{"id":6938,"date":"2016-12-03T11:10:02","date_gmt":"2016-12-03T17:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=6938"},"modified":"2016-12-03T11:11:17","modified_gmt":"2016-12-03T17:11:17","slug":"6938","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/12\/03\/6938\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When You Disconnect From Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a mini review<\/a> of Jeremy Rifkin’s The Zero Marginal Cost Society<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>in NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (19 November 2016, paywall), Sally Adee summarizes Rifkin’s vision of the future:<\/p>\n

Within 60 years, capitalism might have left the building completely. In its place will be a society in which all our basic needs are met. Rifkin calls his new economic vision \u201cthe commons\u201d, but it goes beyond the economy \u2013 it will be the new \u201cwater\u201d we swim in.<\/p>\n

You will have a job, but it won\u2019t be for money. The company you work for will be a non-profit. Your \u201cwealth\u201d will be measured in social capital: your reputation as a cooperative member of the species. So when you contribute to open-source code that makes a better widget, you\u2019ll enjoy a \u201cpayment\u201d in the form of an improved reputation. Apps that track your contribution to the commons \u2013 whether by your input at work, your frugal use of energy, or other measures of reputation \u2013 will let you cash in your karma points for luxuries, say, an antique chair that was conspicuously not built by a fabricator. Even in the commons, we\u2019ll still be human.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Karma points, eh? And how will this differ from money? It doesn’t. Just another measurement of what I’ll call social contribution<\/em>\u00a0– so don’t get sidetracked by the terminology. The key is the nature of social contribution\u00a0and what is valued. In the past it was contributing to the building of things, whether you’re laying the pavement of a bridge – or building the software that enabled the proper design\u00a0of the bridge – or created the mathematics that enabled the proper design. In other words, working with reality, even at some remove, in order to further our survival.<\/p>\n

From this limited mini review, it appears Rifkin wants to more directly control the definition of social contribution, transforming from the relatively unregulated riff on satisfying the wants and needs of society, individual and whole, to a more idealistic – or at least more manipulable – definition of good vs bad wants and needs. I suspect this’ll definitely be a more political definition of how to run society, as it’ll be disconnected from base reality (in other parts of the review, citations of automation and next generation 3D printers are used to suggest the cost of creating such things used for survival will become negligible), possibly resulting in potent arguments over who has contributed and who has not.<\/p>\n

Could even lead to small wars. Especially with those 3D printers functioning as your weapons factories. Now I’m tempted to buy the book just to see if it’s as nihilistic as this little tidbit suggests it should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a mini review of Jeremy Rifkin’s The Zero Marginal Cost Society\u00a0in NewScientist (19 November 2016, paywall), Sally Adee summarizes Rifkin’s vision of the future: Within 60 years, capitalism might have left the building completely. In its place will be a society in which all our basic needs are met. \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6938"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6941,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6938\/revisions\/6941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}