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The Next Social Revolution?
Cryofan writes "In a recent interview, Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs) discussed the possibility of a 'new economic system' born of 'unconscious cooperation' embodied by such technologies as Google links and Amazon lists, Wikipedia, wireless devices using unlicensed spectrum, Web logs, and open-source software. Rheingold speculates that 'the technology of the Internet, reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices...may make some new economic system possible....We had markets, then we had capitalism, and socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism. There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production.' However, Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies could 'quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'"
...but doing so would probably sentence me to a diagnosis of mentally insane.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies could 'quash such nascent
innovations as file-sharing
Don't worry, they can only manage this for a very short period of time. They're all ice vendors in the age of the fridge, and it's not a rut that they can simply step out of. They're in the wrong business entirely - technology doesn't just stand aside when a few vested interests complain to Capitol Hill.
Are you saying the giant corporations might do something that's not in the interest of the public good?
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
I can't think of anywhere where they had communism. I mean, some places *said* they were communists, but Hitler also called himself a christian.
our new longwinded summary overlords....
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Stopping file sharing will make the US fall behind? By definition file sharing would be pointless if the US wasn't so anal about copyrights and IP. You have mass file sharing because of the US. The US will crumble without file sharing???... how the heck did this guy make that connection? Someone please enlighten me... I'm not following the logic.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
What's this term "social" you speak up?
Anyone who thinks that human beings are going to work together for the common good, especially in an economics setting, has been smoking too much weed. We don't even have a FAIR capitalistic society yet.
Besides it's one thing to say that new forms of economics should be created, but it's quite another to go out and create that system. And even then, who is to say it won't be too idealistic, or just plain ineffective (communism, etc.)?
The process of evolution is never ending. Some ideas get recycled in a modified form. Look at barter: the trading of goods or services, for goods or services. Has anyone fixed someones computer in exchange for something? Thats how I got my current office chair.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Oh my, a 'new economy' based on 'unconscious cooperation'. My, that sounds like Capitalism.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
It's called the FREE MARKET, people!
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
"Unconscious cooperation?" Why, it's almost as if it's being guided by...an "invisible hand!"
But then I looked around and all I saw was people clawing their way to the top, stepping on each other in a futile grab for something they couldn't reach: "enough." Nobody ever has enough in this society. Nobody has enough money, enough respect or enough love. We are a society of maximizers, always worried about what we're giving up for having something else. "I could take a sick day now, but I have to make my car payment." "I don't like my job, but I'll stay there and be miserable because other jobs don't pay enough."
It won't work on a global scale. All it would take is one person taking advantage of another for the whole thing to collapse.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies could 'quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'
The easy solution? Make the rest of the world quash innovations such as file-sharing too.
(Sadly, this seems to be too common the attitude, and seems to work somewhat...)
I like to think a global network mesh could enable something like Orson Scott Card's citizens net; government, and economics would fall squarely in the hands of the people. For this to happen, we need proper education and corporations have done a fine job of turning schools into factories for worker bees and obedient consumers. In the truest form of capitalism, information flows freely.
Of course, we all know too many examples how our modern economic incarnation of "capitalism" works hard to restrict knowledge through "proper" channels and limit competition. It may take a while, but I think as the costs of communication continue to fall, we may see some effort towards creating alternative economies within the superstructure of global capitalism. Just a little rant . . . I'd be happy to clarify any questions you all may have.
And here's another link that contains sentiments similar to nooron: The Bootstrap Institute
harmonious design
We could get into a long discussion about how the US patent model conflicts with the EU patent model, and how perhaps they are starting to merge together depending on what you believe, and that would probably turn into a flamefest. The point that he is trying to make is that if there is going to be some sort of technogically-inspired shift in social matters beyond the kind of thing we see now, that having goverenments interfere will ultimately be useless and only slow progress (falling behind so to say instead of stopping completely). He explains further:
So I would guess that his message is to let the technology happen and adapt.
Slashdot in 5 Paragraphs
I also got the distinct feeling he visited Slashdot once and got this idea, without sticking around to see how it doesn't work sometimes. (GNAA, I'm looking in your direction...)
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I respect Howard Rheingold as a technology writer, but can he at least give some props and credit to digital anarchists and hacktivists who have been writing about these ideas for years?
By the way, the next economic system will be the participatory economics of anarchism. Capitalism is unsustainable. Not only are its days are numbered, but billions around the world want something better and more fair.
Chuck0
http://www.infoshop.org
It wont be until we can let go of fear that we will be able to evolve into such a perfect 'Star Trek' society where people work for the sake of people, and money isn't used (yay geek reference). But this is semi-irrational since there will always be fear as long as there is death and suffering.
For this system to work would require a major percentage of the global populace to commit to two things. 1) Helping/Aiding others so that they do not suffer and 2) Stopping any single person or group from causing suffering.
So yes, the article has a nice theory behind it, but if I see it in my lifetime, or the lifetime of my great great grandkids, I will be amazed.
"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!" ~8BT
This interview is especially interesting because it outlines some specifics about HOW this can proceed, using technology as a tool to force social progress. Hopefully governments won't start fucking with things to protect their client corporations and realise that everyone needs to adapt. Otherwise they might as well be full-blown communists.
Slashdot in 5 Paragraphs
So open source and open content and what media companies call "piracy" is actively destroying the distribution systems in paces for software and media. It's inevitable, Agent Smith. It's entropy. The "mob" ain't gonna settle for being controlled.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
I work for a large and very dominate bio-medical company. One of our products is flow-cytometers. They are used in looking at the relative size, complexity and antibodies a cell possesses. They use lasers, Photo Multiplier tubes,fairly complex electronics and reagents to do this.
