is incredibly excitement when you listen to a person who can visualize big picture applications evolving from systems we have already mastered in the past but using them in a more efficient way! I absolutely LUV the idea of the standard of Living world wide raising......
Wow! Some great insights here for possible future economies. Shifting from a focus on profits and GDP to the social commons and human wellbeing while instilling biospheric consciousness. Definitely a future I want to be a part of.
It will not be about shifting focus it will be a natural progression.
Profits today is what will enable this too occur in the future.
Bryan Hardy Marx identified this in 1850...
Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin describes how the emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism.
Wow! He is preaching the TVP and RBE that is great.
Absolutely love this guy, what an amazing thinker. It gives me so much hope over this current dystonia neo-capitalism brutality we are currently experiencing.
Eye opening and super inspiring talk about the story we might want to inform our thoughts with regarding the future (next 20-30 years).
Among the points i liked best: Collaborative commons as the engine for development. A new economic model emerging that is characterized as distributed, collaborative, peer directed, and that scales through lateral economies of scale.
I really appreciate how he underlines the need to change the narrative/mindsets.
For all the logistics/supply chain experts out there, there's also a very interesting and transforming view of the business that deserves pondering upon.
He also mentions threats to that emerging narrative (big business, if they can, and climate change), which makes it very realistic.
I think i am part of that movement, and hope to do my share of the work to create that world civilization.
***** Michael Karlberg Justin Scoggin you will appreciate what he is saying.
FLOK Society charla recomendada, directamente alineada con sus temas de interés.
FLOK Society Si lo traen a Ecuador, avisarán!
Probably the most important video you will see in the next year.
"The worker feels vaguely that our present technical power could give abundance to all, but he also perceives how the capitalistic system and the State hinder the conquest of this well-being in every way."
-- Peter Kropotkin, _Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal_ (1896)
If people listen carefully to these ideas they may get to the point in realizing, this is brilliant.
This audience uses the word "never" too much and seems to be looking behind instead of ahead.
Brillant speach Mr Rifkin, as well as your seminar talk to the European Central Bank in Germany on 27 Jan 2017 and I agree with you fully. Comgratulations!
I am a American-Brazilian with 4o years of a multi- displinary scientific and comercial experience, deligently built up studying ( MSc + MBA ) and working in 7 countries ( including USA, Japan and China) and visiting/ dealing, academically and commercially, with about 50 other countries. Have book and scientific papers published and am very hands-on familiar with the cultures and decisions-making thinking minds of the "developed" West, Asia, Australasia and Latin America.
I am very conscious of the actual dramatic climate change and have an urge to help changing our current "blind egotistic business-as-usual" track and mind sect. I wouuld love to be in touch with you and hopefully join your team in help carrying your very important and civilization-saving objectives/ teachings, worldwide. Can I communicate with you and share my thougths and 40-year global hands-on experience with you and you team? Kindly contact me @ bluesky10x@aol.com or provide me your contact information. Thank-you kindly.
I find Rifkin's work immensely stimulating and important.
I think his ideas become even more useful when tempered by rational skepticism.
I found this commentary disturbing but also important to consider- especially for those who are not fortunate enough to be working in one of the fledgling co-operations of the collaborative commons such as Google.
The push-back
David Appelbaum • 9 days ago
I believe Mr. Rifkin is absurdly over optimistic! The amount of political will to implement the level of infrastructure improvements required is not remotely feasible in our polarized political climate. Plus the notion of the Social Commons assumes a highly educated and entrepreneurial population. Given the appalling state of our educational system how are the majority of our people going to achieve the level of self sufficiency required to participate effectively? Moreover under a social commons system the means for truly complex goods and services and the associated wages concentrates wealth and power even further at the top leaving a culture of barter serfs gleaning the digital fields of the mega corporations. Mr. Rifkin's ideas are dangerous in the extreme and do absolutely nothing to correct the extreme social imbalance and dislocation we're seeing now. Whenever prophets speak of the shining city on the hill they never talk about how the plumbing works. We need real practical solutions for bringing dignity, self sufficiency, and security for the majority of our people. Mr. Rifkin does not advance that with his glorious digital future.
Mr David Appelbaum position is one that is bogged down by today's level of engineering.
He simply does not understand that technology is exponential because it is feed by ever increasing technology.
Thanks for that comment. No criticism but nobody is actually questioning his speech. I think at certain point he contradicts himself. He says Economics and physics are intertwined and then debunks the "more machines, more productivity" approach, and then he brings the same economic philosophy and just tweaks the algorithm with a third sentence. Adding a third line to machines, productivity and now 'aggregation' isn't going to solve anything, His debunking of physics was followed by bringing in the laws of the universe, which is basically physics, imho, and 2 mins later declaring the problem solved -- the problem that he himself set up mind you! But what I am asking is why go down the same road? Why use the same aggregation framework to move the economy if that has not worked. So will his plan stop the global crisis? To that my answer is that it won't and no amount of grandstanding & showmanship can stop this sinking issue.
