12 ms·

The end of capitalism has begun (2015)

84 points by rpeden 10y ago

grandalf 10y ago
I think the core premise of this article is flawed. The trend we've actually seen is increasingly socialized risk. This applies to all areas of the economy, from the artificial demand for high risk mortgages to the allowance of a bank's arbitrary assets to be used as risk capital. Also, congress has gutted the PBGC to the point where it is far from being actuarially sound. Social security and medicare are budgeted such that cuts are guaranteed, etc. None of these are capitalist enterprises whatsoever. They are state-run markets with various ministers and officials dictating the prices and claiming to understand supply and demand better than markets, and allocating "welfare" to various interest groups (individuals and firms). Note that nearly all justifications for the overreach in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis were welfare oriented. Prices stopped being an indication of supply and demand but were considered "good" or "bad" and government was called upon to help make prices "more good". This is profoundly dangerous, and has had significant consequences. More recently, the ACA was passed which codified a massive redistribution of wealth from young to old. The trends we're seeing emerge are things like credit being a right rather than a function of supply and demand for risk capital. So soon we'll find that a job is a right, credit is a right, healthcare is a right, etc. The tough question about healthcare is not whether we should care for the sick and indigent, but what are the proper incentives for a healthcare system to have. Rather than addressing the real questions we got a simple wealth redistribution from young to old and from consumers to incumbent firms, an emerging class of Halliburtons of healthcare. Both political parties lack any desire to exist in a capitalist society; both would rather make big promises and undertake massive projects that have no counterfactual data with which to judge their success or failure. Trump has promised to continue the work done by Clinton and Bush and Obama to remove regulatory barriers to risk aggregation, which appeals strongly to firms now that we all know that regardless of whatever (arbitrary) underwriting requirements the law sets, the government will underwrite any losses that could result in insolvency. Employees of those firms stand to collect performance bonuses each quarter until the firm turns out (oops) to be over-leveraged. The nice thing about socialism is that it is a simple ideology of preventing class power from emerging. What we have in the US today is a highly corrupt form of crony capitalism and public/private schemes designed to enrich specific firms and cronies. That there still exists any rhetoric that talks about capitalism, individualism, etc., is simply due to some politicians finding it useful to rally a small number of constituents, but it means nothing and has zero impact, other than to fuel articles like this that disparage it.
- rpeden 10y ago
  Do you think that technology has the potential to take the power away from politicians and companies and put it back in the hands of the people? I'm by no means a technological utopian. But it would be nice if we could develop to the point where technology helps make things like health care inexpensive enough that we don't have to ask questions about whether it is a right. It'll just be something that everyone has access to, and it would seem weird to think otherwise. Of course, right now the primary reason for people and companies have for developing that kind of technology is the potential for a financial return. I'd personally work for less money for an organization with a goal like making health care, or clean water, etc. available to everyone at low cost. But I'm not sure how such an organization would compete against the massive corporate incumbents in those fields. Along those lines, cheap and powerful technology can also be used be groups who are already powerful (mainly large corporations and governments) to consolidate their power. I think we're already seeing that happen.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    > Do you think that technology has the potential to take the power away from politicians and companies and put it back in the hands of the people? Yes. I think blockchain technology has the potential to create a more transparent system of government spending, as well as allowing for very easy audits, particularly in the area of risk capital (explicit or implicit underwriting, which is where most of the fraud happens). I think the big remaining frontier is RF and communications. Currently our mobile phones are a near requirement for modern life, yet they are costly and link our behavior to all sorts of tracking systems (private ones like Facebook and government ones per Snowden).
  - mdpopescu 10y ago
    > make things like health care inexpensive enough... At least half of health care is "my magic book says that if you cough a lot and have a bit of temperature, you need to take these pills three times a day and call me again in a week". This can be automated. At least half of the remaining part is "if you run these tests and get these results, you need to take these other pills and call me again in a week". This can also be automated. I was discussing "expert systems" capable of doing the first part in the '80s. The reason we don't yet have them is political. I am still waiting for the Uber / AirBnB of healthcare (as in, "ignore the law, fix it after getting 100 million users").
rpeden 10y ago
