[p2p-research] Post-Capitalism

Wed Jul 14 07:22:20 CEST 2010

I find this a nice s-f scenario,but totally irrealistic ... so inline, my
own predictions

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 10:53 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> A Crude Timeframe for Innovation
>
> Next 2-4 years.  Universities begin to die wholesale through massive
> government cut-backs.  R&D goes to the garages in huge numbers.
>

- some universities will face severe cutbacks, and western education will be
in crisis because of financial issues, but they will continue to grow
massively in East Asia and other emerging countries

>
>
>
>
> Next 4-8 years.  Wiki-like repositories of design projects and mechanics
> for sythesizing everything from green transport vehicles to simple drugs
> start to emerge.
>
>

they are already starting to emerge now, but it will take longer than that
to have an integrated system that is part of the economy

> Next 8-12 years...governments regularly fail based on financial collapse of
> soverign debt.  This will start in Europe and spread quickly to Asia and
> North America.
>

this will happen earlier I suspect

>
> Next 12-15 years.  The capacity of homebrew biology products like new
> organs, limbs, and rebuilt arteries, etc. will make longevity far less
> problematic for the rich (top 20% of the world)...we on this list are all
> rich.
>

all being rich, I suspect that this is not true, for example, for four
years, I could not afford healthcare insurance, my kids were expelled from
school for inabilty to pay the fees, and in 2006, we relied on food
donations ... I suspect there are other people in the list who are not as
rich as Ryan .. I'm not claiming to be poor per se, I'm just saying you are
perhaps a little foolhardy in expecting that everybody shares your
condition; of course, if you compare it to people having less than 2$ a day,
you are probably right, but that doesn't make most of the people 'rich', in
the relative terms of the peoople we live in ..

>
> Next 15-20 years...Last of the large for profit industries find it
> difficult to operate in a world where rapid movements to free P2P networks
> are commonplace and very disrespectful of intellectual property.
>

certainly the crisis of value will play out in the coming period, but I
personally don't discount a new green wave ..

>
> Next 20-25 years...humans become largely irrelevant.  Singularity and
> robotic technology makes non human hybrids irrelevant...rather like hobby
> farm animals.
>

this is total fantasy, this rapture will not happen, in 25 years, human
society will face a number of big crisis due to natural resource
constraints, there will be a few more robots around, some increases on
longetivity for some people, drops for others, most people in the world will
likely be busy with other technologies for survival instead of transhuman
religious fantasies; technology will continue to evolve as an adjunct of
humankind, there will be no AI gods ruling us, and we will not be pets of
them

