Implications of the Third Industrial Revolution

http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/jeremy-rifkin--2/9652-implications-of-the-third-industrial-revolution

by blue1 • 11 years ago

75 11 11 years ago

theeuropean-magazine.com

minthd• 11 years ago

For a more realistic view on this subject:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/03/16/12632/

danbruc4• 11 years ago

Ad hoc I would say he is wrong, zero marginal costs are a problem for capitalism. Zero marginal costs imply no labor involved, no wages earned, no prices payed, no profits made. So how are you now going to acquire the capital for the initial investment?

tsotha2• 11 years ago

I don't see how you get there from here. If a product requires fixed costs there will be prices paid and profit even if marginal costs are negligible. That's the software industry in a nutshell.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

The existence of zero marginal costs are not a problem for capitalism whatsoever. You're thinking in a very inflexible way. You're trying to take the model of economic activity today and map it with only a few adjustments onto some future world. But this is as foolish as trying to model the economy of 2015 from the example of the economies of 1950, 1850, or 1500.

I think the economics of air is an exemplary point here, worthy of delving deeper into. Throughout human history air has not been a subject of economic activity, precisely because it is free and abundant (and I'm setting aside the discussion of air pollution because it's a more complex subject and not strictly relevant). But despite the fact that air has always been a critical necessity for all human activity, the fact that it has not been the subject of economic activity has not been a hamper to other economic activity, in fact if anything it has been a boon. Internal combustion engines benefit greatly from the free availability of air, for example, to great financial and functional benefit to many.

But what happens in the context of, say, a commercially run colony on Mars? There air is very much not free and must be paid for in some way, either through fees, taxation, or metered use of some sort. But even then that wouldn't change the economic foundation of society in, say, rendering "capitalism" obsolete or not obsolete.

The point being, that what is and is not the subject of economic activity can change, and change drastically, between different contexts, but that doesn't require a grand revision of economic theory. In the future a lot of things that are currently very expensive may become extremely inexpensive or free. But this has happened repeatedly throughout history. What happens is that economic activity moves elsewhere. Today getting enough food to survive is very easy to do, even at a minimum wage. This is very unusual historically. And lots of other things were once tremendously expensive, such as: trans-continental travel, world-wide messaging, books, personal transportation, clothing, durable high quality silverware, and, of course, spices and "exotic" or "rare" fruits such as watermelons and pineapples. At one point pineapples were so exotic, expensive, and sought after that ship captains used to use pineapple motifs for decoration as a status/wealth indicator. Today, of course, you can go to any grocery store in any city in the US and buy one for a few dollars, or get canned pineapple for even cheaper. And so what? All that means is that people aren't working in order to buy pineapples, their working to buy other things.

The economy of 2050 is likely to be very different from today's, but it will still have a lot of familiar characteristics. People will still go to work, people will still exchange goods and services with one another. There will still be a huge amount of economic activity, though it's likely that many of the things we consider valuable today will be nearly valueless then and many things we are not even aware of today are considered valuable.

kennethh• 11 years ago

This article was a waste of time, it only tells us that the robots will take our jobs just like numerous times before. Technology have always changed the labour landscape and old professions vanish and new one show up.

Petition of the Candle Makers

Ironically, French economist Frederic Bastiat lampooned protectionism back in 1845 when he penned 'Petition of the Candle Makers', mocking the sun's "unfair trade advantage" over candle-makers.

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion (excellent diplomacy nowadays!), particularly because he has for that haughty island a respect that he does not show for us.”

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.no/2014/11/too-big-to...

Implications of the Third Industrial Revolution

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