16 ms·

The World After Capital

112 points by sethbannon 9y ago

georgeecollins 9y ago
If you want to read an economic examination of a world without scarcity, I can recommend Trekomics. The title may sound fanciful, but the subject is not. Some of the trends discussed and the social phenomena do seem to be happening. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6USVP0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6USVP0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
pmilot 9y ago
From the FAQ: It is a work in progress. The current version is a rough draft with many problems and placeholders. I am using gitbook and github to keep track of versions of this website and the book itself. You definitely do not get that impression just looking at the homepage. Beware!
- lucideer 9y ago
  Beware of what? What impression do you get looking at the homepage?
  - chaosite 9y ago
    The impression that this book is a finished product and not just a rough draft.
yusee 9y ago
This is a non-serious piece. Not a single mention of mining/resource extraction or security. As long as people are fighting over rocks, we live in a capital-driven world. Key questions are who owns the minerals in the ground and the airwaves in the sky? "Humanism" has always been an ironic euphemism for imperialism, and I suppose it still is in "the world after capital."
- imglorp 9y ago
  Even if we had enough rocks, we'd still find something to fight about: ideas even. Objectively, the number of wars deaths is going down, but tribalism overall seems to be going strong. Humanity has some growing to do, still.
chb 9y ago
Capital's not going anywhere. Not until the world implodes.
dandare 9y ago
> One of my fundamental claims is that capital is no longer scarce. There is enough capital in the world to meet everyone's basic needs. When was there not enough capital in the world to meet everyone's basic needs? The 2015 estimated World GDP per capita is $16,800, or $46/day. The poverty threshold is $2 per day. We crossed that threshold long before 1990.
- dsjoerg 9y ago
  You demonstrated that average income exceeds the poverty threshold; that does not in and of itself demonstrate that there was adequate capital. GDP is not a measure of capital; GDP is the value of goods and services produced. That said, the burden is on the author of "The World After Capital" to demonstrate what is meant by "sufficient capital".
  - aninhumer 9y ago
    What exactly do you think it means to have "enough" capital, and how would you suggest measuring it? Surely looking at the value of goods and services we are able to produce with existing capital is precisely that which we should be measuring to determine whether it's enough?
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      I'm not sure how to measure this, but as an observer, there are definitely things that to me are signs that we are drowning in capital. It's easy to get money for really goofy projects with poor long term potential. Alot of motels and shopping centers are sustainable projects because of financial shenanigans where the developers are "harvesting" expenses to offset taxes for other projects and companies. Those schemes break down as the loans funding the properties shift from paying off interest to paying off principal. Airplanes are similar -- that's how you can fly to Europe on Norwegian Air for less than a bus ticket from NYC-Boston.
    - albertwenger 9y ago
      My suggestion in the book is to go back to a distinction between "needs" and "wants." A distinction that capitalism has unfortunately erased. For a great treatment of that I recommend "How Much is Enough" by Edward and Robert Skidelsky. Here is my take on Needs (caveat: this section of the book is heavily under development, so YMMV) https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-one/Needs.html https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...
gt_ 9y ago
The foremost claim of Karl Marx was that capitalism would eventually secede to socialism. Most HN readers were indoctrinated to simplisticly demonize Marx despite ignorance of his nuanced academic legacy, and might overlook the glaring similarities here. They should be reminded that Marx laid these foundations ~150 years ago and offers a lifetime of critical research on this very discussion.
- narag 9y ago
  Marx had a good bullshit detector. But as a prophet... let's say that I've seen better.
  - Tchakra 9y ago
    Please do elaborate.
    - sewercake 9y ago
      He's probably referring to Marx's Historical determinism. Marx claimed that there were stages of the development of labour and capital that would inevitably happen based on the forces that govern both. For most people, I would say, even those who study Marx, these ideas have been dismissed, or proven wrong by the failure of the 'working class' to seize the means of production in most countries where such attempts took place. However, his predictions are only a part of a very rich body of work that still provides productive economic analysis.
      - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
        Precisely. This whole recent STEM discussion comes back to the demonization of the Liberal Arts. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics all makes money as a multiplier for the capitalist class. So all of them are highly praised. However, those pesky things like philosophy and art are "worthless" - as in they don't make the owners money. Marx's works also talk about turning universities into training centers too. Eventually, the cost of education would be the point that either the rich (capitalists) would attend, or regular people would attend to learn how to work in the above (STEM) categories.