Isn’t the deal with 3D printing (last question) that even though it’s a higher marginal cost than traditional manufacturing, you don’t have to completely reconfigure the manufacturing line to produce a different product? I thought that was the main driver of marginal cost reduction for an entire plant.
Cooperation is the way of nature. Competition is an expensive, man-made delusion. for example: The big players on the Tech market are spending twice as much money for the lawyers and others soldiers of their patent wars than in the technical development of their products. Competition is a waste of energy and talent. What seems to be competition in nature is in reality a cooperation. But it's too complicated for those who do not want to look 2 steps ahead.
+Alfred Mayer Competition is part of nature, too. We all experience it at least in intrasexual competition, which all other competition in society is just proxy for. Men wouldn’t persue a high salary, a successful business if not to raise their sexual market value. Everything and all comes down to this.
Competition is very real and very natural. And very useful.
perliva as I said. its only there for people who are unable think two steps ahead :) what you define as competition is a freudian falassy. competition in nature doesnt exist. what exists is elimination and territorial boundaries. there are no 2 male deers fucking the female deers of the same herd together to compete for who will have the bigger number of descendants. but this is analog to what microsoft and apple are doing since 40 years.
@@AlMayer1100 Terrific insight :))
The only thing I know is that competition sucks when you're on the losing side. And there's always a loser. You should not try to get secure under government or conformity umbrella to be afraid of the loss. You should not be afraid of suffering. It's educational, but also traumatising. However, cooperating eliminates the suffering and trauma part and gets only the education.
I am an architect and the digitalization of space will put the planet in a small room. Pretty amazing
So we can't see where society is going...that makes it exciting. It is also an astounding glimpse into the Singularity - it's happening NOW.
When can we foresee the end to banks as we know it? How long before people wake up to the Credit Unions movement?
Mr. Rifkin does a great job of explaining how our exponential growth of technology has enabled us to move out of the economic systems we've known in the past. Socialism, Capitalism, the Marketplace... NO LONGER NECESSARY. And guess what. Neither is the Monetary System! And this is what now stands in the way of our progression into a sustainable future.
How do we create a system that's designed to meet human needs and a healthy environment? What does our natural world demand of us? A "real economy" means to economize, to maximize efficiency. And to get there, we'll need collaboration, not competition. Access, not ownership. Intelligent management of our resources, not perpetual growth and consumption in a fictional money game.
Time to let go of the game and focus on what's real. The banking institutions, Wall Street, financial advisers, stock brokers, investment bankers, and on and on... this entire Financial Industry -- which is just an elaborate contrivance, based solely on the movement of money, and contributes NOTHING to what people really need -- is NO LONGER NECESSARY. It has nothing to do with the natural world. It thrives on manipulated scarcity and inefficiency, on consumption and waste. And it will hinder our progress every step of the way. Until people realize this, we may just be fighting a losing battle.
"Monetary System! And this is what now stands in the way of our progression "
This is not true.
It is the only system that is viable today that enables trade and innovation and what Rifkin proposes as a future will need the monetary system to occur.
bighands69 This is "the only system that is viable today that enables trade and innovation..."
Well... this may have been the case in the past. But with our advancements in technology over the past few decades, it is simply no longer true. Especially with innovation. There are many recent studies which have shown that our monetary system, based on competition and financial-incentive, is actually detrimental to innovation and progress. However, when people are put into situations where they can collaborate rather than compete, the result is an increase in creativity and performance.
Corporations hoard scientific knowledge for the sake of advantage. And researchers are often made to work on projects where profits take precedence over true scientific intent, another example of how our monetary system impedes progress.
If we could only take advantage of our current communication technology, and work in collaboration with EVERYONE who has something to contribute, imagine the speed at which scientific breakthroughs and innovation might occur... free from the restrictions of the monetary system.
And trade? The emerging reality of "zero-marginal cost", our ability to make more with less, automated production systems, 3-D printing, etc... these might transform the act of "trade", as we've known it, into something we might call "localized production and distribution".
And anyway, trade is just another corrupt mechanism of the money game, where Governments and Corporations collude to rig the game for the benefit of a few. They can manipulate scarcity in order to maximize profits. And they do. They'll take food from poor countries where it's grown (and where people are starving), and ship it to where people have the most money to buy it.
In fact, starvation, human suffering, environmental degradation... these consequences are never even taken into account in our monetary economy. They're just an unfortunate result, a "negative externality", inherent to the system.. along with growing inequality, escalating conflicts, the destruction of our ecosystems, and all the rest.
Sorry to ramble. But these issues are important. Crucial. Potentially catastrophic. I mean, does anyone really believe -- in a monetary economy built around endless growth and consumption -- that we can pass along a healthy, sustainable planet to our future generations? I don't think there's any way that's possible. Which leaves us no choice...