Most of the data and techniques that are used are shared by our customers at Purdue
Of course universities are more likely to share data than our pharmaceutical customers but that is to be expected and they do share some data mainly in regards to techniques. Our customers have also started forming user groups and organizing conferences. Because of this format stem cell research, mapping of the human genome, and progress fighting aids and cancer has quickened. I am pretty excited to be a part of it all we even have some custom products that allow our customers to look at bacteria!(much smaller than cells).
What is even more exciting is that our latest generation of instruments are being purchased by people who have never used them before(yay profit!) and are in completely different fields. I always make sure to point them to purdue so even more data can be shared.
Over all I am very optimistic about these developments. In the next 5-10 years I would not be surprised to see major develpments if not cures in all immune system related fields.
"To Err is Human To Forgive is Divine neither of which is Marine Corp Policy"-My SNCOIC
Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies could 'quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'"
Since it looks like the only way to do the quashing is through the courts, doesn't that make it a government-managed economy? Only now, instead of "the people's" will, it's "the companies' will". No matter, it's still a club to beat people up with.
Meet the new Communism, [amost the] same as the old Communism.
Please repeat after me: capitalism with a hundred thousand government rules and regulations functions the same way as communism. a + 100000*b = c.
Is that a statement I somehow missed while reading Marxist literature?
A capitalist system, even a protective one such as the one found in the U.S., encourages corporations to maximize their profits, and even to be exploitive. In a communist economy, state owned monopolies protect the proletariat at the expense of profits and efficiency.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
Seems like Mr Rheingold has been reading a little too much of the good Mr. Doctorows work.
The whole problem with other alternative systems, respect based, communism, or whatever is the simple fact that they require people to be better than they are. Unfortunately people are rotten in general. The typical person can convince themselves that any and all action they take is of the highest order. The current election where both parties seem to have betrayed every principle they espouse is a good example.
Untill you have a literally unlimited production capacity, there will always be incentive for people to take the other guys. If for nothing else people will take yours just to deprive you of having it. As long as their is shortage of desirable goods it doesn't matter wheather you call the currency the Dollar, ruble or the respect unit, the system will wind up looking rather similar.
If you would like to see society get better figure out how to make people a little less rotten.
Communism didnt work because people are flat out lazy and greedy. Throughout time, the US and other big countries will lead into this socialism/communism and capitalism will gradually play less of a role as things become more and more mechanized, especially farming. People didnt want to grow crops for the common good, but electricity doesnt seem to care. OSS works because the maker of the software doesnt have to remake it for everyone who wants the software, computers can simply copy it, and not everyone has to contribute; the OSS is meant to be abused by average users with the few who feel they should/want to make something for the common good. If power becomes less of an issue (fusion power obviously), and the few ppl (scientists, related to the people who make open software) will design something (farming or productive robots) for the average lazy user. Communism required too much from the average user.
Industrial capitalism: Presence of corporations, legal "people" with unlimited liability protected by the State. Phony "free trade agreements" and "free trade organizations" which are nothing more than protection of businesses. Strict intellectual property laws. This is what we have in America.
Free-market capitalism: What this guy is describing. No corporations, true free trade (meaning the absence of subsidies, tariffs, embargoes, outsourcing bans, and other restrictions, NOT by agreements or organizations, but by lack of laws.) Whether there is intellectual property or not is debatable. I don't think that this has ever been fully put into practice.
... potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world
Not going to happen - because the US will just swallow up (read: US-Australia Free Trade Agreement) anything that seems to be creeping ahead, thus quashing these technologies in other parts of the world as well.
All that needs to be done is to abolish property and the state (which is the ruling elite's machine to protect their property), and the rest will take care of itself. When there is no state to protect "property" (i.e. production machinery and such, not personal possessions), there will be no authoritarian hierarchical society (as capitalism is), to the top of which to attempt to climb to. When the majority of the people reject the concept of property, there is no way to exploit and oppress others.
And once the majority of the people are not coerced to wage slavery or unemployment (as under capitalism) and have most of their time off to do what they want to do in addition to what little is needed to produce the basic essentials of life, everyone will be much better off. And to make people work, no oppression machinery like the state is needed, just social pressure.
This is called anarchism; see http://anarchistfaq.org
But the idea of the interview is not that people is willing to work together for the commong good. The idea is that people is actually doing what is better for them, and by doing that, they are uncounciusly working for the common good - ie: P2P networks.
All that needs to be done is to abolish property and the state
Ok. We'll get right on that. Is next Friday soon enough, or do you need it earlier?
Read this and understand - the world will be a better place!
Who is John Galt?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Communism must come from the will of the people, not of a ruling elite. Otherwise it will just be a "state capitalism", and that is the case with the so called "communist states" of today. It's all just one giant evil of an megacorporation. Both the so called "communist states" and corporations are: hierarchical, authoritarian, oppressive and exploitative. There is no democracy in either, and the elite that "owns" the "property" calls the shots.
Greed is not the problem - greed is a pejorative word for self interest. Any system that does not recognize that all human (and most animal and plant) behavior is based on self-interest is doomed to failure.
And self-interest didn't succeed. Nature eventually and inevitably produced humans, and we continued act in self-interest but with more power, destroying ourselves and the world that created us. Essentially, nature's policy of self-interest is doomed eventually to destroy it. Nature's encouragement of greed/self-interest is now something that humanity, if it wants to survive, must overcome.
This is sounding like a new way to pass the buck. At the same time, there are far more social implications to these technologies.