narag 9y ago
Wikipedia defines capital as "a factor of production that is not wanted for itself but for its ability to help in producing other goods". That's the definition I learned in high school while studying Marx. There is not an "after capital" world. To manufacture anything you need capital first. Even for software services you need software, that's also capital. So to reach a world of post-scarcity you need a lot of capital.
- aninhumer 9y ago
  The argument being made here is not that we don't need the things we call capital, it's that we have enough capital now that allocating it is not the primary problem we need our economy to solve, and that the current system we use to do so (i.e. Capitalism) is limiting our ability to prioritise anything other than the creation of more capital. Therefore I would read the title not as "after capital ceases to exist" but "after capital ceases to be as relevant".
  - gt_ 9y ago
    Fair point. But, the concerns with attention are the other part of this thesis. How is attention related to capital?. I think this is a fair question. Something worth considering in relating this to Marx is that while Karl Marx did not live at a time that would have favored a deep awareness of media, his work is very concerned with culture. His more economic terminology was "human relations" and how capital mediates human relations. These days, what we call media ("mediation" of human communication) is at the root of our concerns with attention. Having studied Marx, I assume my eagerness to relate his work to contemporary economics discussions might seem desperate but it seems desperate to me that others try so hard to do otherwise. I hope you'll forgive me. Marx did live in a more simple time but the wonder of his work is that he identified so much of the forces that guide our society. Even living at a time when attention was at a surplus, his work is robust and thoughtful enough to translate in more modern times.
    - aninhumer 9y ago
      If you're interested in the role of attention under capitalism, I would recommend Peter Coffin's videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/petercoffin https://www.youtube.com/user/petercoffin Most of his stuff is focused on how attention is used to manipulate people's worldview in the "Marketplace of Ideas", but his latest video is about considering attention as labour. (Although, I thought it was a little unclear tbh)
rmorey 9y ago
In case anyone is unaware, OP (Seth Bannon) runs Fifty Years (fifty.vc) a VC firm supporting some really awesome and important businesses, like Memphis Meats
cko 9y ago
> We need to figure out how to live in a World After Capital in which the only scarcity is our attention. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this issue. I believe that at the end of the day attention is the only finite resource. Sure, you can say time, but that’s more relative. For example - waiting in line at the supermarket seems like a waste of time, but if mind’s attention is uplifted / benevolent / doing something productive (whatever your values are) then it is a net gain. Meanwhile I spend so much of my day watching YouTube and reading HN in a distracted and mindless manner. Perhaps being Buddhist years ago shaped this perspective.
- wnkrshm 9y ago
  One could also be cynical about it and say that a human is reduced to a pure consumer, since productive mental work will be automated as well with a few exceptions. So there is nothing of value to contribute in the line at the supermarket, except for watching/listening to something and feeding the recommendation engine.
- nradov 9y ago
  High quality land will always be a finite resource. They aren't making any more of it.
  - cko 9y ago
    As a real estate investor, this is kind of true. Though for now there’s a lot of undeveloped land, if you venture beyond cities. And we could always build vertically. And some kind of Elysium-like thing. Some of it will have to be farmland, of course.
    - nradov 9y ago
      Most of that undeveloped land is undeveloped for a reason. The high quality locations (climate, natural resources, waterways) are already developed. All else being equal, the majority of people prefer to have some space and privacy rather than being crammed into dense vertical developments.
  - 9y ago
Qasaur 9y ago
Lots of shaky assumptions and economic misconceptions in this book. Every decade there is always a utopian or a group of idealists who claim that we have the means to meet everyones needs and that capitalism and its economic laws are no longer capable of providing the goods and services that we demand. But these ideas are always incoherent and boil down to arbitrary assumptions about human nature. Let us, for the sake of the argument ignore the fact that capitalism, voluntary exchange, and the free market is the _only_ system that is capable of rationally allocating resources in a society and instead assume that we have somehow surpassed the need for capital-based economics. What do the central planners like the author of the book have in mind to "replace" capitalism? The proposed solutions always boil down to some form of common ownership of the means of production. Private ownership is considered obsolete and common ownership of resources with a rational distribution system where everyone receives what they need. In the past people proposed that this rational distribution system would be controlled by a committee of experts, and today