As a developer who writes software that does work that replaces the work of people, I've often wondered if my work is somehow pushing us toward the end of capitalism. I've also wondered what that end of capitalism and post capitalism will look like if and when it happens. My hypothesis has been that while it would be nice to live in a world where we're free to spend more time with friends and family doing things that actually, actually getting there will be a long, messy, and painful process. Perhaps some of the upheaval we've seen in the Western world lately is part of that? A lot of the recent anger and anti-establishment sentiment seems to be centered around jobs disappearing. That collective anger is easy to exploit - savvy leaders and politicians can direct it toward things like immigrants and outsourcing, because I think it is easier for people to conceptualize their job disappearing because another person took it, rather than disappearing because it was automated. And I don't mean that as political criticism, or as criticism of people who are angry about lost jobs. I think it's rational to be angry about it, and it's rational and smart for politicians to address it. It seems to me that the desire for cheaper labour is the ultimate cause of all of this, and that immigration and outsourcing are just transient proximate causes - hiring less expensive immigrants (legal or otherwise) or outsourcing to a low cost country are contributing factors right now, but they're becoming less so as technology becomes less expensive. I expect that trend to continue. What I wonder is whether eventually, the collective anger about job loss will be increasingly directed at those of us (both people and companies) who are creating the technology that replaces human labour.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  "A lot of the recent anger and anti-establishment sentiment seems to be centered around jobs disappearing. That collective anger is easy to exploit - savvy leaders and politicians can direct it toward things like immigrants and outsourcing, because I think it is easier for people to conceptualize their job disappearing because another person took it, rather than disappearing because it was automated." It's easier to manufacture consent for trade agreements and austerity if you can convince people that a robot took their job instead of a Chinese or Mexican worker and that fighting back would be pointless. "outsourcing to a low cost country are contributing factors right now, but they're becoming less so as technology becomes less expensive" If the last time 95% of (agricultural) jobs were automated and it didn't end up causing 95% unemployment I can see reason to be skeptical of this idea. I can definitely see why our ruling classes would like us to feel insecure about our jobs and powerless to fight the various trade agreements and austerian measures which hurt us, though. Beware the magic robots!
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
TL;DR: The author conflates "capitalism" with state controlled economic systems. The author commits the cardinal philosophical sin of not defining his terms. What exactly is "postcapitalism?" "Capitalism" is simply the description of who owns the means of production (regardless of the good). Namely that individuals without legal means of physical coercion control production rather than a state with the legal means for physical coercion. So anything that is post-capitalism by definition means that production isn't held by individuals - which is the opposite of what the author seems to be advocating for. Markets exist irrespective of whatever the formal mechanism of trade is sanctioned by the state. So even in the most socialist/communist of systems, there exist markets. It just happens that in those systems the state has the plurality of pricing controls (ie. controlling supply and demand). In fact the more top-down controls there are in a market the more there are non-sanctioned, non-connected markets (black & grey markets as an example). The author seems to be saying primarily that there is an increasing number of grey and black markets that are forming and being utilized because the official sanctioned markets are "failing." Ok, nothing new here really other than speed and scale. This is how capitalism works. Markets will clear eventually, and it will probably be really bad for a lot of people. There isn't a "solution" to this. People will need to adapt to the demands of the people around them, as has always been the case.
- rpeden 10y ago
  I think you assessment of the article is fair. It's not the best piece I've read on this topic, but I found it interesting enough to share on HN. Do you think it's possible we'll get to the point where technology makes labour so cheap that capitalism and markets as we know them now will no longer make sense? With software that already replaces a lot of human labour, and things like 3D printing continually improving, it seems like it's at least possible for us to reach a point where the means of production are so easily available and so dispersed throughout the population that the current system as we know it won't really make sense anymore. So I'm not even sure "postcapitalism" would be the right word to describe it. Things will still be produced, and the idea of markets won't go away. But this new system might not be recognizable to us at all. I often wonder if we can even envision how the transition could happen, because we're so used to reality as it exists for us now. I don't mean to sound like a naive technological utopian. I suspect that something better than what we have now is possible, but the transition, if it happens, will be messy and painful.
major505 10y ago
Capitalism is not dyying. Capitalism without state intervention, one person to another, is the most pure form of capitalism.
- posterboy 10y ago
  > the most pure form of capitalism. purer than pure, so to speak
norea-armozel 10y ago
I think at the heart of the 2016 US elections is this panic over the decline of capitalism. It'll be interesting to see what the alt-right does when the world doesn't need the old systems of manufacturing and military to sustain societies.
- rpeden 10y ago
  Maybe just the decline of capitalism as we know it? As others have pointed out, if people are still making things and providing services, and there are markets in which people exchanges those goods and services, that's still capitalism. But not capitalism as we know it right now. Our current system puts a lot of power in the hands of big corporations and governments. That's worked pretty well (for the Western world, at least) for a long time, in terms of quality of life. So I understand the widespead desire to maintain what we've got right now. I just wonder how long it'll be possible to do that for. Technology that enables people and small groups to create things for themselves offers the opportunity to put more power back in the hands on individuals. But technology also enables groups that are currently powerful to consolidate their power. I suspect that we'll eventually reach a point where individuals have more control over their circumstances, but not before we go through a period where powerful governments and companies becomes even more powerful.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    >As others have point it out, if people are still making things and providing services, and there are markets in which people exchanges those goods and services, that's still capitalism. Capitalism: the means of production are controlled by private individuals, and operated by wage-laborers, to accumulate profit. Anything other than that is not capitalism. Personal trade and markets in goods preexisted capitalism by thousands of years. They will probably survive well after capitalism is dead and gone, if anyone at all is alive at that point. Capitalism itself, though, is teetering now as it did in 1930. There were ways to save it then: break up overlarge firms, enforce competition with the hand of the state, use the welfare state to prop up the working class's standard of living. Frankly, I think those can still work, but it's also much more desirable to shift to codetermination, socialized finance, and worker cooperatives in the first place.