To everyone wondering how people whose jobs are displaced by the technology, you must realize companies can't simply keep producing even at very low marginal costs of there is no demand for their product. It will all balance out
The robots that these companies use will also enable everyday people and communities to build more robots and so on.
What this will lead to is a world of abundance.
This will not balance out because simply will not just let things rest they will move onward and up.
This guy was 4-5 years ahead ...wow!
great talk, keep up the great work to make the world better !
I'm sorry to say that but now in 2021 weekend see that E. ON has been investing in battery storage systems around the world for a number of years, which means when in 2014 video, you said that E-on is going to go yet they do not leave the market but Rise Up in the new Horizons business because they have already be capital and great people behind their business.
So Mr Jeremy Rifkin don't make statements we have deep thinking and use your intuition.
Anyway altogether you had a great talk delivered thank you very much.
How do we mass produce food from small cooperatives? How do we distribute water to billions of people?
+Ron Knox Rifkin's work is contradictory from the very start. I think its on page 7 or 8 he states that entropy cannot be avoided and then on the next page states that sustainability can bring abundance. The rest of the book goes back and forth from there with the contradictions abounding. My book The Singularity and Socialism shows exactly how to get to "utopia" without violating any valid economics or having contradictions abound. www.amazon.com/Singularity-Socialism-Complexity-Techno-Optimism-Abundance/dp/1503034739
I dont agree with everything he says, part make sense, but not all. Cooperatives are not the must efficient system.
Information and technology are negatively entropic. Entropy is the dissolution of heat and order. Information takes post-entropic materials imbues them with order. We do this on a small scale now, but our creation of anti-matter particles using large watt lasers fired over bodies of water, and the forward momentum being made on fusion energy reactors are examples of what our future contributions to the universal entropy balance might look like.
Automated vertical farming is a pretty good solution. The real problem is going to be phosphates... but materials science is unstoppable.
Water is a bigger problem. Especially with the tar sands' fresh water needs.
E.ON SE is a European electric utility company based in Essen, Germany. It runs one of the world's largest investor-owned electric utility service providers.
- this is a prophecy ! unbelivable insight !
Brilliant talk! Plus he reminds me of Don Carlton from Monsters University.
This makes since. I don't know if I'd be okay to share my home with someone I don't know with my daughter living at home.
wonderful lecture!!! Blessings to you!
Sharing is caring !!!!
lol
Someone should find out how we can apply this to healthcare
Simple: NEED not GREED.
one of the social commons he's talking about is known as Ethereum. You should check it out.
I'm replying to your post a year later but I think it's important to say that blockchain technology and the innovations that are developed from it (i.e. Ethereum) will get us ever closer to a post-capitalist, collaborative commons society. I'm excited to be living in one of the greatest transition periods of human history so far. Lets see where the future takes us.
+Bryce How are you defining capitalism? All economic systems are a set of rules. The rules of capitalism are: don't steal or damage other people's private property, and don't break a contract you agree to. It's that simple. All of the spontaneous order that emerges from those rules is a product of those rules. Non-profits are capitalist. Co-ops are capitalist. Open source is capitalist. If it's not owned by the government it's private, and if it's private it's capitalist. Ethereum is especially capitalist thanks to their smart contracts.
Networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin still impose us intermediaries. What he is talking about is much closer to networks like IOTA or NANO
26:30 Wow. Former treasury secretary / president of Harvard proposes favoring monopolies. And acknowledged there will be a new paradigm.
He must be tried for conspiracy
So if we eliminate profits then we eliminate money. What takes it’s place? Social recognition points (almost like China’s social credit score system?)
What a dystopia.
This is awesome!
The elephant in the room isn't Climate Change. That's a topic that is out in the open and spoken about all the time by almost everyone. The elephant in the room is the root cause of Climate Change, something that nobody ever talks about - Human overpopulation. If we could tackle that problem through legislated human cap and trade, subsidies, HOV lanes for childless people, etc., we wouldn't have a child asking, "Mommy, is a rainforest being destroyed so I can eat my hamburger?" The question he or she should be asking is, "Mommy, why did you bring me into a planet being destroyed by human overpopulation?" That's the real question.
+Patricia Leary This may not be what you would want to hear, but some people use way more resources than others.
Just think about it. It is obvious, that a self-sustaining farmer in a third world country, who's only producing for self use, does not have a car, has never been near an airplane, has never bought food from the other side of the world, doesn't have to heat his house (because it's near the equator), and doesn't buy a lot of cheap plastic or electronic goods will not have the same greenhouse gas emissions as an average citizen in Europe or the US, where all these things are more or less normal to do and have.
If you are interested in some actual numbers on the topic, just google something like "greenhouse gas emissions per capita". The short story here is, that some regions in the world produce 10x, 20x or even 50x more than others.
