5 ms·

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 h

by Ixiaus 8y 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 8y 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 It's been replaced by hoarding.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 8y ago
  Average life spans in the first world beginning to actually fall is a sign of some kind of decline.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y 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 8y ago
    Maybe it is an indication of some kind of decline. Saying that decline is the decline of capitalism seems like a stretch, though.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      People didn't wake up one morning and say "oh, Rome is gone and it's the Early Middle Ages now." I don't think it's that much of a stretch. At the very least, the postwar order is facing serious challenges.
  - ixtli 8y ago
    Oh there are lots of ways to show that things are declining, but capitalism has been successful in concentrating wealth in the hands of those who have it. That system is working for those in power and as such I think it's extremely presumptuous to say we're living in the "late stage" or that we're anywhere knowably near the "post-" part of capitalism.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      The question is whether that state of affairs can exist forever, or if the system can find a way to adapt and head off any cataclysm.
      - facingworlds 8y ago
        Genuinely curious, when was the last time humanity pro actively headed off a huge systemic problem instead of waiting for it to become a crisis?
        emodendroket 8y ago
        I think the Great Depression could plausibly have ended with the total collapse of the US government if not for the combination of the New Deal and the WWII-driven stimulus. I guess the problem with answering this question definitively is the counterfactual nature. Who's to really say what things would have been calamitous that ended up not turning out to be?
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > we haven't totally solved all of our dependencies on limited resources I think this seriously understates the case. Hoarding certainly matters in terms of shared wealth, but the resource use of the mega-rich is much closer to that of the middle class than their financial position. The common "fourth Earths to live like Americans!" statistics seem to abuse means, but even median first world consumption is basically debt-financed in terms of resource use. Certainly we can expect more efficiency in the future, our current consumption isn't irreducible, but that's far from a guarantee we'll make it through the gate. The trend on issues like water consumption has been for efficiency gains to slowly lose out against the fundamentally unsustainable approaches taken everywhere from Oklahoma to Capetown.
  - ixtli 8y ago
    Good comment: I don't really disagree with you. I probably shouldn't have thrown that thing in there about hoarding cause it's more of a gripe than anything. I guess what I was trying to say is that our current relation to power (that is, capital) results in serious inefficiencies like huge amounts of food going to waste because no one near them will pay, or people dying of preventable causes within walking distance of the services to prevent that outcome. This is kinda what i meant by hoarding: the resources that we can easily automate production of are just getting stockpiled instead of given to people. Even worse, we "hoard" more abstract things like education. The means to pay for free education for all in America is well within the accumulated wealth of a few of those who have been most successful at accumulating it. For sure I agree, though, that some sort of soviet-era attempt at forced redistribution wont magically solve all our issues. As you say, resources are limited and only further technology development will solve those issues.
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      Ah, thank you for the followup - you're right that we don't much disagree! There's undoubtedly room to go back and forth on specifics, but it's hard to deny the extreme cases; access to things like clean water, mosquito netting, and essential medicines are exceedingly low cost for their amount of benefit. The education point is even more poignant - faced with the sudden ability to offer educational resources at near-zero marginal cost, we've instead devoted huge effort to recreating scarcity (e.g. with login access codes in textbooks). Even outside gatekeeping spaces like college degrees, we end up with absurd situations like artificial limits on how many times a digital library book can be 'loaned' before it has to be 'destroyed'. It's been a depressing road seeing that even in the least-scarce domains imaginable, we can't accept ways to create wealth other than artificial scarcity. (And conversely, it's been awesome to see things like Patreon sponsor free-for-everyone content creation.) I'm not sure what the answer will be - it's pretty clear that new technology will be necessary to make non-scarcity possible, but insufficient to make it happen.
samirillian 8y ago
It can also be argued that countries in which the majority of the housing and labor markets are "off the books" are still pre-capitalist. So just because much of the world is not post-scarcity, it doesn't mean that he's wrong. I just don't know if attention really will be the new currency or whatever. I think that part's ridiculous. The real danger to post-capitalist possibilities is greed and the effect greed has on structures. Crypto could be the vehicle to take us past capitalism, but it looks like it's just gonna turn into capitalism 2.0. An even better way for the rich to use their wealth to put pressure on those without it.
- ameister14 8y ago
  No part of the world is post-scarcity.
albertwenger 8y ago
There are different views of sustainability. My view is that the only path is continued progress. Here is what I write early on in the book https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-one/Optimism.html https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...
- emodendroket 8y ago
  I think you will find very few people who disagree with the abstract idea of "progress," but that isn't really a program.
  - albertwenger 8y ago
    Part 3 of the book is a program for that reason https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-three/ https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      "Free ourselves from scarcity thinking." Brilliant. Do not worry about the decrease in arable land, shortages of drinking water, decline in biomass in fisheries, scarce minerals, or any of that stuff. It's all in your head! Mind over matter, man.
      - aninhumer 8y ago
        That's not the argument being made there. Indeed, the argument is that "scarcity thinking" prevents people from addressing those problems, because people are afraid of losing what they have individually, and so are incapable of collaborating on collective issues.
        emodendroket 8y ago
        What's the solution to declining fisheries that involves such "post-scarcity" thinking?
moeadham 8y ago
I'm not sure if you read the entire book, but I don't think that this is a fair assessment of the main thesis the Author makes. Of course we are not in a post-scarcity world. Capital itself will always be scarce by definition. The question is: If time is not longer a viable means to obtain capital, how to adjust societal norms to compensate?