the same people say that a highly intelligent computer system would marshal the resources. Human needs can be objectively determined, and damn those who demand more than what they are entitled to from the rational distribution system. Sounds familiar? That is because it is. Socialism _always_ fails because a central authority cannot, objectively, plan an economy better than the collective decisions by acting men in the free market. Hayek wrote about this in his essay _The Use of Knowledge in Society_ [1] This is the same fallacy that caused the collapse of every single planned economy in the past and will in the future. Without prices there is no economic calculation, and the best pricing system is one that is based on private property. Frankly, after skimming the book, I find that his entire argument boils down to the fact that he believes that certain things should be worth more and others should be worth less, and damn the market for telling me why they cost the way they do. There is a reason space travel costs as much as it does, but luckily for us we have a system that allows for entrepreneurship where innovative individuals and corporations who are able to arbitrage between the cost of factor inputs and the prices of their output get rewarded with a handsome profit. Since it is in their interest to maximise their spread they always tend to discover ways cut costs while still delivering the product that their customers demand (just look at Elon Musk and his space venture). While I agree with the author that enabling people to widely access information will speed up the process of entrepreneurship, time is unfortunately an element in entrepreneurial discovery and there is no coming around that. [1] http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
java_script 9y ago
Started skimming this and immediately started to wonder this guy's credentials, especially when I got to the parts on UBI and communism and how "governments distort markets". Like how can you write a book called "The World After Capital" with such a thin understanding of capitalism and the very very obvious prior art here, Marxism. Then went back to the preface for the money shot: > As a Venture Capitalist (“VC”)....
rufusroflpunch 9y ago
We're no where close to eliminating scarcity or capital. We're so far from that there is almost no point in giving it serious merit. Probably centuries away. Humans being will be limited by scarcity until we're able to convert matter from one substance to another with ease, and able to freely genetically engineer ourselves to survive on other worlds.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  I think that's the most important (and one of the least examined) aspect of "post-capitalism". It's easy for me and, I assume, anybody else to _envision_ a world where there's no more useful work for humans to do and therefore no further need for people to "earn a living". However, it seems pretty obvious that we're not there yet. We might be ten years away, we might be a thousand years away - but destroying civilization now because we figure we might get there in the near future strikes me as unwise. While I see lots of people debating about what to do when we get to the "end of capitalism", I see very few people trying to find any common ground as to how to figure out when we get to that point.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I think most people talking about the end of capitalism are imagining the system caving in on itself rather than its gentle evolution into a Utopian post-capitalist state.
- albertwenger 9y ago
  The opposite of scarcity is not abundance. There is a state in-between which I call "sufficient." See https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-one/Scarcity.html https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...
  - ameister14 9y ago
    Rather than throwing away the definitions and creating one that is very loosely supported, it may make more sense to divide scarcity into 'artificial' and 'innate' or something similar where artificial scarcity is created by 'attaching property rights' to something like in the air example; though you are correct, I do think that is a ridiculous example despite some people arguing for it.
purple-again 9y ago
Capital can’t be eliminated because it’s an extension of what we are in the natural world. You might look at Bill Gates billions of dollars and think it’s an excessive amount that could never been needed. Yet what does he do when he and Jeff Bezos both want to own the Mona Lisa? It can’t be shared and it can’t be copied. One man will take it back to his house and the other will go empty handed. No amount of wealth in the world will change its property of relativity in problem solving.
- aaron_m04 9y ago
  > It can’t be shared and it can’t be copied. One man will take it back to his house and the other will go empty handed. It can be shared, and is currently being shared -- it's in a museum.
Ixiaus 9y ago
We do not live in a post-scarcity world, just the illusion of one. Ecological systems will collapse because humans' unchecked consumption patterns disrupt the homeostasis of those systems. I feel sad that this person writes about "post-scarcity" and "post-capitalism" because it reinforces for me the fact that this person with the resources and station in life to help take responsibility for this accelerating, destabilizing train ride instead chooses to talk about a fanciful Utopia.
- ixtli 9y ago