What geeks saw in the 80's. College students saw in the early 90s, and what the entire world is waking up to now is that by changing the extent of a single persons ability to communicate, we have a much larger base population for any one society.
It is interesting to note that while large corperations are throwing money at ways to resist economic change, governments and traditional cultures are also trying to resist a "global" society by protecting viewpoints,certain sentimentalities,and cultural identification. Are we seeing a unilateral changes in social-political power structures as well as economic systems?
My $.02, but I think I have change coming.
Kei
Christian/Moslim/Jewish/Davidian/Religion X zealots have killed millions of people who didn't agree with them. The Romans did it, the Greeks did it. Every society in the history of the world has gotten rid of pesky infidels. Not just Christians or Moslims, but EVERYBODY!
The common thread, however, is that all these zealots justify their horrible acts with their irrational religious beliefs. It's easy to kill people after you dehumanize them with ideas like "they're going to hell anyway because they're not the chosen ones". Without religion, we would have far less barbaric acts.
Sure, sociopaths can do whatever they want without justification, but a simple "let's go kill some people" won't bring you any followers without some twisted justification.
You are making the mistake of thinking that technology increases leisure time. You're wrong. The industrial revolution has only resulted in more hours worked than ever before in human history. There have been African tribes (before the Portugese arrived) where a person worked on average 16 hour a week.
Try reading the works of thinkers such as John Zerzan who argue that a return to technology-free hunter-gathering would be the best thing to happen to the human race. One might not agree with them, but their viewpoint is worth considering. And such desire for simplicity is present in our zeitgeist. Just consider the popularity of the movie Fight Club among young adults.
Congratulations, Howard, you're discovered free markets. Self-organizing, self-optimizing.
Best of all, gussy it up with some techie-speak and no one will ever notice you're repeating one of the best sellers of '76.
1776.
[sigh] One of the things that drives me nuts about Randroids is the way they try to redefine perfectly good words to fit their own ends. (They remind me, in this as in a lot of ways, of Marxists. Actually.) "Greed" and "self-interest" do not have the same meaning; they are similar but distinct concepts, and everyone but fanatics understands this.
Greed: taking everything you can get your hands on.
Self-interest: acting in the way that most benefits you.
Is this too hard to understand?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
there is so much food that it is not the richest people who are the fattest, but the poorest.
I would say that it on the right track, but a not quite there. The fattest people are not the richest, nor are they the poorest. They are the middle class. The people who 'get by'.
Have you ever seen a fat Ethiopian?
That creating intellectual property takes work, and time. If I am creating digital music I am putting my time and effort in to that, rather than other things. Thus if I wish to do it all the time, I must recieve compensation for it since I have physical needs.
The other side of the problem is people that assume that because there is no marginal cost in copying digital data, it shouldn't cost anything at all. Well, that's a problem. Those that create the data still need to eat, have a house, and so on. PHysical, limited production, needs. Thus they need to earn money, if they wish to ocntinue their persuit in a serious fashion.
So you have two choices. IF you want all IP to be free, that's fine, but then you basically religate it to the realm of spare-time projects. People work on it only if they feel like it, and only in time they have free. The other choice is what we have now, it can and does cost money, but because of that people invest full-time effort in it.
I'm not saying the way in which we currently charge for IP is the correct way, but if you want it to be anything but a hobby, there needs to be money invloved.
'unconscious cooperation'
Wouldn't it still be conscience since it's trying to, uhh, earn the most amount of money possible?
There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant
China isn't doing so badly. It seems most capitalistic societies are taking a more socialist turn - providing healhcare, welfare, education, etc. Seems capitalism sort of fused with the ideas of communism.
Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies
Open source is superior to brand name any day. Linux > windows. Firefox > IE. However, the latter both dominate the market, but Linux and Mozilla still have their fair share. Open source is the only example of REAL capitalism - since it's based on rugged individualism and can compete with huge corperations. That being said, it also forces big companies to innovate their software. You can bet that IE 7 will closely resemble FireFox.
quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'"
That is a fairly valid assumption, however, file sharing seems to be as rampant as ever. Kazaa, Ares, Gnucleus, eMule... if you want it, it's out there.
Case in point, desire for profit still does give companies incentive to improve upon existing models. The best thing that has ever happened to big corperations was open source - free, creative innovations which they can utilize in their up and coming products. Most of it was way too technologically advanced for the average user (try and explain to your parents how and why you need a 3 partition drive to have Linux and Windows).
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
And Ghengis Khan:
Most all the postings on this story are making the assumptions prevalent to the last forty years. Yet if the topic is evolution of economic systems, then a broader view is called for. People should include the data points of FDR, Lincoln, and Hamilton. I would think that even the youngsters among you might have a clue that the New Deal had different intentions for corporate behavior than we have been inculcated to expect.
With respect to the Soviet Union, the simple minded are calling it an economic failure without noting the paradox that the military sector was successful and relatively efficient, while the civilian sector was the pits. A good explanation for the paradox, from someone who predicted the date of the collapse five years out, is that the Soviet Union did not have what we would call entrepenurial small privately owned corporations to invent better ways of doing things. In this view, US capitialism is a danger to itself, and not least because of the dominate role of large public corporations.
A capitialist state that discrimates against speculation will do better for us. Note that Malaysia's relative quick recovery from the "Asian flu" as compared to those neighbors who followed the IMF prescriptions give us a current data point.
And without a data point, I claim that descrimination against publicly traded corporations would be a good idea. One of the things this does is keep the scale of the corporations down, and thus tend to keep them out of political power.
Communism must come from the will of the people, not of a ruling elite.