whack 10y ago
"Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely." Can anyone explain what the heck the above paragraph is supposed to mean? Can anyone translate the above into a logical or evidence backed argument? It's hard for me to take anything in the article seriously when it contains unsubstantiated indecipherable mumbo-jumbo like the above. Edit: After much thought, I think the author is claiming that corporations are building their entire business models around the artificial scarcity of goods (information) that are in fact abundant. Maybe this argument holds water in the case of some technology companies like Facebook, and maybe those companies will one day be disrupted by free, open-source alternatives. But that still leaves the vast majority of the marketplace, such as cars, electronic devices, food, furniture, clothes etc etc which are indeed scarce. Just because some goods in the economy are becoming cheap & abundant, doesn't mean that the entire marketplace is going to collapse.
- V-2 10y ago
  Nah, these clothes are breathtaking. What colors! What a design!
- clavalle 10y ago
  I cannot because the author is simply wrong. "information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly." Information is essential for the market's ability to set prices. "markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant" That's only part of the story. They are also based on value. Information may be abundant but valuable information is scarce and the creators of valuable information are scarcer still. "The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies" Here the author contradicts himself. Just like you cannot form an 'air monopoly' since it is so abundant. If the author is arguing that information cannot be intrinsically valuable because it is so abundant, you cannot create a monopoly on top of it. "By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information" That is not what these companies are doing. They are creating platforms that enable the creation of valuable information or finding valuable information out of a sea of worthless information. "most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely." Information and data are not ideas. And, while it is useful to use valuable ideas, it is also useful to create them which means it is useful to incentivize the creation of valuable ideas which is difficult when they are used freely. In short, the author is wrong at almost every turn.
clavalle 10y ago
The author sees abundant, cheap data and information as eroding Capitalism...I see it as lubricating Capitalism and re-invigorating it with the efficiency gains into areas that may, according to very old labels, might superficially look like collectivism. But the old capitalist incentives still fuel the machine. We don't have to declare a collectivist utopia and force everything to fit in that mold. We can let the market decide where it works.
V-2 10y ago
The inevitable and imminent demise of capitalism, it's been "beginning" for nearly 200 years now.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  Same issue with those kids. They are not behaving anymore and listen to terrible music. We truly are the special generation.
- Bombthecat 10y ago
  Exactly, and, in my own humble opinion. The capitalism thing just started.
  - V-2 10y ago
    The left-wing critique of capitalism has its roots in the dated, 19th century mindset of an Engineer. It has never really moved on from the "era of the telegraph and the steam engine", as the author puts it. The core of it is the belief that social world has to be set up like a precise mechanism. The direct outcome of that was the idea of central planning, of course, but in principle this school of thought values categorizing, configuring and arranging everything, even humans. Case in point - Fourier's phalanstères (influential early socialist who "believed that there were twelve common passions which resulted in 810 types of character, so the ideal phalanx would have exactly 1620 people", and so forth). Today's musings are less naive, but the common utopian theme is still that once we arrive at the ideal order of things, we're "liberated" and all that's left is maintenance work, winding the great clock up so it never stops ticking. They conceal this sentiment better these days, but it still comes out in perceiving every system that's everchanging and highly adaptive as "corroding", "collapsing" etc. If there's no Big Project behind it, it's flawed in their eyes. Is capitalism as we know it living its days out? Of course - always.
    - jddjdbdbd3 10y ago
      That is certainly not true for all. I am on the far left, but think centralised systems tend to be brittle. What we are all looking for is a distributed resilient system that maximises some mix of our own happiness and the happiness of others. Capatilism is one such distributed resilient system. I bet that there are others. The "sharing economy" while poorly defined, may be such a system, when married to some kind of collective decision making process.
unicornporn 10y ago
This is strange, I watched Paul Mason's presentation at Google yesterday[1]. I recommend it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyr9l22fLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyr9l22fLE
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
HillaryBriss 10y ago
> individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity If the risk of fighting for the expansion of individual rights is that it reduces collectivism and solidarity then the progressive left has a fundamental inner conflict to resolve.