But the real story is even a bit more complicated.
First, some of these statistics include emissions from vegetation. So if a country burns a lot of it's forests, in order to get agricultural land, its per capita emissions will rise accordingly.
Another aspect that often is missing in those sort of statistics is that some countries produce a lot for export. So for example the Chinese have a large industry base that's basically producing goods for US, EU, etc consumption. Chinese domestic consumption is still very low. So is it fair, if those factories contribute to Chinese emissions in those sort of statistics?
Or what about the Amazon rainforest, and the bovine and soya agriculture that has been built there for export. Should that count as Brazilian emissions, if the real consumers are mostly not Brazilian?
And some of those stats are even based on weak assumptions. Up until recently, the CO2 emissions of a type of coal that's widely used in China had been overestimated. Which means that a lot of the statistics on Chinese emissions of the last few years were a few percent too high.
As you can see, the details matter a great deal.
Have a nice day.
+Patricia Leary We are well on the way to ascertaining big data of population, food, water, and other essential resources with the amounts for sustainable pops, at what standards too. So relax and enjoy, you won't even notice it happening.
+Patricia Leary
_the root cause of Climate Change_
We don’t know what that is. Could be anything. And we shouldn’t look into it that much. It’s better to prepare for the consequences and a new reality. Like we did for the last million years. We’re good at that.
+perliva What do you mean by "we"? You are probably talking about humans, because you wrote "like we did for the last million years". Sure, humans might survive for a while. But our modern civilization is not millions of years old. As a matter of fact, most of it is less than 200 years old. And some argue, that most of it is still in creation. What we have is very new. We still need to learn how to make it last.
Let me ask you this: When you drive on a road, do you care about what is ahead? I do, because it is much cheaper to prevent a disaster than to clean up afterwards. Besides, I can't clean up my own remains very well I think. ;)
And what do you do on a misty day with low visibility? Do you slow down, or do you become another statistic?
Climate change is much like that. It is about how we deal with uncertainty. Because it is true, we haven't fully understood everything about it yet. The models of how it works are not perfect. Every serious scientist will tell you that. But does that mean that we shouldn't act? Can these models ever be perfect? When is good enough, good enough?
While we have not understood everything, we do know parts of it. The greenhouse gas effect of certain gasses for example has been discovered over 150 years ago. So we do know that very well. We know where the brakes, or at least some them, are.
If you think the Syrian crisis is a problem, with maybe 10 million refugees, think about what could happen from climate change in 50-200 years. We have at least 4 big problems: 1. Most larger cities (3/4) are at the ocean. So they're gonna be under water, should the ice of Antarctica ever melt. We don't need that. 2. Extreme weather events, like long droughts, become more likely. Many people could die from starvation or migrate because of that. 3. Europe has a radiator that keeps it warm, called the Gulf Stream. Basically a particular pattern of water movements in the ocean. If that stops working, or get's changed in a significant way, Europe has a big problem. And 4. there are several major countries that get their water from the Himalayas, including China, India, etc. Half of the worlds population. The glaciers on those mountains are a natural buffer for water. They grow in the winter, and melt in the summer, giving necessary water to the rivers that run through those countries. I've just done some reading on this myself, and it seem like those glaciers are receding fast. And honestly, I'm most worried about that. Because if the people that rely on that water don't get what they need to survive, they will have to move somewhere else. And that effort could cause instability, which could cause the collapse of the current global economic system. And even if that doesn't occur, it would still take up a lot of resources that could be spent on better things than cleaning up after the fact.
Anyway. In the end you can only find out what makes sense to you by your self. And you can only do that by listening to the arguments that are brought forward and by thinking about them. So, since you seem to speak German, which I gather from the videos you have on your channel, I recommend to you "Der Klimawandel" by Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber. It's a very small book that gives you a good overview of the essentials. The best book I know on the subject.
Have a nice day. :)
InfoSopher Never said we shouldn’t act. Of course we should. What I am saying is: doesn’t matter what the reasons behind climate change are, it is important that we adapt. That is where our resources should go. Adapting to changing conditions is what we are doing very well. Since ages.
Rifkin reminds me of the late Jacque Fresco, who developed a social system alternative called a Resource Based Economy. It is the ONLY well-thought out, detailed alternative social system that can provide a high standard of living for ALL humans and maintain environmental sustainability via intellgent resource management, which is grossly not done in today's capitalist system.
agreed.
Jacque Fresco got his idea from Buckminster Fuller. I just love them both!
kina Cool. I love his books
I have done Marxist political economy and Marx identified this in 1850...
Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
It crazy listening to lectures and reading comments to see just how much money is slowing the growth of technology. The need to monetize everything is acting like brakes on our culture. And somehow the vast majority of people think this makes any sense.