That may be true of Marxist Communism, but not all forms of Communism are so. Leninism states that "the proletariat can only achieve revolutionary consciousness through the efforts of a communist party that assumes the role of "revolutionary vanguard", although this view changed during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917."(Leninism)
The belief that so many hold that Marxism is the only true Communism is simply wrong. There are and were many forms of Communism and Socialism and all are legitimate.
AT&T's monopoly was dismembered.
Standard Oil's monopoly was dismembered.
The horrific child labor conditions of the Industrial Age were checked by laws.
Labor unions were established.
The weekend was created.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but the point is that business in the United States is not immune to pressure from the population at large. It just takes a lot of hard work and political activism to force change of any kind, and most Americans are for a variety of reasons singularly uninterested in exercising their political power.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
One subtext of this interview seems to be the inefficiency of capitalism, not in the Econ 101 sense of an "efficient market" but in the real sense of creating the most products or having the greatest impact, while using the least resources and selling at the lowest cost. The publishing economy (software, music, every type of media content) is very inefficient in real terms, with media companies still striving to make as much money off a given work as they did in the days when distributing copies was a physical process.
The fact that something like OpenOffice, for example, can be created and distributed without spending millions of dollars, is right out there for everybody to see. If the public eventually recognizes it, our long-held perception of the value of a copy of something might change, to the point where newer business models based on real costs are the only ones that will still work. Why should an industry exist to produce something that for all practical purposes grows on trees. The same goes for the recording industry. If bands can generate fame and get better performance gigs by distributing free copies of their songs, there's no need for them to sign away their rights to a record company.
One obvious way for the old gang to stop this evolution is to outlaw the means that will enable it. Like file sharing.
Charles Stross has a funny riff about this in his SF novel Accelerando, which is currently being serialized intermittently in Asimov's. The novel is coming out this year, I think. Entities running Economics 1.0 are strongly urged not to enter into any contracts with those running 2.0 :-)
Find free books.
As technology progresses, goods become more and more commodity, and even replace services. (Where once you hired a maid to come vacuum your floor, now you can buy a Roomba; where once you used the Roomba on your carpet, now you can install metabolic carpet that simply eats the dirt.) Consider the Recording industry and its fight against inevitablity. Why's it fighting so hard? Because its business model is based solely on the scarcity of physical media to store music on and control over distribution of those media. With P2P, that scarcity is obsolete.
Simply, it's incumbent upon businesses to reduce costs, one means of which comes from increased efficiency. Increased efficiency means lower cost per unit produced, which means either more units produced per unit cost, or fewer units produced -- another artificial scarcity. Seeing any knobs inevitably cranking towards zero here?
This is going to happen everywhere, even in our vaunted technology sector, where we're -- were -- paid the "big bucks" because we understood all this high-tech shit. Well, it's been demonstrated that genetic algorithms and such can, ultimately, design faster, more efficient, more powerful, &c chips than humans can. As that technology progresses, we'll have programs writing programs, too. We've got prototype Mickey-D's that don't have any humans at the counter: swipe your card, push some buttons, and then, finally, a person hands you your McNuggets or whatever -- and those humans are replaceable, too. It will, eventually, be cheaper to have some sort of robotic contraption flip your burger, wrap it up and hand it to you than it is to keep bodies on staff.
Intentionally or no, technology obsoletes scarcity, the fundamental thing upon which even the need for capital is based; everything's simply there. Without scarcity, what good is money? The very knob which needs to be cranked up for capitalism to be useful and, to the extent it is, beneficial to society is progressively, unstoppably being cranked down towards zero.
What happens then? Because either it's going to hit zero, or the next Dinosaur Killer's going to strike first, in which case it's all moot anyway. Foregoing the latter, WTF point will capitalism serve?
Now, I'm not remotely arguing that it's been unnecessary all along; we wouldn't be where we are unless the world had turned out exactly as it did. But we're only just beginning the creep into the post-scarcity age. What happens then? One way or another, there will always be some things that are scarce no matter what, but the fundamental fact is, scarcity is, itself, becoming scarce.
And, FTR, communism and socialism have always failed not because there's a market underneath, struggling to get out, but simply because of human greed, be it for wealth, power or whatever else. In a post-scarcity world, does greed even make sense?
Wishful thinking.
:)
"Without religion, we would have far less barbaric acts."
The entire 20th century was secular. A secular century, but probably one of our most violent in recorded history. 2 world wars, a cold war where we nearly burnt ourselves to a cold crisp, a Gulf War (and a follow-up in the next century), Vietnam.... just to name a few. A few. All secular.
Secu-freakin'-lar.
If it isn't for God, damn right it'll be for "national interests."
We'll kill each other no matter what.
Cheery, innit?
You pseudo-anarchists keep thinking that anarchy has never been tried by human beings, completely ignoring not only history but current events. Anarchy has been tried, often involuntarily, time and time again; and humans have INVARIABLY rejected it for ANY form of government, no matter how atrocious.
That's how 'great' a working anarchy is. People think it sucks so much they'd rather have a brutal dictatorship than continue to suffer the 'delights' of anarchy.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Before you blame the corporations (oops too late), take a quick look at the article, and you'll see that the only way they are able to prevent change is through "manipulating the political process". Everyone with an Econ 101 class under their belt should know that businesses should do everything in their power to suceed in the market, which should mean work hard, if the government is doing it's job. But, surprise, surprise, it's not! So before you get pissed off at the corportations and ask the government to assume more power (which will inevitably be used illegitimately by the highest bidder) to kick them down, think a little, and ask the government to do less. Then the people decide which firms survive and which do not with their dollar votes. It's 1000000 times better than democracy!