84 points by rpeden 10y ago

I think the core premise of this article is flawed. The trend we've actually seen is increasingly socialized risk. This applies to all areas of the economy, from the artificial demand for high risk mortgages to the allowance of a bank's arbitrary assets to be used as risk capital. Also, congress has gutted the PBGC to the point where it is far from being actuarially sound. Social security and medicare are budgeted such that cuts are guaranteed, etc. None of these are capitalist enterprises whatsoever. They are state-run markets with various ministers and officials dictating the prices and claiming to understand supply and demand better than markets, and allocating "welfare" to various interest groups (individuals and firms). Note that nearly all justifications for the overreach in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis were welfare oriented. Prices stopped being an indication of supply and demand but were considered "good" or "bad" and government was called upon to help make prices "more good". This is profoundly dangerous, and has had significant consequences. More recently, the ACA was passed which codified a massive redistribution of wealth from young to old. The trends we're seeing emerge are things like credit being a right rather than a function of supply and demand for risk capital. So soon we'll find that a job is a right, credit is a right, healthcare is a right, etc. The tough question about healthcare is not whether we should care for the sick and indigent, but what are the proper incentives for a healthcare system to have. Rather than addressing the real questions we got a simple wealth redistribution from young to old and from consumers to incumbent firms, an emerging class of Halliburtons of healthcare. Both political parties lack any desire to exist in a capitalist society; both would rather make big promises and undertake massive projects that have no counterfactual data with which to judge their success or failure. Trump has promised to continue the work done by Clinton and Bush and Obama to remove regulatory barriers to risk aggregation, which appeals strongly to firms now that we all know that regardless of whatever (arbitrary) underwriting requirements the law sets, the government will underwrite any losses that could result in insolvency. Employees of those firms stand to collect performance bonuses each quarter until the firm turns out (oops) to be over-leveraged. The nice thing about socialism is that it is a simple ideology of preventing class power from emerging. What we have in the US today is a highly corrupt form of crony capitalism and public/private schemes designed to enrich specific firms and cronies. That there still exists any rhetoric that talks about capitalism, individualism, etc., is simply due to some politicians finding it useful to rally a small number of constituents, but it means nothing and has zero impact, other than to fuel articles like this that disparage it.