  I think it's fair to argue that scarcity has been reduced significantly, and continues to be reduced. It's been replaced by hoarding. I agree that this book is a little naive in that way (from what i've skimmed) but it's also important not to dismiss the spirit of the claim just because we haven't totally solved all of our dependencies on limited resources. edit: I also wanna point out that i get frustrated when people say "late stage capitalism" or "post-capitalism" because it's really presumptuous. For one thing, you have no evidence that you're anywhere near the "end" of capitalism, or even that it's in decline!
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Average life spans in the first world beginning to actually fall is a sign of some kind of decline.
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
      A good example is when your parents did better at your current age.. Jobs were plentiful when your parents were your age. They were even more plentiful when your grandparents were your age. Healthcare was reasonably priced then. Of course there was less that could be done, but people didn't go bankrupt because of a diagnosis. Now we're seeing longevity declines and infant mortalities climb for the low and middle classes. Wealth disparity is also the greatest its ever been... But I'm sure they "worked hard" for being born into wealth.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
isthatart 9y ago
From the Author page: "a New York-based thesis-driven venture capital firm investing in in networks" attention is is scarce.
aj7 9y ago
You see whether scarcity is “attention” if you’re 59, “retired” due to “technological obsolescence,” and develop a medical problem in the U.S.
- aninhumer 9y ago
  Is that a problem of scarcity though? In most other developed countries, there is some form of universal healthcare, and this hasn't caused these countries to come grinding to a halt. Which suggests that the problem in the US is not "scarcity" but how the existing resources are allocated.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Unless we institute a worldwide, universal commune where all resources are equally available to everyone, people are going to experience localized scarcity. I think it's a fair example.
    - aninhumer 9y ago
      But the question is, is the lack of access to healthcare in the US result of an inherent shortage of capital, or is it due to the system used to allocate healthcare to individuals? Given that the majority of the developed world seems to be mostly able to deliver universal health care with relatively little difficulty, it seems more likely that the problem is the system, not a need for more capital.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        I guess it depends what "post-scarcity" is supposed to mean, but I don't consider a situation where people die because of lack of access to resources post-scarcity, even if someone is hoarding all the necessary resources somewhere.
teawithcarl 9y ago
Albert - Ignore the naysayers and keep writing your book and ideas. I have followed your writing for years, and share many of your hunches. As did Aaron Schwartz. It's a bold attempt at a future worth working on. Abundance is indeed here now, and attainable in a more equitable distribution. Not easily - indeed it's hard work - harder still allowing the negativity on Hacker News.
gimmeDatCheddar 9y ago
If you add a billion users to Youtube or to Facebook or to any other major platform, the marginal costs won't be 0 or close to 0. They'll be substantial. Existing servers won't account for the new demand. Electricity needs to be generated, new hardware needs to be procured, more employees need to be hired, etc. So I'm having trouble understanding how we're entering an age where the digital entities have marginal costs approaching 0. For a single additional customer, that's true - their costs are effectively zero. But if you start adding millions of users, the costs are not approaching zero.
- ameister14 9y ago
  As soon as I saw the author wasn't being precise I suspected that this wasn't a serious paper - you can't handwave numbers and say they are 0 when they are provably not 0, then build an entire argument on it.
drallison 9y ago
Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030: World leaders urged to act as anger over inequality reaches a ‘tipping point’ By Michael Savage Apr 7 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-inequality-tipping-point-2030> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-ineq... "The world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030, according to a shocking analysis that has lead to a cross-party call for action." Hard to rationalize the inequalities in the distribution of wealth in a "World After Capital" where the commodity in short supply is attention. From the webpage for the TL;DR folk: Technological progress has shifted scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers, food was scarce. During the agrarian age, it was land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became scarce. With digital technologies scarcity is shifting once more. We need to figure out how to live in a World After Capital in which the only scarcity is our attention.
- Can_Not 9y ago
  > the only scarcity is our attention. I'm surprised nobody brought up artificial scarcity. Debeer's diamond cartel is one of the most recognized early examples of artificial scarcity. Lots of places have artificial land shortages. There's plenty of capital to solve societies big problems but instead we have economic waste like 20 companies cloning the latest candy crush app.
franzmafka 9y ago
The world after centralised capital might be a thing.