The reason for germanys energy companys to go down is not just the self-energy-providing homes. But mainly because of germanys crazy energy reform program, causing nuclear power stations to shut down, in favor of coal and renewable energy production. Since this energy reform started more and more energy is bought from neighbor countrys, which lead to an extreme increase of energy costs. Most of the energy isn t used by homes anyway but by the industry. (Sorry for language mistakes i am german)
So that's the supposed "Energiewende", no ?
"We create human beings", "create a sense of transcendce", "we love these internet companies"... don't let it deceive you
Great talk
That video is a pure gold!!!
03:20
So he is an intellectual. Intellectual’s end products are ideas. Normally they don’t get tested, often enough ending in catastrophes.
He is also active for some time now, luckily. In order to value his ideas: *how have his other, older ideas turned out to be? Were they accurate?*
Does anyone know?
perliva good question. He has a book about Hydrogen fuel cells and that vision is a bust...they wont work to scale because of physics. The book the End of Work is faring better and in part the UBI crew is banking on it. A book about beef I think is not getting any traction. So 1 for 3 off the top of my head
perliva to be fair I did havs a state of the art beef substitute a couple weeks ago that was pure plant based and it was good. If costs go down or beef goes up then I can see beef use declining - so the jury may is still out on that one
Ok so a quick read on amazon and just based on the book subject matter I say 3 hits, 3 misses and 3 the jury is still out, about a 33% ratio. Not bad but not good
@18:45 - Hmm... that prediction about "all the major automakers" coming out with fuel cell vehicles "in the next few years" didn't age well. OTOH, the EV revolution is well underway in December 2019, so the larger point about the changing economy still stands. Interesting talk.
EDIT: Btw, it's interesting to note that 2014, the year of this talk, is also when Tony Seba's "Clean Disruption" was published.
100,000,000,000,000 sensors automating every in 2030 too! ha ha!
Looking at it 10 years later makes me sad knowing that monopolies won
starts at 3:20
What about the environmental cost?
So.. how do we move ahead with all this technology in the so called "developing countries".. when some seems to be goind the other way, towards "underdeveloping countries"?
Hi guys,
I have to say that I have enjoyed reading this book and think it settles many strong ideas that will bring down the current economic system to its knees.
However, as a reader, I wanna warn others that in Chapter 14, there is a piece of misinformation regarding Bitcoin creation. In the book is stated that Amir Taaki and Donald Norman are the creators of Bitcoin. But it is not true. As a simple Google search can show you, the creator of this protocol is Satoshi Nakamoto, which is a pseudonym for an anonymous person or group of people. Amir Taaki and Donald Norman created Britcoin, which is based on Bitcoin.
I think this misconception must be corrected or demonstrated through the sources listing.
Please, share your thoughts.
Javier Martínez Marx identified this in 1850...
Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
Anticipar que el costo marginal podría ser cero, gratis, abundante y distribuido en la nueva economía. Ejemplo: 1) industria de la música, economía compartida, consumidores productores de su propio contenido. 2) modelo fremium no motiva lo suficiente a premium por lo que el costo marginal no se acerca a cero.
awesome
8 years later, Germany still depends on Russian gas to power its economy. He was too optimistic.
That’s only because they decommissioned all their nuclear plants for backup. Grid-scale energy storage can fix renewables intermittent problems.
So if nobody has jobs to purchase the things hes talking about that will be produced at zero marginal cost how can the companies profit? How can society continue on, unless everything that we buy and sell is free?
That's what he says. Everything will be free
What makes this amazing talk is its pre blockchain. #Nftdaes is the head of near zero marginal cost paradigm
Fuel cells are not a zero-marginal cost technology. It is instead the means by which Big Oil will become Big Hydrogen and maintain their high margins.
You can use solar energy to recharge/refill your fuel cells, unless you prefer being a consumer, but that is your choice.
***** How? They car itself doesn't do it. And if the car doesn't do it then you will need additional equipment, which I assure you, will be either cost prohibitive or made illegal.
Fuel cell technology is actually pretty simple. The limitations have always been with storage.
If you have a solar cell on your house and wind they can convert water to Hydrogen so yes these system will move to zero cost.
the problem with 'zero marginal cost' is that it's temporary until a premium is incurred to as for something that is invented to redefine quality rather than quantity.
The object is scaling is to equalize the burden of production across the broader market size.. This theory is all burdened by the fact that the more people, the more demanding consumption, which competes with the Gates Foundation school of thought and recent dissertation from Michael Moore.
some great ideas for sustainability articulated in a very positive manner. gives me hope.
Assuming a future where we have all embraced the collective commons and we are living in the new economy, who will be living in the waterfront houses? Who has to live where the breeze wafts off a sewerage plant? Not being cynical, just wondering...