by Ixiaus 8y ago

ixtli 8y 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 8y ago
Average life spans in the first world beginning to actually fall is a sign of some kind of decline.
- crankylinuxuser 8y 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 8y ago
  Maybe it is an indication of some kind of decline. Saying that decline is the decline of capitalism seems like a stretch, though.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    People didn't wake up one morning and say "oh, Rome is gone and it's the Early Middle Ages now." I don't think it's that much of a stretch. At the very least, the postwar order is facing serious challenges.
- ixtli 8y ago
  Oh there are lots of ways to show that things are declining, but capitalism has been successful in concentrating wealth in the hands of those who have it. That system is working for those in power and as such I think it's extremely presumptuous to say we're living in the "late stage" or that we're anywhere knowably near the "post-" part of capitalism.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    The question is whether that state of affairs can exist forever, or if the system can find a way to adapt and head off any cataclysm.
    - facingworlds 8y ago
      Genuinely curious, when was the last time humanity pro actively headed off a huge systemic problem instead of waiting for it to become a crisis?
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        I think the Great Depression could plausibly have ended with the total collapse of the US government if not for the combination of the New Deal and the WWII-driven stimulus. I guess the problem with answering this question definitively is the counterfactual nature. Who's to really say what things would have been calamitous that ended up not turning out to be?
Bartweiss 8y ago
> we haven't totally solved all of our dependencies on limited resources I think this seriously understates the case. Hoarding certainly matters in terms of shared wealth, but the resource use of the mega-rich is much closer to that of the middle class than their financial position. The common "fourth Earths to live like Americans!" statistics seem to abuse means, but even median first world consumption is basically debt-financed in terms of resource use. Certainly we can expect more efficiency in the future, our current consumption isn't irreducible, but that's far from a guarantee we'll make it through the gate. The trend on issues like water consumption has been for efficiency gains to slowly lose out against the fundamentally unsustainable approaches taken everywhere from Oklahoma to Capetown.
- ixtli 8y ago
  Good comment: I don't really disagree with you. I probably shouldn't have thrown that thing in there about hoarding cause it's more of a gripe than anything. I guess what I was trying to say is that our current relation to power (that is, capital) results in serious inefficiencies like huge amounts of food going to waste because no one near them will pay, or people dying of preventable causes within walking distance of the services to prevent that outcome. This is kinda what i meant by hoarding: the resources that we can easily automate production of are just getting stockpiled instead of given to people. Even worse, we "hoard" more abstract things like education. The means to pay for free education for all in America is well within the accumulated wealth of a few of those who have been most successful at accumulating it. For sure I agree, though, that some sort of soviet-era attempt at forced redistribution wont magically solve all our issues. As you say, resources are limited and only further technology development will solve those issues.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    Ah, thank you for the followup - you're right that we don't much disagree! There's undoubtedly room to go back and forth on specifics, but it's hard to deny the extreme cases; access to things like clean water, mosquito netting, and essential medicines are exceedingly low cost for their amount of benefit. The education point is even more poignant - faced with the sudden ability to offer educational resources at near-zero marginal cost, we've instead devoted huge effort to recreating scarcity (e.g. with login access codes in textbooks). Even outside gatekeeping spaces like college degrees, we end up with absurd situations like artificial limits on how many times a digital library book can be 'loaned' before it has to be 'destroyed'. It's been a depressing road seeing that even in the least-scarce domains imaginable, we can't accept ways to create wealth other than artificial scarcity. (And conversely, it's been awesome to see things like Patreon sponsor free-for-everyone content creation.) I'm not sure what the answer will be - it's pretty clear that new technology will be necessary to make non-scarcity possible, but insufficient to make it happen.

samirillian 8y ago

It can also be argued that countries in which the majority of the housing and labor markets are "off the books" are still pre-capitalist. So just because much of the world is not post-scarcity, it doesn't mean that he's wrong. I just don't know if attention really will be the new currency or whatever. I think that part's ridiculous. The real danger to post-capitalist possibilities is greed and the effect greed has on structures. Crypto could be the vehicle to take us past capitalism, but it looks like it's just gonna turn into capitalism 2.0. An even better way for the rich to use their wealth to put pressure on those without it.

ameister14 8y ago
No part of the world is post-scarcity.

albertwenger 8y ago

There are different views of sustainability. My view is that the only path is continued progress. Here is what I write early on in the book https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-one/Optimism.html https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...

emodendroket 8y ago
I think you will find very few people who disagree with the abstract idea of "progress," but that isn't really a program.
- albertwenger 8y ago
  Part 3 of the book is a program for that reason https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/content/part-three/ https://worldaftercapital.gitbooks.io/worldaftercapital/cont...
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    "Free ourselves from scarcity thinking." Brilliant. Do not worry about the decrease in arable land, shortages of drinking water, decline in biomass in fisheries, scarce minerals, or any of that stuff. It's all in your head! Mind over matter, man.
    - aninhumer 8y ago
      That's not the argument being made there. Indeed, the argument is that "scarcity thinking" prevents people from addressing those problems, because people are afraid of losing what they have individually, and so are incapable of collaborating on collective issues.
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        What's the solution to declining fisheries that involves such "post-scarcity" thinking?

moeadham 8y ago

I'm not sure if you read the entire book, but I don't think that this is a fair assessment of the main thesis the Author makes. Of course we are not in a post-scarcity world. Capital itself will always be scarce by definition. The question is: If time is not longer a viable means to obtain capital, how to adjust societal norms to compensate?