You mean people who celebrate X-mas?
...is some workable, "non-oppressive" alternative to the free market...
Capitalism is a great system, but what I really think the Lefties should concentrate on is not throwing the whole system out but rather tweak how it works.
Two of the characteristics that the capital system has assumed is the goal of a company which is traditionally to make money and the costs of business associated with achieving the goal.
Starting with costs, the system could be restructured towards a green economy by manipulating the costs - Gasoline costs a hell of a lot more, old-growth trees cost a lot to harvest, etc. With more ecologicaly orientated costs built into the system you would get eventually get your desired social system organized through capitalism.
The goals of a company too can be tweaked to achieve new societial effects. Individuals in a new society can easily create co-ops by organizing on the internet and having the co-ops focus on creating economic activity with goals such as creating jobs or providing free neighborhood watch functions in a local area thus having the profits returned to the community.
Or not.
Shh.
Sounds great. Tell ya what - you go first. I'll hold onto your property while you're busy on that abolish-the-state thing.
> And once the majority of the people are not coerced to wage slavery or unemployment (as under capitalism) and have most of their time off to do what they want to do in addition to what little is needed to produce the basic essentials of life, everyone will be much better off.
Yes, we went over this. Neither of us are wage slaves, and during my free time, I hold onto your property. And you go and abolish the state.
> And to make people work, no oppression machinery like the state is needed, just social pressure.
So what are you waiting for? Gimme your stuff! What are you, some kinda chicken? :)
Once technology has lowered the high barrier-to-entry of multimedia distribution, i.e., once broadband gets cheap enough so that most households have it, then distributing a movie can be done over the p2p networks. As for making movies, digital cameras are getting super cheap. And then there is video editing software for next to nothing.
Heck, I am even making a short movie right now. Look for it on kazaa in a month or so....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Soo instead of the government forcing me to do stuff it'll be my neighbors. And because the laws not written, i have no recourse. Take that Hammurabi! But i suppose we'll worry about that after we fundamentally change the human mind.
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp12102002.shtml
You didn't set this up for someone to argue that Buddhism fulfills perfectly this definition, did you?
a) Ridding of desire.
b) Termination of suffering of others.
c) Deals heavily in overcoming/coping fear of death and suffering.
This must have been set up.
Too the editor...
There's been an assumption that since communism failed,
When did communism fail ?
It was never implemented..
definition communism: Theory of political and economic development proposed by Karl Marx. In Marxist theory, "communism" denotes the final stage of human historical development in which the people rule both politically (compare: democracy) and economically (contrast: capitalism).
Please point me to a country that was/is run
by the people
mmm... Russia ? Umm no, Anyone who reads up on russian history, will know that what was implemented by lenin after the civil war wasn't communism... It was State Capitalism ( the state owned everything)
mmm... I know North Korea
Ow yeah how about China? sorry.. ( State Capitalism)
Dictators and State Captialism =! Communism.
Have you ever read anything about anarchism?
A blog about stuff.
it's because only Americans are stupid enough to pay money for frozen water?
(yes I'm joking, and American.)
Rheingold: "If I was a Nokia (NOK) or a Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), I would take a fraction of what I'm spending on those buildings full of expensive people and give out a whole bunch of prototypes to a whole bunch of 15-year-olds and have contracts with them where you can observe their behavior in an ethical way and enable them to suggest innovations, and give them some reasonable small reward for that. And once in a while, you're going to make a billion dollars off it."
Companies do this all the time. Everyone from Pepsi to Motorola to vacuum cleaner companies to newspapers (to name a few of the projects I've worked on since the mid-90s: in the early 90s I experienced it in Japan with high school girls, the all-powerful force driving product development and marketing in Japan).
As is usual, the "gurus" are either behind the times, clueless, or purposefully making suggestions that are already in action so that they look good once the existence of these things become more commonly known by the population: "hey, that Rheingold guy suggested that..." Yeah, right.
What all this trend are converge to is in fact a Gift economy or Potlach economy. In gift economy status of the participant defined not by his material possesion and not by formal administartive standing(that is not how many people he can order around), but how famous he is and how generous to society. That is status defined by reputation, and reputation defined by magnitude of his deeds and benefits of community caused by those deeds. The potlatch itself is an example of a gift economy, whereby the host demonstrates their wealth and prominence through giving away their possessions during huge feast and thus prompt participans to reciprocate when they hold their own potlatch. Host of potlach usually was spending all his material possesion during potlach. The potlach economy was widespread all around the world, among native americans, siberians, steppes of Asia etc. That is it's proven that such economy can exists. BTW mongol tribes of Genghis Khan practiced potlach.
Nonsense, no one has ever managed to conner a market for long, though they can cause great harm in the short term with government help. All of that restrictive cross licensing nightmare is a government creation. Without dead stupid IP laws, the markets would quickly correct problems like Microsoft. It's happening anyway, and M$ is running like a baby to Uncle Sam for DMCA and other help. There's a sucker market for shares in such greedy schemes, but it's always a loser and smart money goes with the flow.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That message is worth repeating every twenty years. The sad part is when people have heard it, don't know how it works and think they can legislate and government spend themselves into prosperity. As Alan Greenspan once said, "the laws of supply and demand are not to be conned." The invisible hand slaps people who think they are smarter than it is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Some real trends worth following:
This isn't a new phenomenon. There are many tangible products where the manufacturing cost is a tiny fraction of the retail price. Soft drinks, for example. Bottled water. Jeans. Batteries. Printer ink. There are successful business strategies for pushing the price up, ranging from heavy brand promotion to lock-in. Just because it could be cheap doesn't mean it will be.