This is a false problem
JR inspired many persons here to comment. Is it possible that we self-organize through Google ourselves. Google could be the best firm in the world if people with best heart and mind become creators. In every institution everywhere on the top position are uncapable persons. Human resource management can help and I will try in my country ( Croatia) prove it. At least in my town, Osijek. Soon we will demonstrate it.
Ante Lauc google are parasites and hes tole the idea from Das Kapital
Marx identified this in 1850...
Rate of Profit“Rate of profit” is a term introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital for the ratio of profit to total capital invested in a given cycle of reproduction, or the proportion of value in any given commodity which constitutes profit for the capitalist.In bourgeois economics, “rate of profit” means the proportion of the total capital invested accruing to the capitalist as profit per annum.For a given period of circulation, or cycle of reproduction, the two definitions are equivalent. The circulation time of capital is the time that elapses between a capitalist making an initial investment and when the products are sold and the original capital plus a profit are recovered. This cycle of reproduction is a major factor in the development of capitalism, and much of Volume II of Capital is concerned with circulation of capital and the problems of Realisation.Keeping in mind the distinction between the Marxist and conventional uses of the term “rate of profit”, the following issues are of importance.Surplus Value and ProfitIf a certain quantity of constant and variable capital are invested in a productive process, then at the end of a cycle of reproduction these values will have renewed themselves, but in addition, if the labour power of the employees has used to at least the social average of usefulness, there will a surplus-value.Marx expresses this symbolically: c + v -> c + v + s, where c is the constant capital, vthe variable capital (wages) and s is the surplus value, and the value of every product can be seen as composed of these parts.On the basis of this conception, the rate of profit for the individual capitalist who got into the game of profiteering by investing (c + v) at the beginning of the cycle of reproduction, makes a ‘profit’ of s and therefore the rate of profit is s/(c + v). The individual capitalist is unlikely to see this surplus value in its entirety however, for the landlord, the state, the bank and everyone else will all demand a cut of this surplus: the productive worker must maintain not only “their own” capitalist, but all manner of hangers-on as well.This rate of profit, s/(c + v), which is the ratio which affects the individual unit of capital, is different from the rate of surplus value, s/v.The rate of surplus value expresses the proportion of unpaid labour that workers donate to the capitalist (s) over to the necessary labour time, v, that the workers spend reproducing their own needs, and is paid as wages, or variable capital.Tendency of Rate of Profit to FallMarx believed that there was an historic tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of the growing socialisation and complexity of the labour process, and the growing productivity of labour. Each capitalist employs less labour and spends more on machinery and materials to produce the same value. Marx characterised this process as an increasing “organic composition of capital”. Since employing workers is the only source of profit, Marx believed that the rate of profit would fall.The tendency of the rate of profit to fall, Marx believed is one of the main contributors to the historic crisis of capitalism.
Godlike
“Rifkin cites me in his book, but it is evident that he almost completely misunderstood my arguments in two different ways, both of which bear on the premises of his book.” - Eric Raymond
Whats happening with "ZM," and the growing subversion efforts and conflicts?
Minuto 17:00 IoT permite que la economía sea distributiva, colaborativa y dirigidas por los contribuyentes y escalable horizontalmente
Rifkin thories are like swiss cheese. Great product, just ignore the holes.
You don't need to look at the wholes. The product is great and functional as is
I can't help but notice he has a mustache above & below his nose. I'm a big fan of Rifkin though.
the future will be a very interesting time :)
He is right for sure, being that global economics coupled with internet commerce has not yet taken full effect.
However, he missed a few points- we can not know when the majority of the world will actually begin to buy online, and what corporations will gain power from it, or what they will do. He also missed the fact that china is the worlds superpower at the moment, and who knows what they will do as they ally themselves with places like russia, another massive power. There is also the great cyber wall of china to be considered- there is control over internet communications and buying to a great degree.
lastly, look at the fact that the american dollar is the basis for all currency, and the idea that all three superpowers i just mentioned have plenty of monkeys with guns who can control the people practically on any level. They will still build bombs, too. Nothing I can think of will deter any of those country's from keeping the 12k nukes the world can boast currently- you have to consider the power of companies that cannot sell online, like arms dealers and pharm companies.
The world must convince everyone in a revolutionary idea to get rid of all the weapons and deploy them under 10 km of concrete in the Mariana trench
24:03 -- Yeah, you mean like … 3D-printers?
Interesting how much of this is happening #postcovid
IOTA is the necessary base layer for the Zero Marginal Cost Society he describes
We already do! Then why is there so much hunger and desperation in many parts of the world? We obviously do not either produce enough or distribute it effectively. For a start much of what we produce is perishable.. It's rotten before it can be distributed. To say "we do" is no answer, merely avoids an answer.
The problems that you talk about isn't a result of ability, but an issue with will. We have the ability to produce and distribute. We don't because a lack of empathy for poor people.