rpeden 10y ago
Do you think that technology has the potential to take the power away from politicians and companies and put it back in the hands of the people? I'm by no means a technological utopian. But it would be nice if we could develop to the point where technology helps make things like health care inexpensive enough that we don't have to ask questions about whether it is a right. It'll just be something that everyone has access to, and it would seem weird to think otherwise. Of course, right now the primary reason for people and companies have for developing that kind of technology is the potential for a financial return. I'd personally work for less money for an organization with a goal like making health care, or clean water, etc. available to everyone at low cost. But I'm not sure how such an organization would compete against the massive corporate incumbents in those fields. Along those lines, cheap and powerful technology can also be used be groups who are already powerful (mainly large corporations and governments) to consolidate their power. I think we're already seeing that happen.
- grandalf 10y ago
  > Do you think that technology has the potential to take the power away from politicians and companies and put it back in the hands of the people? Yes. I think blockchain technology has the potential to create a more transparent system of government spending, as well as allowing for very easy audits, particularly in the area of risk capital (explicit or implicit underwriting, which is where most of the fraud happens). I think the big remaining frontier is RF and communications. Currently our mobile phones are a near requirement for modern life, yet they are costly and link our behavior to all sorts of tracking systems (private ones like Facebook and government ones per Snowden).
- mdpopescu 10y ago
  > make things like health care inexpensive enough... At least half of health care is "my magic book says that if you cough a lot and have a bit of temperature, you need to take these pills three times a day and call me again in a week". This can be automated. At least half of the remaining part is "if you run these tests and get these results, you need to take these other pills and call me again in a week". This can also be automated. I was discussing "expert systems" capable of doing the first part in the '80s. The reason we don't yet have them is political. I am still waiting for the Uber / AirBnB of healthcare (as in, "ignore the law, fix it after getting 100 million users").

rpeden 10y ago

As a developer who writes software that does work that replaces the work of people, I've often wondered if my work is somehow pushing us toward the end of capitalism. I've also wondered what that end of capitalism and post capitalism will look like if and when it happens. My hypothesis has been that while it would be nice to live in a world where we're free to spend more time with friends and family doing things that actually, actually getting there will be a long, messy, and painful process. Perhaps some of the upheaval we've seen in the Western world lately is part of that? A lot of the recent anger and anti-establishment sentiment seems to be centered around jobs disappearing. That collective anger is easy to exploit - savvy leaders and politicians can direct it toward things like immigrants and outsourcing, because I think it is easier for people to conceptualize their job disappearing because another person took it, rather than disappearing because it was automated. And I don't mean that as political criticism, or as criticism of people who are angry about lost jobs. I think it's rational to be angry about it, and it's rational and smart for politicians to address it. It seems to me that the desire for cheaper labour is the ultimate cause of all of this, and that immigration and outsourcing are just transient proximate causes - hiring less expensive immigrants (legal or otherwise) or outsourcing to a low cost country are contributing factors right now, but they're becoming less so as technology becomes less expensive. I expect that trend to continue. What I wonder is whether eventually, the collective anger about job loss will be increasingly directed at those of us (both people and companies) who are creating the technology that replaces human labour.

crdoconnor 10y ago
"A lot of the recent anger and anti-establishment sentiment seems to be centered around jobs disappearing. That collective anger is easy to exploit - savvy leaders and politicians can direct it toward things like immigrants and outsourcing, because I think it is easier for people to conceptualize their job disappearing because another person took it, rather than disappearing because it was automated." It's easier to manufacture consent for trade agreements and austerity if you can convince people that a robot took their job instead of a Chinese or Mexican worker and that fighting back would be pointless. "outsourcing to a low cost country are contributing factors right now, but they're becoming less so as technology becomes less expensive" If the last time 95% of (agricultural) jobs were automated and it didn't end up causing 95% unemployment I can see reason to be skeptical of this idea. I can definitely see why our ruling classes would like us to feel insecure about our jobs and powerless to fight the various trade agreements and austerian measures which hurt us, though. Beware the magic robots!