We're starting to see these strategies applied to the Internet. "SBC Yahoo DSL", and "AOL for Broadband" are examples.
Electric power is a striking example of an unstable market. There's no inventory. Demand is relatively inelastic. Producers have high fixed costs. The result is prices that change by three orders of magnitude within a single day. This huge volatility can be exploited by traders, which makes things worse.
There's much economic theology around this issue, and not enough theory with predictive power. This area needs more simulation and less pontification.
Now these are the real issues in postmodern capitalism. Not peer to peer networking.
All US presidents have been "Christians", the current incumbent being one of the more outspoken ones.
Actually, that's not true. The "Founding Fathers", such as Washington, Jefferson, etc. were most likely Deists, if they even considered themselves as following a religion. Of course, the current Christian revisionist historians will swear up and down that "America was founded on Christianity", but it isn't true.
'new economic system' born of 'unconscious cooperation' embodied by such technologies as Google links and Amazon lists
The last time I checked my car didn't run on Google Links and Amazon lists and I didn't sleep inside a Blog. An economic system has to deal with the physical world, and where the rubber meets the road is where all the conflict has been over the course of human history We're talking about the distribution of SCARE resources like oil, timber, cement, skilled labor, etc. not things that can be effortlessly and almost endlessly copied, like computer programs. Maybe he's talking about a new form of commerce, or a new concept of intellectual property but he's nowhere near a new economic system.
"but a simple "let's go kill some people" won't bring you any followers without some TWISTED JUSTIFICATION [emphasis added]"
Thats the point. The justification can be ANYTHING. Replace religion with culture, ideaology ('lets take away your rights in the name of patriotism') or anything else that people feel strongly about and you got your cause that can be twisted. Religion has just been one of the victims of this twisting.
Twisting (Corruption) is really the root cause, not religion.
Do you suggest then we should abolish irrationality? And do you know what sort of order would be removed from the world if that went away?
also self-destructing....
btw I had to turn off the windows firewall built into SP2 to access slashdot... great job capitalism!!!!!!!
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I'd like to agree with you for the most part as an american and further elaborate. I believe the main reason for our current decline is this idea that everyone is evil, so it's ok if I'm evil to get my share.
It's a corrosive, nasty idea that contradicts the lessons of our history. The late victorian culture here was largely one of cooperation, self regulated kindness towards others, and a concept of justice. Sure, it was deeply flawed in many ways, what with its exceptions for black people, and a lingering tradition of hierarchy, but if you focus in on the actions of individuals and how they treated each other, there was a fundamental difference from the mainstream one today.
Unfortunately, immigration from places that did not practise the same cooperative traditions brought in plenty of people to take advantage and much up the existing system. Today, take for example the way people act in Oklahoma or Minnesota and compare it with New York, LA, Houston, or Chicago.
Once I was driving through Oklahoma and pulled over to the side of the freeway. People kept stopping every few minutes to see if I was ok or needed help! I had to leave so they'd quit stopping! Sorry guys, but this really busts the theory that all people are always selfish. What could they possibly gain by pulling over?
Tasmania in Australia is another example of a somewhat intact Victorian-Enlightenment reformed society. You ask for directions there and people offer to drive you where you're going. Nice.
Why do we complicate things by oversimplifying? People aren't selfish, they're needful. If their basic needs are met, they'll probably end up being mean to get what they need. However, if their needs are pretty much met, they can and will start to look after the needs of others.
(I know what I said above is simplified too, but I believe quite accurate since it describes the average)
Ultimately, we need to do what the enlightenment and their followers tried to do- pull together enough people to establish a consensus view that cooperation is important, and then band together to ruthlessly work against those who refuse to cooperate. Such a system need not be fragile. If someone is clearly an asshole, don't help them out. If someone is clearly treating others with concern, do the same towards them. Easy.
The abysmal failure of communism should be seen only as an abysmal failure of authoritarian government and not much more, certainly not as a success for the democratic capitalist system. The success (or failure) of the US capitalist system should be measured by it's own merits. This I think is where many Americans become confused. If the only metric used to determine the success of the US system is wealth and the exchange of wealth then American is the most successful nation on earth. But there is a lot more to life than wealth.
Consider the adult literacy rate, a crucial component to a true democracy. The US has a lower adult literacy rate (~97%) than all of northern Europe (100%).
Consider freedom of the press, another critical component of a democracy. Here to the US is ranked 17th again behind most of northern Europe.
The same with violent crime, murder, private & public debt and pollution output.
I'm a naturalized US citizen, and in the years that I have lived in the US, I have witnessed a slow erosion of many of the things that lured my parents to move to the US to begin with. Now I've moved back to the EU I've found that all governments could stand for a lot of improvement and no society really is significantly better than others but rather different.
So I guess it's a matter of finding a society to live in who faults don't totally offend you.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
'...therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production.'
No we haven't http://www.parecon.org. Its just that people have stopped reporting such things.
Actually, that's not true. The "Founding Fathers", such as Washington, Jefferson, etc. were Christians, even if they frowned upon some aspects of organized religion at at the time. Of course, the current atheist revisionist historians will swear up and down that "America wasn't founded on Christianity", but it isn't true
The problem in our capitalist economic system is that we are all longing for economic growth. But it is impossible to achieve this forever, because everything is finite. Another problem is the growing inequality that is happening in all capitalist societies. The richer become richer, the poorer become poorer.
So a new Social Revolution should aim at new technologies for energy, like eg solar energy, in order to become independent from oil an coal (also to avoid an ecological collapse) and it should develop an economic system which does not need permanent economic growth, and it has to be a fair system, where poor people have a chance to develop.