112 points by sethbannon 9y ago

If you want to read an economic examination of a world without scarcity, I can recommend Trekomics. The title may sound fanciful, but the subject is not. Some of the trends discussed and the social phenomena do seem to be happening. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6USVP0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6USVP0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

pmilot 9y ago

From the FAQ: It is a work in progress. The current version is a rough draft with many problems and placeholders. I am using gitbook and github to keep track of versions of this website and the book itself. You definitely do not get that impression just looking at the homepage. Beware!

lucideer 9y ago
Beware of what? What impression do you get looking at the homepage?
- chaosite 9y ago
  The impression that this book is a finished product and not just a rough draft.

yusee 9y ago

This is a non-serious piece. Not a single mention of mining/resource extraction or security. As long as people are fighting over rocks, we live in a capital-driven world. Key questions are who owns the minerals in the ground and the airwaves in the sky? "Humanism" has always been an ironic euphemism for imperialism, and I suppose it still is in "the world after capital."

imglorp 9y ago
Even if we had enough rocks, we'd still find something to fight about: ideas even. Objectively, the number of wars deaths is going down, but tribalism overall seems to be going strong. Humanity has some growing to do, still.

chb 9y ago

Capital's not going anywhere. Not until the world implodes.

dandare 9y ago

> One of my fundamental claims is that capital is no longer scarce. There is enough capital in the world to meet everyone's basic needs. When was there not enough capital in the world to meet everyone's basic needs? The 2015 estimated World GDP per capita is $16,800, or $46/day. The poverty threshold is $2 per day. We crossed that threshold long before 1990.

dsjoerg 9y ago
You demonstrated that average income exceeds the poverty threshold; that does not in and of itself demonstrate that there was adequate capital. GDP is not a measure of capital; GDP is the value of goods and services produced. That said, the burden is on the author of "The World After Capital" to demonstrate what is meant by "sufficient capital".
- aninhumer 9y ago
  What exactly do you think it means to have "enough" capital, and how would you suggest measuring it? Surely looking at the value of goods and services we are able to produce with existing capital is precisely that which we should be measuring to determine whether it's enough?
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    I'm not sure how to measure this, but as an observer, there are definitely things that to me are signs that we are drowning in capital. It's easy to get money for really goofy projects with poor long term potential. Alot of motels and shopping centers are sustainable projects because of financial shenanigans where the developers are "harvesting" expenses to offset taxes for other projects and companies. Those schemes break down as the loans funding the properties shift from paying off interest to paying off principal. Airplanes are similar -- that's how you can fly to Europe on Norwegian Air for less than a bus ticket from NYC-Boston.
  - albertwenger 9y ago
    My suggestion in the book is to go back to a distinction between "needs" and "wants." A distinction that capitalism has unfortunately erased. For a great treatment of that I recommend "How Much is Enough" by Edward and Robert Skidelsky. Here is my take on Needs (caveat: this section of the book is heavily under development, so YMMV) https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-one/Needs.html https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...

gt_ 9y ago

The foremost claim of Karl Marx was that capitalism would eventually secede to socialism. Most HN readers were indoctrinated to simplisticly demonize Marx despite ignorance of his nuanced academic legacy, and might overlook the glaring similarities here. They should be reminded that Marx laid these foundations ~150 years ago and offers a lifetime of critical research on this very discussion.

narag 9y ago
Marx had a good bullshit detector. But as a prophet... let's say that I've seen better.
- Tchakra 9y ago
  Please do elaborate.
  - sewercake 9y ago
    He's probably referring to Marx's Historical determinism. Marx claimed that there were stages of the development of labour and capital that would inevitably happen based on the forces that govern both. For most people, I would say, even those who study Marx, these ideas have been dismissed, or proven wrong by the failure of the 'working class' to seize the means of production in most countries where such attempts took place. However, his predictions are only a part of a very rich body of work that still provides productive economic analysis.
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
      Precisely. This whole recent STEM discussion comes back to the demonization of the Liberal Arts. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics all makes money as a multiplier for the capitalist class. So all of them are highly praised. However, those pesky things like philosophy and art are "worthless" - as in they don't make the owners money. Marx's works also talk about turning universities into training centers too. Eventually, the cost of education would be the point that either the rich (capitalists) would attend, or regular people would attend to learn how to work in the above (STEM) categories.