13:42 and thats preciesly what happening now with the flawt assumption that climate change was slow procces
"CONSTRICTION" IS INTENTIONAL
Google will be broken up.
Bitcoin solves all this.
Now, have this guy give this speech.
AT the 30:30 sec point on the Video. This will transform the Architectural and Constriction industries environmental pollution once and for ALL
this makes only sense, if you have all ressources in unlimmited values available for no costs - including work.
Else: you need an "orientation point" a "baseline" for calculating the optimal allokation of ressources for maximizing the output based on ... whatever: in a free market economy the demand of the people and their organizations. In a war economy the targeted output is different, but still a measurement is required to optimize the allocation of ressources.
Digitalization and the transparency that lives in it will be the killer of capitalism. And CBDC will be the main pillar of the data-driven, ai-controlled new system with optimization of resource allocation and contribution-based gratification. ... as an altrenative we still do have the option of a totalitarian tyranny as a new order ... we will figure it out pretty soon, I guess ... Since the liquidity trap in 2019 things accelarate ...
my father is a retired electronic engineer and he gets angry with electrically illiterate people missing the fact that we cant just put solar panels in the desert and power the world. Electrical energy does not travel easily over distance. This is a major problem with the idea of an internet of energy. localised hydrogen may be a solution but then it still needs to be transported. Information flows a lot easier than electricity.
ross carruthers That's a good point Ross, when he talks about shuffling electricity from west to east Europe it doesn't sound realistic But if every building across the continent is a mini solar power station feeding a grid and storage system the electricity is not being shipped over long distances. No?
Solid state battery technology will partly solve this problem, firstly because energy will be preserved in solid state batteries and secondly because they will charge up much quicker. Perhaps energy will be shipped from one place to another in driverless cars using zero marginal cost energy. In distant future, Quantum entangled electrons may also be used to transport electricity over infinite distances at zero cost. I.e. no need for cables.
the energy doesnt have to move far, that was the entire point
The reason we have come this far i.e. zero marginal cost society is because of capitalism and capitalism will continue to take us forward as it has done since the beginning of human activity. We have always traded goods and services with each other. It is part of human nature.
Psychiatry
Great! as long as these ideas are not driven by ideology.. so internet neutrality seems to be the key.
this will be amazing for supermarkets, so i know what is the cheapest at each supermarket.
Businessmen always pursue a Zero-Payroll solution; hence technology - only for the Greedy.
It annoys me that this guy is talking about socialism but doesn't seem to realize it because he thinks socialism is when the state does things. I mean for fucks sake the paradox of capitalism he talks about isn't previously undisclosed, it's literally what Marx talked about.
was waiting if he would say something about cryptocurrencies
[27:00] on how capitalism doesn't work on a 0% marginal cost economy
Zero marginal cost = you have zero salary
+Pawel Magnowski The Iphone has zero marginal cost to produce yet you pay more for it every single year a new model comes out.
Pierrot Clowns iPhone 6 Costs $200 to Make
time.com/3426087/apple-iphone-6-cost/
Pawel Magnowski
No you are seeing what it costs to ship not what it costs to make.
Pierrot Clowns No. Nothing has zero marginal cost. There's minimum wage + cost of capital + insurance + profit
Pawel Magnowski
He said near zero margin cost. When a robot is putting together most all intricate parts of a device and assembling a vast majority of it through Automation and mechanization. That item has virtually no cost to produce that item.
Great for the Consultant, but sentences such as " even if we get only half of the Internet of Things done" and " .... marginal cost may be (high) but we need to get the cost down ... otherwise why do it " Sadly Ayn Rand has commented famously on University professors leading the charge using Altruism ... Rifkind's ideas are very very poorly formulated here ... maybe it can improve... let's hope so.
Young people like sharing because their asses are broke as fvck. I hardly find a sentence in this whole talk to agree even a little. Energy internet? Jesus christ, the guy has no clue about the things he's saying, Transporting energy is a huge waste of power, it requiers a lot of metal and those distances are totally impractical, and with no solutions in sights. Recycled plastic is cheap? So why does it need so much government propaganda to get people to recycle it and why there is still literal mountains of plastic garbage near every city and town, that businesses do not see fit to recycle and rather pull more oil out of the ground to package and manufacture their goods with.
Why not energy internet? It's a cable LoL
You're part of the oil propaganda
How is he defining capitalism? All economic systems are a set of rules. The rules of capitalism are: don't steal or damage other people's private property, and don't break a contract you agree to. It's that simple. All of the spontaneous order that emerges from those rules is a product of those rules. Non-profits are capitalist. Co-ops are capitalist. Open source is capitalist. If it's not owned by the government it's private, and if it's private it's capitalist.