It was good right up to that last bit. He managed to shake the communism/capitalism black&white thing, but he's still got this "end-of-the-world = U.S. falling behind" problem.
The world is round. The U.S. is behind the rest of the world once a day -- at local midnight. At local noon, it's in front. The rest of the time it's either moving to the front or to the back. Why do so many otherwise smart people fail to realize this?
Classical Marxist theory states you have a Working Class and a Ruling Class. The Working Class has exactly one asset, its labour. The Ruling Class ultimately depends for its survival on the Working Class.
According to this model, the Working Class could use its labour just to support itself, and say a big fat "screw you" to the Ruling Class -- and do less work into the bargain, to the tune of whatever it was costing to keep the Ruling Class in luxury goods. This is what most people think of as "revolution", and it usually goes T.U. when the organisers of the Revolution, having won the respect of the people, start falling into the decadent ways of the former Ruling Class.
Well, that may have worked in a manufacturing economy when the Working Class was doing things like growing food, building houses, making cars, &c. But today, thanks to a combination of automating many jobs out of existence and outsourcing the rest, a new class has emerged: the Consuming Class. The Consuming Class own DVD players and cell phones (made, BTW, using a labour force to whom such things would largely be useless), and think they are above the Working Class. The Consuming Class does work, but it is meaningless and irrelevant: what the heck is a telephone sanitiser going to do after the revolution? And on the flipside, who will till the soil, grind the grain, bake the bread? Who will build the homes, do the wiring and the plumbing? Marxist theory suggests the Consuming Class would perish before the Ruling Class, since the latter at least usually has savings.
The other reason why Classical Marxist theory doesn't apply anymore is that -- as far as some kinds of things are concerned -- we are now living in an age of plenty rather than an age of scarcity, and that really tends to muck up the traditional concept of value which underpins both Capitalism and Socialism. When it takes hardly any more work to make a thousand or a million examples of something than it took to make the first, how do you decide what price to sell it for?
As a former New Age Traveller, I have first hand experience of attempting a unilateral declaration of independence, and it isn't easy. Every so often, you still run up against a dependency on some big corporation or another: the supermarkets, the oil companies, and -- for some of my friends -- the NHS.
Social change is needed alright, but a lot of people are going to get hurt when it comes.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
For what it's worth, it seems like from my studies and from visiting Russia, tha the soviet architects missed this fundamental point too. Only Gorbachev seemed to realize the importance of establishing a society of quality persons, but his efforts to ban vodka, etc, did not come to much.
Gorbachev was NOT the man who tried to ban vodka this was idea of another man - Egor Ligachev ( the ideologist of communism that time) - the one who harshly critisesed Eltsin and overall was and old minded communist and opponent of Gorbatchev. It is also untrue that only Gorbachev realized the importance a society of quality persons. USSR always tried to build more quality pepple but due to means it used it very offen failed. as for example there were no enought pay for talented engineers they got just 10 percents more than complete loosers who were sitting around in offices. So there were always means to stagnate motivativation of people. And what actually Gorbatchev attempted to find a way to motivate talented people. But he made it so badly... he was not really a leader which was needed to made changes.
I could agree with danila in 60s and 70s USSR had the one of the best education system yet it failed to modernise. Though there were attempts -but they failed it is just due to inherited problem - no competition - the top soviet leaders became old men - ALL of them. And they just were no able to control the country on somewhat reliable way. No devise ways to find new motivations to people as old ones started not to work.The 'zastoi' or laying off (stagnationg of) all social process was a reality. Still giving a good diagnosis Gorabachev made afwul thing destroing USSR by wrong steps.
But here is the point - he was just fomally educated man. He for example spoke broken russian (in a dialect which caused laught of most population) , he invented one 'idea' after another and NO one of his ideas looked to be working as they were not thought to the end. That is why Eltsin later won. There were too much wording from Gorbatchev - and no real deeds. Partly his failures were just because entire top managment were old men with their thoughs dated by 50s. But partly because the top managers in country were good to speak but not good to think
but what I agree
I say, create decent people who value things for their own sake, and economic success will follow. education is important.But look around. Those children who have internal potential to wonder the world HAVE now means - wikipedia, slashdot etc - there were nothing like that just few years ago. They could learn MORE, faster. And having more knowledge they have more influence.
And this is a woderful process. I'm not sure if you are aware of Ivan Illich ( search google)thoughts that people learn mostly from other people. Partly I agree. We learn from good people.
Just my own example. My parents lost their parents in WWII - they got not so great education and could not help me much. The school in late 80s in USSR was not a place where one could wonder the world. It already had signs of stagnation and tendency to be army like organisation. But there were guys around who pointed to books, to encyclopedias etc. And :) this helped to me to become quite educated.
At least I self studied english and very proud of that.
So really - more means to exchange information such as wikipedia,different other wiki pages, forums etc would result that more people would help to more other people to get 'ignition' to wonder the world. So providing impulse to become decent people who value things to some others is your own interest and is interest of many decent people. And there are means. slashdot for example :)
So it is in every one own hands - HELP others to start to value things - and them to promote it further. There are means - it is just everyone own will if to help others to start value things or not.
However, it is fictional, i.e. NOT REAL... and Star Trek is not real either, no matter how much some people wish otherwise.