narag 9y ago

Wikipedia defines capital as "a factor of production that is not wanted for itself but for its ability to help in producing other goods". That's the definition I learned in high school while studying Marx. There is not an "after capital" world. To manufacture anything you need capital first. Even for software services you need software, that's also capital. So to reach a world of post-scarcity you need a lot of capital.

aninhumer 9y ago
The argument being made here is not that we don't need the things we call capital, it's that we have enough capital now that allocating it is not the primary problem we need our economy to solve, and that the current system we use to do so (i.e. Capitalism) is limiting our ability to prioritise anything other than the creation of more capital. Therefore I would read the title not as "after capital ceases to exist" but "after capital ceases to be as relevant".
- gt_ 9y ago
  Fair point. But, the concerns with attention are the other part of this thesis. How is attention related to capital?. I think this is a fair question. Something worth considering in relating this to Marx is that while Karl Marx did not live at a time that would have favored a deep awareness of media, his work is very concerned with culture. His more economic terminology was "human relations" and how capital mediates human relations. These days, what we call media ("mediation" of human communication) is at the root of our concerns with attention. Having studied Marx, I assume my eagerness to relate his work to contemporary economics discussions might seem desperate but it seems desperate to me that others try so hard to do otherwise. I hope you'll forgive me. Marx did live in a more simple time but the wonder of his work is that he identified so much of the forces that guide our society. Even living at a time when attention was at a surplus, his work is robust and thoughtful enough to translate in more modern times.
  - aninhumer 9y ago
    If you're interested in the role of attention under capitalism, I would recommend Peter Coffin's videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/petercoffin https://www.youtube.com/user/petercoffin Most of his stuff is focused on how attention is used to manipulate people's worldview in the "Marketplace of Ideas", but his latest video is about considering attention as labour. (Although, I thought it was a little unclear tbh)

rmorey 9y ago

In case anyone is unaware, OP (Seth Bannon) runs Fifty Years (fifty.vc) a VC firm supporting some really awesome and important businesses, like Memphis Meats

cko 9y ago

> We need to figure out how to live in a World After Capital in which the only scarcity is our attention. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this issue. I believe that at the end of the day attention is the only finite resource. Sure, you can say time, but that’s more relative. For example - waiting in line at the supermarket seems like a waste of time, but if mind’s attention is uplifted / benevolent / doing something productive (whatever your values are) then it is a net gain. Meanwhile I spend so much of my day watching YouTube and reading HN in a distracted and mindless manner. Perhaps being Buddhist years ago shaped this perspective.

wnkrshm 9y ago
One could also be cynical about it and say that a human is reduced to a pure consumer, since productive mental work will be automated as well with a few exceptions. So there is nothing of value to contribute in the line at the supermarket, except for watching/listening to something and feeding the recommendation engine.
nradov 9y ago
High quality land will always be a finite resource. They aren't making any more of it.
- cko 9y ago
  As a real estate investor, this is kind of true. Though for now there’s a lot of undeveloped land, if you venture beyond cities. And we could always build vertically. And some kind of Elysium-like thing. Some of it will have to be farmland, of course.
  - nradov 9y ago
    Most of that undeveloped land is undeveloped for a reason. The high quality locations (climate, natural resources, waterways) are already developed. All else being equal, the majority of people prefer to have some space and privacy rather than being crammed into dense vertical developments.
- 9y ago