>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 8:27 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I agree with Ryan re his points on participative innovation,
>>
>> the question is, what are the industrial effects of participative
>> innovation?
>>
>> the answer is: there is really no crucial difference, yes they are rival
>> goods, but, anything that needs to be made, needs to be designed, and thus
>> falls under the possiblity of open innovation,
>>
>> more interestingly for me is that once open design communities take hold,
>> they are also designing the production process differently, which gives rise
>> to the new forms of distributed manufacturing that are described in our
>> wiki,
>>
>> of course, this emergence of open and distributed manufacturing will take
>> more time (more capital needed, more integration between the physical and
>> the virtual, many collaborative tools are still missing in many sectors),
>> but it is precisely this necessity, which weds the corporate world, to the
>> world of shared design, and makes it co-evolve with it,
>>
>> that a development is marginal only matters to a degree, what matters is
>> the direction of the evolution, and from my vantage point, it is happening,
>> and I agree with Ryan's time frame on this, i.e. 20-30 years, but that
>> doesn't mean its effects are not visible long before that ..
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>   On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:00 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Dan:
>>>
>>> Arguing with Marxists is very similar to arguing with anyone who believes
>>> strongly in their point of view.  Personally, I see little evidence to
>>> support Marxism any time I've made admittedly minimal efforts to understand
>>> it.  As I am inclined to work with and use things that are evidential, I
>>> have never seen any reason to seriously engage Marxism any more than I
>>> do have reason to engage others systems or beliefs that are minimally
>>> evidential.  That said, some very smart people have used Marxism as a basis
>>> of analysis particularly in sociology and history.  I don't diss it as a
>>> sort of theory of how the world works much from those academic traditions.
>>> It isn't useful as economics or social policy so far as I can tell.  It also
>>> isn't in any way a good predictor of social evolution.  I think Marx meant
>>> well.  State implementations of his theories have been uniformly disasterous
>>> in my opinion.  Others can certainly disagree, but I think an objective
>>> viewer would find most instances of Marxism in practice to be worse than
>>> mere failures.
>>>
>>> You ask is innovation possible in a post-capitalist world.  I suspect it
>>> is not only possible but it will accelerate.  What is killing capitalism
>>> is technology.  Technology is rapidly encroaching on the mind and the body
>>> as to how humans can control and own reasoning.  This is not a bad thing.
>>> Personally, I'd much rather trust a system that was built and vetted by
>>> thousands of doctors and nurses than the ideas of one human.  Soon, that
>>> sort of collective, social technology will be commonplace.  Elements have
>>> already begun.  Your field, learning, is all important.  Soon there will be
>>> a greater synergy between machine learning and human learning.  This is all
>>> but inevitable unless some cataclysm freezes us where we are or in a lower
>>> state of progress.
>>>
>>> Innovation requires a sort of willingness to trial.  Trials and
>>> experiments are typically expensive and hard.  In a post capitalist society
>>> (one where debt driven growth is not the norm) it may be less risky to try
>>> things.  This will give even further impetus to innovation in co-ops, maker
>>> faires, garage-level manufacturing, etc.  I think all that stuff is very
>>> very exciting.  Anyone who does not have a still or a CNC router or a set of
>>> test tubes in the garage right now is really missing out on what is most
>>> exciting about our times...it is the democratization of R&D...and that is
>>> the most important driver of innovation of all.  Don't get me wrong, we are
>>> still in the corporate age and will be for 20-30 more years at least.
>>> The change is started though.  Many of the people on this list are doing
>>> it.  That's why I am here.  The associated Marxism is not helpful, but I'm
>>> unlikely to convince those of that inclination of that nor are they likely
>>> to convince me.  In general, it is better, as Michel has said, to seek out
>>> common ground.  I find Marxian influenced people, like people of any strong
>>> metaphysical view, have great difficulty finding common ground, however.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 7:21 AM, Daniel Araya <levelsixmedia at hotmail.com
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ryan, one question I have for you: Do you think there is room for
>>>> continuous innovation in 'capitalist' post-industrial economies? If so
>>>> innovation in what areas? Green energy? Or are we in the early phases of a
>>>> post-capitalist commons-based era?
>>>>
>>>> What is your view (ignoring all the Marxist fog)...?
>>>>
>>>> D
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:03:48 +0700
>>>> From: michelsub2004 at gmail.com
>>>> To: p2presearch at listcultures.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [p2p-research] The problems of debt
>>>>
>>>> Hi Ryan,
>>>>
>>>> when do you place item 8, I think this would be crucial in your theory,
>>>>
>>>> if you place it in 2008, then obviously, this is right,
>>>>
>>>> but if you place it before, it's totally against the historical record,
>>>> as debt and credit is precisely the strategy that was chosen to jumpstart
>>>> the economy, i.e. the social product going to labour was dramatically
>>>> diminished, forcing the middle class to resort to debt-fuelled lifestyles
>>>> ... It is the collapse of this strategy that led to the meltdown of 2008 and
>>>> the death of the neoliberal model (but not of the power of the elite that
>>>> sustained those policies, as you rightly say, they were 'saved' and remain
>>>> in place)
>>>>
>>>> as any enterpreneur or capitalist knows, in real production, profit only
>>>> comes from monopoly, i.e. preventing as long as possible that innovations
>>>> are shared, once this happens, super-profits become impossible, and start
>>>> declining very rapidly; this is of course why IP is crucial,
>>>>
>>>> in a world of open and social innovation therefore, and I think this is
>>>> happening, profit tends to be distributed much faster, and therefore
>>>> declines much faster,
>>>>
>>>> as you can see in the RSA animate presentation by David Harvey, and this
>>>> is confirmed by The Big Shift of Hagel/seely brown, production-based profit
>>>> has dramatically declined, and only financial rent is now providing profit,
>>>> or at least it was until 2008
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 10:33 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've been asked to explain debt problems as influenced by technology.
>>>> I'll try.
>>>>
>>>> Here's my "theory".  Many others share or have versions of something
>>>> similar.  I claim no originality.  I've posted several versions on this
>>>> list.
>>>>
>>>> 1. Growth occurs when someone produces something others value.  The sum
>>>> total of value is the economy.
>>>> 2. In the past, it was a matter of work and labour to produce something
>>>> of value...like digging a hole where a hole was wanted.
>>>> 3. People learned to take money that was not in use and to use it by
>>>> borrowing it and then buying value-production which was then placed on sale.
>>>> 4. The process of 3 entails risk.  Risk was rewarded by profit.
>>>> 5. The system of 3-4 really works quite well so long as profit is
>>>> likely.
>>>> 6. In a world where learning and high productive machinery requiring low
>>>> skill levels is readily available (i.e. post 1990 or so) making profit is
>>>> harder.  7. Item 6 is especially true if innovation is not protected by the
>>>> state (e.g. through intellectual property.)
>>>> 8. Because profit is harder especially in tangible goods and services
>>>> (because of technology and learning distribution) credit is harder.
>>>> 9. When credit became hard, the incentives to cheat increased.  People
>>>> lent money badly and then cleverly sold the bad loans to others who didn't
>>>> understand.
>>>> 10. When 9 happened, the state had to decide whether huge firms
>>>> fulfilling important institutional roles would die, or be saved.
>>>> 11. Nearly all states, especially in Japan and Europe, chose to save old
>>>> institutions (e.g. Royal Bank of Scotland), or in the US, AIG.
>>>> 12. There is now an open question as to whether markets can still create
>>>> value (e.g. the iPod) in such a way that debt is justified.  If not,
>>>> capitialism in the form that creates ready growth through using unused money
>>>> is screwed.
>>>> 13. When money goes unused, it is difficult to create new money and
>>>> growth of value.  There is no/little incentive to innovate.  This can be
>>>> called "deflation."
>>>> 14. Deflation is more dangerous to capitalism by far than inflation.
>>>> Deflation means shrinkage of an economy because unused money becomes more
>>>> valuable by sitting than by being used.  Thus, people become even more risk
>>>> averse.
>>>> 15. When 14 happens for a long time (e.g. Japan) then demographic and
>>>> institutional patterns start to become unsustainable.
>>>> 16. When 15 happens, we do not understand the long term outcomes, but
>>>> they don't seem good.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Ryan Lanham
>>>> rlanham1963 at gmail.com
>>>> Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
>>>> P.O. Box 633
>>>> Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
>>>> Cayman Islands
>>>> (345) 916-1712
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ryan Lanham
>>> rlanham1963 at gmail.com
>>> Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
>>> P.O. Box 633
>>> Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
>>> Cayman Islands
>>> (345) 916-1712
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>> Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Ryan Lanham
> rlanham1963 at gmail.com
> Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
> P.O. Box 633
> Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
> Cayman Islands
> (345) 916-1712
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>

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