4 045hyvlcE
Tell that to this guy http://community.webshots.com/photo/70233469/7023
"Insert Sig Here"
Knowing the classic American love of conspicious consumption, I think it had to do with the fact that, before refrigeration, the wealthy elites of American society could afford an icehouse or deliveries of ice. They put ice in their drinks; this was emulated by whomever in the middle class could afford it. Once refridgeration spread, everyone could 'look rich' for a penny's worth of water. Ice used to be valuable, and so it remains as a cultural preference to this day.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
this sounds like some troll article trying to normalize the public opinion that open source software is analogous to communism... i don't see anyone being forced to produce software in prison camps for open source party bosses. if you are walking down the street and you help someone change a tire because they need help, is this a new economic force at work? NO we live in such an anti-altruistic corporate society that the concept of anyone doing something just because they like it or because it fills a badly needed void without monetary gain seems totally alien to the average economist.
The concept that the runaway consumption of natural resources and the paving over of fertile land
either in the name of western Capitalism, or in the name of nature-unfriendly Communism (China and the former USSR has/had a HORRIBLE environmental record)
can go on forever
is science fiction.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Actually, they would be full-blown fascists. High-level cooperation between government and business leaders is the foundation of a fascist state.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Tell me -- because there's Windows, do you think operating systems are a bad thing?
Get a clue, poopsie: if the government is maintaining barriers, that's not a fault of a free market.
Or it is at least a wash... Soda costs like 20 cents a gallon when you buy the concentrate in the kind of bulk that movie theaters do... Ice on the other hand costs quite a bit to keep cold/freeze. they are not ripping you off, they are providing what the consumer expects.
Any system based on the good will and selflessness of others will be victim to the most ruthless member. Therefore the system will collapse. This is the primary flaw in most "peace" initiatives, and would be a flaw in the proposed new economic system. In this case the most ruthless corporation would rule.
Additionally, you have to take into account government. In the US, government consumes roughly 36% of the total economy. In European nations it consumes more. The workforce in these nations must be continually driven to work more, work harder, and work more efficiently to satisfy the monetary needs of the ruling elites. The new economic model would be crushed under this burden.
Finally, the new model is incompatible with 90% of the worlds pre-industrial societies and would not function at all unless the society had a solid foundation of rule of law, property rights, and a highly educated, liberal-humanist population.
To paraphrase Noam Chomsky; just that communist countries *called* themselves socialist doesn't actually mean they were. Just as some eastern European communist countries called themselves democratic republics, when they obviously were not.
In fact, the first thing that Lenin did after the communist revolution in Russia was to dimantle the workers organizations and centralize power, in conflict with the socialist ideals. Communism (the russian version) was a perversion of socialism, just like the spanish inquisition was a perversion of christianity.
What we call capitalism today isn't true free-market capitalism either, even though everyone seems to say it is. In fact, the current capitalist system is highly protectionist (just look at what goes on at the WTO), and western society as it's currently organized would collapse pretty fast if the state stopped intervening in the economic system.
Lessee, "communism failed" == socialism "failed".
Gee, and here I thought that the British Labour Party was, at base, socialist; the socialists won in Spain, the socialists look like they might take back France; Chavez beats US-backed recall in Argentina...while the US "free market capitalism" won...which is why our deregulated, monopolistic economy is down the tubes.
While we're on those lines, let me say "Dick Cheney" and "Halliburton no-bid contracts", and then quote a favorite explanation of someone who speaks with some authority on the subject, Benito Mussolini: "fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
Tell me again what social system "won", and explain how the current world situation doesn't resemble 1932, with the US starring as Germany?
And if Mah Fellow Amurcans don't like the comparison, try looking at the news from around the world, and you might note that about three-quarters of the world's population is *terrified* of this administration, and what America will be, if Bush is elected this time.
An alternative? If the generation that fought WWII was "the Greatest Generation", then it's time for us to be the children and grandchildren they deserve, and stand up to be counted, to stop neofascism here at home.
mark
"Will the advent of [A] give rise to a new [B] which displays emergent properties of [C]?"
Now make those all important calls to Stewart Brand's Global Business Network and the Foresight Institute. Beg John Brockman to slip something onto edge.org. Tap Esther Dyson and ask her to bring it up at the next Santa Fe Institute board meeting. One of these will provide the backing for the seed conference.
Now call up one of the youngsters you've been grooming, like Cory Doctorow, who will get very excited about this, without raising any awkward questions. The "memes" will then spread: and anyone who doubts that the political economy hasn't changed as if by magic can be dismissed very simply: they simply Don't Get It!
With that, you should be set up for two or three years of modestly lucrative consultancy - and then it's time to do it all over again. Rinse and repeat.
Of course, the current atheist revisionist historians will swear up and down that "America wasn't founded on Christianity", but it isn't true
What the supposedly "revisionist" historians are saying is that modern LAW, grounded in FOUNDING law, was not specifically Christian. The Founding Fathers were very specific in minimal government that didn't favor one religion. What modern day Christian Rightists are claiming is that because of the (semi-)Christian nature of the Founders that means that modern Christians should be able to legally enforce what they deem to fit with their view of morality, bypassing the church/state separation. You'd be much freer under President George Washington than President Pat Robertson.
So you went to England and expected things to be just like they are in FLORIDA? "lots of ice, fill the damned thing up with ice if you have to" --how could they? In hot semitropical american florida, there are these things called Ice Machines that produce tons of ice each day. In England, the machine that produces the ice is called a fridge, and they take a cube out of the tray. Or two.
Plus they have ideas of the Correct way to do things. They know how to serve their idea of whatever drink it is you ordered, and it doesn't include the filthy american habit of dumping a bunch of useless ice in there. For example, I drink scotch neat (that is, without ice, soda, water or whatever) and have the damndest time getting unpolluted whisky in cheap bars where every yahoo wants ice. But in the expensive bars it's fine but of course, expensive.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon