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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 It's been replaced by hoarding.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

by 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 It's been replaced by hoarding.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
  Maybe it is an indication of some kind of decline. Saying that decline is the decline of capitalism seems like a stretch, though.
  - emodendroket 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.

by ixtli 9y ago

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
Maybe it is an indication of some kind of decline. Saying that decline is the decline of capitalism seems like a stretch, though.
- emodendroket 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.