Qasaur 9y ago

Lots of shaky assumptions and economic misconceptions in this book. Every decade there is always a utopian or a group of idealists who claim that we have the means to meet everyones needs and that capitalism and its economic laws are no longer capable of providing the goods and services that we demand. But these ideas are always incoherent and boil down to arbitrary assumptions about human nature. Let us, for the sake of the argument ignore the fact that capitalism, voluntary exchange, and the free market is the _only_ system that is capable of rationally allocating resources in a society and instead assume that we have somehow surpassed the need for capital-based economics. What do the central planners like the author of the book have in mind to "replace" capitalism? The proposed solutions always boil down to some form of common ownership of the means of production. Private ownership is considered obsolete and common ownership of resources with a rational distribution system where everyone receives what they need. In the past people proposed that this rational distribution system would be controlled by a committee of experts, and today the same people say that a highly intelligent computer system would marshal the resources. Human needs can be objectively determined, and damn those who demand more than what they are entitled to from the rational distribution system. Sounds familiar? That is because it is. Socialism _always_ fails because a central authority cannot, objectively, plan an economy better than the collective decisions by acting men in the free market. Hayek wrote about this in his essay _The Use of Knowledge in Society_ [1] This is the same fallacy that caused the collapse of every single planned economy in the past and will in the future. Without prices there is no economic calculation, and the best pricing system is one that is based on private property. Frankly, after skimming the book, I find that his entire argument boils down to the fact that he believes that certain things should be worth more and others should be worth less, and damn the market for telling me why they cost the way they do. There is a reason space travel costs as much as it does, but luckily for us we have a system that allows for entrepreneurship where innovative individuals and corporations who are able to arbitrage between the cost of factor inputs and the prices of their output get rewarded with a handsome profit. Since it is in their interest to maximise their spread they always tend to discover ways cut costs while still delivering the product that their customers demand (just look at Elon Musk and his space venture). While I agree with the author that enabling people to widely access information will speed up the process of entrepreneurship, time is unfortunately an element in entrepreneurial discovery and there is no coming around that. [1] http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html

java_script 9y ago

Started skimming this and immediately started to wonder this guy's credentials, especially when I got to the parts on UBI and communism and how "governments distort markets". Like how can you write a book called "The World After Capital" with such a thin understanding of capitalism and the very very obvious prior art here, Marxism. Then went back to the preface for the money shot: > As a Venture Capitalist (“VC”)....

rufusroflpunch 9y ago

We're no where close to eliminating scarcity or capital. We're so far from that there is almost no point in giving it serious merit. Probably centuries away. Humans being will be limited by scarcity until we're able to convert matter from one substance to another with ease, and able to freely genetically engineer ourselves to survive on other worlds.

commandlinefan 9y ago
I think that's the most important (and one of the least examined) aspect of "post-capitalism". It's easy for me and, I assume, anybody else to _envision_ a world where there's no more useful work for humans to do and therefore no further need for people to "earn a living". However, it seems pretty obvious that we're not there yet. We might be ten years away, we might be a thousand years away - but destroying civilization now because we figure we might get there in the near future strikes me as unwise. While I see lots of people debating about what to do when we get to the "end of capitalism", I see very few people trying to find any common ground as to how to figure out when we get to that point.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I think most people talking about the end of capitalism are imagining the system caving in on itself rather than its gentle evolution into a Utopian post-capitalist state.
albertwenger 9y ago
The opposite of scarcity is not abundance. There is a state in-between which I call "sufficient." See https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-one/Scarcity.html https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...
- ameister14 9y ago
  Rather than throwing away the definitions and creating one that is very loosely supported, it may make more sense to divide scarcity into 'artificial' and 'innate' or something similar where artificial scarcity is created by 'attaching property rights' to something like in the air example; though you are correct, I do think that is a ridiculous example despite some people arguing for it.

purple-again 9y ago

Capital can’t be eliminated because it’s an extension of what we are in the natural world. You might look at Bill Gates billions of dollars and think it’s an excessive amount that could never been needed. Yet what does he do when he and Jeff Bezos both want to own the Mona Lisa? It can’t be shared and it can’t be copied. One man will take it back to his house and the other will go empty handed. No amount of wealth in the world will change its property of relativity in problem solving.

aaron_m04 9y ago
> It can’t be shared and it can’t be copied. One man will take it back to his house and the other will go empty handed. It can be shared, and is currently being shared -- it's in a museum.

