The Future Is So Bright, it's Dematerializing

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204909104577237220008056712.html

by tokenadult • 14 years ago

16 5 14 years ago

online.wsj.com

This is why I think Capitalism is failing. As we move into a more virtual world, where the means of production are owned by all, value derived from utility (the principle tenet of neoclassical thought) becomes almost meaningless, less a few required cases.

Look at Communism, it began to crumble when Labour as value stopped making sense, i.e. intellectual work was the driving force of the economy during the cold war. Just ask Doctors in Cuba, where farmers often earn more.

As we move into a more virtual world, where work is no longer connected to sweat labour, or direct utility, when everyone owns a machine capable of digital and physical reproduction our fundamental understanding of value will shift; bringing about new economic principles.

(I am not an economist)

jacquesm• 14 years ago

> As we move into a more virtual world

What will you eat?

Where will you live?

Who will tend to you when you're ill?

We could lose all this virtual stuff overnight and the world would be much like before, it's funny how things are all different and yet nothing changes. Facebook could disappear and you'd likely never notice (unless you happened to hold stock).

But someone still has to grow crops, build houses, produce the goods we use and someone still has to know how to set bones and how to apply stitches.

The virtual world is mostly a first world luxury, if not an outright illusion.

Work will always be connected to sweat labour, maybe not directly but it will be very hard to get rid of that factor in a sustainable manner.

Capitalism is not failing, it is simply adapting to a new situation. And Communism didn't crumble because labour as value stopped making sense, we simply have never had communism, only a bunch of people using it as a fig leaf to cover up their crimes.

SudarshanP• 14 years ago

Robots/Automation already grows crops, builds houses and produces goods we use. 6 people are involved in the production of millions of TVs at Panasonic. Foxconn is adding millions of robots to its workforce. While not a virtual world, it definitely is a growing into a more digitally operated world.

Ubiquitous surveillance and a swarm of drones doing policing probably is as effective as most law enforcement is. I don't like it though... but not liking something does not make it less effective.

In the new world, the value of sweat is falling, but the value of each person's time is improving.

sounds• 14 years ago

If you checked here before reading the article, it's a short intro to the X Prize, starting with a concept called "Dematerialization":

"...dematerialization, the reduction in the quantity of stuff needed to produce a product. An iPhone, for example, weighs 1/100th and costs 1/10th as much as an Osborne Executive computer did in 1982, but it has 150 times the processing speed and 100,000 times the memory."

The Future Is So Bright, it's Dematerializing

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