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

TL;DR: The author conflates "capitalism" with state controlled economic systems. The author commits the cardinal philosophical sin of not defining his terms. What exactly is "postcapitalism?" "Capitalism" is simply the description of who owns the means of production (regardless of the good). Namely that individuals without legal means of physical coercion control production rather than a state with the legal means for physical coercion. So anything that is post-capitalism by definition means that production isn't held by individuals - which is the opposite of what the author seems to be advocating for. Markets exist irrespective of whatever the formal mechanism of trade is sanctioned by the state. So even in the most socialist/communist of systems, there exist markets. It just happens that in those systems the state has the plurality of pricing controls (ie. controlling supply and demand). In fact the more top-down controls there are in a market the more there are non-sanctioned, non-connected markets (black & grey markets as an example). The author seems to be saying primarily that there is an increasing number of grey and black markets that are forming and being utilized because the official sanctioned markets are "failing." Ok, nothing new here really other than speed and scale. This is how capitalism works. Markets will clear eventually, and it will probably be really bad for a lot of people. There isn't a "solution" to this. People will need to adapt to the demands of the people around them, as has always been the case.

rpeden 10y ago
I think you assessment of the article is fair. It's not the best piece I've read on this topic, but I found it interesting enough to share on HN. Do you think it's possible we'll get to the point where technology makes labour so cheap that capitalism and markets as we know them now will no longer make sense? With software that already replaces a lot of human labour, and things like 3D printing continually improving, it seems like it's at least possible for us to reach a point where the means of production are so easily available and so dispersed throughout the population that the current system as we know it won't really make sense anymore. So I'm not even sure "postcapitalism" would be the right word to describe it. Things will still be produced, and the idea of markets won't go away. But this new system might not be recognizable to us at all. I often wonder if we can even envision how the transition could happen, because we're so used to reality as it exists for us now. I don't mean to sound like a naive technological utopian. I suspect that something better than what we have now is possible, but the transition, if it happens, will be messy and painful.

major505 10y ago

Capitalism is not dyying. Capitalism without state intervention, one person to another, is the most pure form of capitalism.

posterboy 10y ago
> the most pure form of capitalism. purer than pure, so to speak

norea-armozel 10y ago

I think at the heart of the 2016 US elections is this panic over the decline of capitalism. It'll be interesting to see what the alt-right does when the world doesn't need the old systems of manufacturing and military to sustain societies.

rpeden 10y ago
Maybe just the decline of capitalism as we know it? As others have pointed out, if people are still making things and providing services, and there are markets in which people exchanges those goods and services, that's still capitalism. But not capitalism as we know it right now. Our current system puts a lot of power in the hands of big corporations and governments. That's worked pretty well (for the Western world, at least) for a long time, in terms of quality of life. So I understand the widespead desire to maintain what we've got right now. I just wonder how long it'll be possible to do that for. Technology that enables people and small groups to create things for themselves offers the opportunity to put more power back in the hands on individuals. But technology also enables groups that are currently powerful to consolidate their power. I suspect that we'll eventually reach a point where individuals have more control over their circumstances, but not before we go through a period where powerful governments and companies becomes even more powerful.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >As others have point it out, if people are still making things and providing services, and there are markets in which people exchanges those goods and services, that's still capitalism. Capitalism: the means of production are controlled by private individuals, and operated by wage-laborers, to accumulate profit. Anything other than that is not capitalism. Personal trade and markets in goods preexisted capitalism by thousands of years. They will probably survive well after capitalism is dead and gone, if anyone at all is alive at that point. Capitalism itself, though, is teetering now as it did in 1930. There were ways to save it then: break up overlarge firms, enforce competition with the hand of the state, use the welfare state to prop up the working class's standard of living. Frankly, I think those can still work, but it's also much more desirable to shift to codetermination, socialized finance, and worker cooperatives in the first place.