Rifkin's work is contradictory from the very start. I think its on page 7
or 8 he states that entropy cannot be avoided and then on the next page
states that sustainability can bring abundance. The rest of the book
goes back and forth from there with the contradictions abounding. He basically greened Keynesian ideas on how to reach the socialist utopia by bringing about the zero marginal productivity of capital. My
book The Singularity and Socialism shows exactly how to get to "utopia"
without violating any valid economics or having contradictions abound. www.amazon.com/Singularity-Socialism-Complexity-Techno-Optimism-Abundance/dp/1503034739
35% of German power generated green locally. Amazing.
He just says buzz words like "smart phones" "free music streaming" "3D printers" "driverless cars". Thanks George Lucas!
Isn't this already happening?
R u still alive
There is one thing that is going to be the end of the capitalist economy? Nanotechnology and replicators.
Why?
*** Spanish Subtitles !!! .... please !! -
Hola
Prosumers vs. Consumers
So it all depends on google and its ceo
Flattery will get you everywhere.
Mr. Ritkin's analysis is compelling certainly. However, Anybody can work for free, that does not take brains. Any thing that threatens human survival can't be good or 'successful', as the purpose of physical economics is not merely to come to near zero costs, in providing goods and services or near free labor. Low wage labor inhibits family formation and is the cause of societal, political and government destabilization. Our existential system, the physical economy, must increase employment, the standard of living, new scientific discoveries, that are employed to optimize the rate of increase of the potential population density. I don't know why Mr. Ritkin is so grim on Climate Change. 70% of the Earth is water. Using less energy has never increased the population's standard of living; we're offered 'ways', survival measures, to deal with Wall St. and corporate imposed and induced austerity.
The metrics of our 'footprint' on the environment is not helpful if all we're doing is finding the system of compliance, providing the ideology that justifies submission to and enforcement of an fascist economic and population contraction policy. Solar is overrated and we have nuclear 'waste' that can be transformed into nuclear treasure, able to power our economy for the next 1,000 years. Actually we should be in the Fusion economy by now, the Hydrogen Economy at least. The ocean is the source and engine of all natural power, processes and life on our planet and we haven't scratched the surface of knowledge of our oceans. It's the immediate frontier.
Man, because of mind and creativity, is the most powerful life force on and in the Universe; actually necessary to all since Man is the only power of development, the planets are depending on. The human population is not a great unsustainable burden on the planet Earth. Human population must grow to increase the population's brain power, facilitating our immediate great endeavor, the Universal Development Plan, planet Earth must be developed by Man, in a symbiotic organization and relationship to the planet, eventually launching the inter-planetary economy within our Solar System, and on to realizing mankind's destiny which is to distribute humanity beyond the Solar System, into the Milky Way Galaxy, throughout the Universe. I just think we're thinking in the small here.
Inhibiting family formation is not bad. It's the greatest revolution, without any bad consequences. Stop spreading inflammatory bullshit
It's proven that a child brings unhappiness to married couples everywhere regardless of class. Not having children is a net promoter of quality of life. Stop spreading inflammatory bullshit
Human population must not grow, we are more than enough people. Automation is stagnant because we don't know what we'll do with so many people who didn't, don't and won't have a job. Ever. And this is the majority of the world population
The only true thing you're saying is that Earth must be developed by Man. Correct. Problem is nowadays the earth is developed by a system of nation states which are captured entirely or mostly by military, secret service, police and corrupt judiciary. This coercive system is armed and will not go away by simply giving up willingly the power. We need to destroy all this system of coercion, educate people to master level and build earth by untraumatised man and woman
Lots of accolades below - but he got the basics of peak oil totally wrong. The rest is hot air and has not stood the test of time: flywheels! H2 is part of the answer but there is still a long way to go and Russias despotism will hold us back for a decade.
He didnt really answering the questions about developing countries.
OK, yes, perhaps he right....but what will we all do if we want to have the money to buy those things that will still cost money, such as houses?
What will people do as technology continues to destroy more than create jobs? If the vast majority of jobs are done by technology how will those people displaced buy anything? Hence a new economic paradigm evolving beyond capitalism and beyond money.
Good question, different locations will always have value irregardless of the cost of making a home.
I don't think anyone can know what this means in advance. Im Hoping, the solutions will simply emerge as they are needed.
This new revolution as people call it will involve automation in other words robotics.
The robotic system will be able to build other robotics systems and so on. What will happen is that most of the things you today consider as costing money will in the not so distant future cost pennies.
After that products will cost nothing to produce.
what bigands69 said...and you'll most likely be able to 3d print your own house as well. This is already possible.
The entire concept of a "job," while not referenced in this piece, will probably see a dramatic shift as well. If goods are so cheap, and these are ALL GOODS, then what will a job mean in 10, 20, or 50 years? It's an interesting idea and lends itself to the "eclipsing capitalism" ideal....I'm all for it.
I suspect, though, that we will struggle for a number of years with inequality and low jobs...until the collaborative commons eventually becomes ubiquitous.