Ixiaus 9y ago

We do not live in a post-scarcity world, just the illusion of one. Ecological systems will collapse because humans' unchecked consumption patterns disrupt the homeostasis of those systems. I feel sad that this person writes about "post-scarcity" and "post-capitalism" because it reinforces for me the fact that this person with the resources and station in life to help take responsibility for this accelerating, destabilizing train ride instead chooses to talk about a fanciful Utopia.

ixtli 9y ago
I think it's fair to argue that scarcity has been reduced significantly, and continues to be reduced. It's been replaced by hoarding. I agree that this book is a little naive in that way (from what i've skimmed) but it's also important not to dismiss the spirit of the claim just because we haven't totally solved all of our dependencies on limited resources. edit: I also wanna point out that i get frustrated when people say "late stage capitalism" or "post-capitalism" because it's really presumptuous. For one thing, you have no evidence that you're anywhere near the "end" of capitalism, or even that it's in decline!
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Average life spans in the first world beginning to actually fall is a sign of some kind of decline.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
    A good example is when your parents did better at your current age.. Jobs were plentiful when your parents were your age. They were even more plentiful when your grandparents were your age. Healthcare was reasonably priced then. Of course there was less that could be done, but people didn't go bankrupt because of a diagnosis. Now we're seeing longevity declines and infant mortalities climb for the low and middle classes. Wealth disparity is also the greatest its ever been... But I'm sure they "worked hard" for being born into wealth.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago

isthatart 9y ago

From the Author page: "a New York-based thesis-driven venture capital firm investing in in networks" attention is is scarce.

aj7 9y ago

You see whether scarcity is “attention” if you’re 59, “retired” due to “technological obsolescence,” and develop a medical problem in the U.S.

aninhumer 9y ago
Is that a problem of scarcity though? In most other developed countries, there is some form of universal healthcare, and this hasn't caused these countries to come grinding to a halt. Which suggests that the problem in the US is not "scarcity" but how the existing resources are allocated.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Unless we institute a worldwide, universal commune where all resources are equally available to everyone, people are going to experience localized scarcity. I think it's a fair example.
  - aninhumer 9y ago
    But the question is, is the lack of access to healthcare in the US result of an inherent shortage of capital, or is it due to the system used to allocate healthcare to individuals? Given that the majority of the developed world seems to be mostly able to deliver universal health care with relatively little difficulty, it seems more likely that the problem is the system, not a need for more capital.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I guess it depends what "post-scarcity" is supposed to mean, but I don't consider a situation where people die because of lack of access to resources post-scarcity, even if someone is hoarding all the necessary resources somewhere.

teawithcarl 9y ago

Albert - Ignore the naysayers and keep writing your book and ideas. I have followed your writing for years, and share many of your hunches. As did Aaron Schwartz. It's a bold attempt at a future worth working on. Abundance is indeed here now, and attainable in a more equitable distribution. Not easily - indeed it's hard work - harder still allowing the negativity on Hacker News.

gimmeDatCheddar 9y ago

If you add a billion users to Youtube or to Facebook or to any other major platform, the marginal costs won't be 0 or close to 0. They'll be substantial. Existing servers won't account for the new demand. Electricity needs to be generated, new hardware needs to be procured, more employees need to be hired, etc. So I'm having trouble understanding how we're entering an age where the digital entities have marginal costs approaching 0. For a single additional customer, that's true - their costs are effectively zero. But if you start adding millions of users, the costs are not approaching zero.

ameister14 9y ago
As soon as I saw the author wasn't being precise I suspected that this wasn't a serious paper - you can't handwave numbers and say they are 0 when they are provably not 0, then build an entire argument on it.

drallison 9y ago

Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030: World leaders urged to act as anger over inequality reaches a ‘tipping point’ By Michael Savage Apr 7 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-inequality-tipping-point-2030> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-ineq... "The world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030, according to a shocking analysis that has lead to a cross-party call for action." Hard to rationalize the inequalities in the distribution of wealth in a "World After Capital" where the commodity in short supply is attention. From the webpage for the TL;DR folk: Technological progress has shifted scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers, food was scarce. During the agrarian age, it was land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became scarce. With digital technologies scarcity is shifting once more. We need to figure out how to live in a World After Capital in which the only scarcity is our attention.

Can_Not 9y ago
> the only scarcity is our attention. I'm surprised nobody brought up artificial scarcity. Debeer's diamond cartel is one of the most recognized early examples of artificial scarcity. Lots of places have artificial land shortages. There's plenty of capital to solve societies big problems but instead we have economic waste like 20 companies cloning the latest candy crush app.

franzmafka 9y ago

The world after centralised capital might be a thing.