whack 10y ago

"Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely." Can anyone explain what the heck the above paragraph is supposed to mean? Can anyone translate the above into a logical or evidence backed argument? It's hard for me to take anything in the article seriously when it contains unsubstantiated indecipherable mumbo-jumbo like the above. Edit: After much thought, I think the author is claiming that corporations are building their entire business models around the artificial scarcity of goods (information) that are in fact abundant. Maybe this argument holds water in the case of some technology companies like Facebook, and maybe those companies will one day be disrupted by free, open-source alternatives. But that still leaves the vast majority of the marketplace, such as cars, electronic devices, food, furniture, clothes etc etc which are indeed scarce. Just because some goods in the economy are becoming cheap & abundant, doesn't mean that the entire marketplace is going to collapse.

V-2 10y ago
Nah, these clothes are breathtaking. What colors! What a design!
clavalle 10y ago
I cannot because the author is simply wrong. "information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly." Information is essential for the market's ability to set prices. "markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant" That's only part of the story. They are also based on value. Information may be abundant but valuable information is scarce and the creators of valuable information are scarcer still. "The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies" Here the author contradicts himself. Just like you cannot form an 'air monopoly' since it is so abundant. If the author is arguing that information cannot be intrinsically valuable because it is so abundant, you cannot create a monopoly on top of it. "By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information" That is not what these companies are doing. They are creating platforms that enable the creation of valuable information or finding valuable information out of a sea of worthless information. "most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely." Information and data are not ideas. And, while it is useful to use valuable ideas, it is also useful to create them which means it is useful to incentivize the creation of valuable ideas which is difficult when they are used freely. In short, the author is wrong at almost every turn.

clavalle 10y ago

The author sees abundant, cheap data and information as eroding Capitalism...I see it as lubricating Capitalism and re-invigorating it with the efficiency gains into areas that may, according to very old labels, might superficially look like collectivism. But the old capitalist incentives still fuel the machine. We don't have to declare a collectivist utopia and force everything to fit in that mold. We can let the market decide where it works.

V-2 10y ago

The inevitable and imminent demise of capitalism, it's been "beginning" for nearly 200 years now.

allendoerfer 10y ago
Same issue with those kids. They are not behaving anymore and listen to terrible music. We truly are the special generation.
Bombthecat 10y ago
Exactly, and, in my own humble opinion. The capitalism thing just started.
- V-2 10y ago
  The left-wing critique of capitalism has its roots in the dated, 19th century mindset of an Engineer. It has never really moved on from the "era of the telegraph and the steam engine", as the author puts it. The core of it is the belief that social world has to be set up like a precise mechanism. The direct outcome of that was the idea of central planning, of course, but in principle this school of thought values categorizing, configuring and arranging everything, even humans. Case in point - Fourier's phalanstères (influential early socialist who "believed that there were twelve common passions which resulted in 810 types of character, so the ideal phalanx would have exactly 1620 people", and so forth). Today's musings are less naive, but the common utopian theme is still that once we arrive at the ideal order of things, we're "liberated" and all that's left is maintenance work, winding the great clock up so it never stops ticking. They conceal this sentiment better these days, but it still comes out in perceiving every system that's everchanging and highly adaptive as "corroding", "collapsing" etc. If there's no Big Project behind it, it's flawed in their eyes. Is capitalism as we know it living its days out? Of course - always.
  - jddjdbdbd3 10y ago
    That is certainly not true for all. I am on the far left, but think centralised systems tend to be brittle. What we are all looking for is a distributed resilient system that maximises some mix of our own happiness and the happiness of others. Capatilism is one such distributed resilient system. I bet that there are others. The "sharing economy" while poorly defined, may be such a system, when married to some kind of collective decision making process.

unicornporn 10y ago

This is strange, I watched Paul Mason's presentation at Google yesterday[1]. I recommend it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyr9l22fLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyr9l22fLE

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

HillaryBriss 10y ago

> individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity If the risk of fighting for the expansion of individual rights is that it reduces collectivism and solidarity then the progressive left has a fundamental inner conflict to resolve.