The Revolution in Motion

[Moonlight Graham]

Yep. People think that food and shelter are a higher priority than hypothetical impacts. It is ridiculously condescending to act like the use of technology is a luxury. It isn't. There are 7 billion people on the planet that would not be able to survive without all of the technology we have at our disposal.

I'm a huge fan of technology, but it has to be used responsibly. This isn't always the case. i think everyone has this same belief, but everyone has their own line they will draw as to how far humans should sacrifice destruction or harm of the natural environment in order to benefit humans. It's quite a big deal to destroy a piece of the environment or pollute our oceans and fresh lakes etc., which has taken thousands or even millions of years to create and could take centuries to repair or even may never be, for the advantage of some human organisms that live 80 years then die.

Also, some uses of technology extends human life, some other uses are indeed a luxury.

As for "environmentalists", they simply have a different value system than yours. It's a philosophical difference, no more inherently "right" or "wrong" than yours (except one's own philosophical bias). They're willing to sacrifice economic profits and some industrial growth in order to protect the destruction and/or pollution of the natural environment. Their ethics system may even say "I value the prevention of the destruction of ie: a large old forest above the extension of X number of lives by X amount of years". Yes, some of their claims/concerns are scientifically unfounded, but others are scientifically legitimate.

People think that food and shelter are a higher priority than hypothetical impacts

Humans usually think of their own needs and wants ahead of other considerations. Some impacts are hypothetical, others the risks are proven real, like your aforementioned oil pipelines, atomic power etc. Plastics are an amazing technology. Littering our water bodies with plastics is a stupid and careless way to use them, but is often done for profit & economic growth (ie: a vessel dumping its garbage for free into the ocean rather than paying to properly dispose of it). But we need to carefully consider the risks/benefits of the way we use technology, both short-term and long-term. The difficult thing is that in the future we may or may not have the technology to clean up some of our environmental messes, it's hard to predict what we can sustainably get away with.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Moonlight Graham

[Moonlight Graham]

Re: the OP article. After reading it in full, beyond it being a pretty vague and incoherently written article, it makes some very interesting points. But it's also hard to see freely shared open-source technology becoming the basis of a new economic system. People have to eat and have housing etc., and those are tangible goods that can't be copied and shared on a network 7 billion times over.

Sharing information over the internet is great, and it even costs people a good deal of time and money to provide it, which is an incredible phenomenon (even things like crowdfunding). But how do we get people to go from sharing interesting and fun things in their spare time like pirated movies and Wikipedia entries to providing free backbreaking labour like agriculture and carpentry for life's necessities? The OP author claims most of our mundane jobs can be automated using technology/machinery (minus design and supervising it), and these jobs only exist because people need to work to live and spend in a capitalist economy, but this author is so vague on everything. Beyond idealistic dreaming, could this actually work? Do we have enough resources to build all of these machines? Who will build and pay for them? How is society going to distribute physical goods?

The author notes that the "how" is impossible to predict because, as we've seen, technology (and history) develops and plays out in unpredictable ways, even by its creators. Therefore I think the author is jumping to far too many conclusions in his vague idealistic dreams given that the future of our economy will play out unpredictably. He still gives us lots of fascinating things to ponder though, even if it's most likely science-fiction.

[Michael Hardner]

Hi Moonlight...

I think you're right that the specifics are quite vague, but since we're talking about a revolutionary change it's probably to be expected. Imagine speaking to people in feudal times about the industrial revolution and they wouldn't be able to understand many of the things to come.

Of course, there will still be commodities, production, and so on but I think wondering about the things that will be the same is missing the point.

I have read a few articles that encompass these topics, and this is more coherent than a lot of them.

[TimG]

i think everyone has this same belief, but everyone has their own line they will draw as to how far humans should sacrifice destruction or harm of the natural environment in order to benefit humans.

Everyone believes in different gods but some people's beliefs are quite harmful to society. The modern incarnation of environmentalism that seeks only to ban and prohibit technology instead of looking for ways to use it safely is one of those harmful religions. The modern society we take for granted could have never been built if the 'ban until proven safe' standard was used in the past. IOW, modern environmentalists are shameless hypocrites living off the the benefits of a society that could not exist if people in the past had adopted the standards they push today. The way forward requires reasonable people that acknowledge that risks exists and need to be properly managed but also understand new technology and infrastructure needs to be deployed to ensure the future well being of our society.

Also, some uses of technology extends human life, some other uses are indeed a luxury.

Most technology starts off as a frivolous luxury before it becomes essential. For example, the advanced graphical displays essential for modern medical imagery only exist because people wanted to play video games and watch porn 2 decades prior. Edited July 27, 2015 by TimG

[TimG]

that the specifics are quite vague, but since we're talking about a revolutionary change it's probably to be expected. Imagine speaking to people in feudal times about the industrial revolution and they wouldn't be able to understand many of the things to come.

We have gone through several significant technology driven changes over the past 100 years. From electrification and the automobile to television and the telephone to smart phones and the internet. Throughout all of these transitions capitalism remains the primary foundation for all economic activity even as formally dominate companies collapsed and disappeared. There is no reason to believe that will change in the future which makes the headline of the article extremely silly. I think the author has confused "capitalism" with "business model". i.e. new technology has rendered old business models obsolete, however, it creates new opportunities for new business models that will allow a new generation of companies to emerge. But even as business models evolve, capitalism stays as the foundation. Edited July 27, 2015 by TimG

[bush_cheney2004]

We have gone through several significant technology driven changes over the past 100 years. From electrification and the automobile to television and the telephone to smart phones and the internet.....

Yes...such technological advances made it possible to separate communications from transportation. The telegraph helped the Union win the U.S. Civil War, and started a technology blitz that has never stopped.

[Moonlight Graham]

Everyone believes in different gods but some people's beliefs are quite harmful to society. The modern incarnation of environmentalism that seeks only to ban and prohibit technology instead of looking for ways to use it safely is one of those harmful religions.

Calling environmentalism a "religion" to discredit it is silly. It's an ideology if anything, with many variations. Any decision to ban or utilize powerful new technologies without scientific and/or logical investigation is reckless, since they can have profound impacts on humanity & the earth, good and/or bad.

The modern society we take for granted could have never been built if the 'ban until proven safe' standard was used in the past. IOW, modern environmentalists are shameless hypocrites living off the the benefits of a society that could not exist if people in the past had adopted the standards they push today.

That's not accurate. You're forgetting that tremendous amounts of new technology, from medicine to consumer/industrial chemicals to food ingredients etc. have been and continue to be tested by its makers and by different authorities, including government ie: FDA or EPA in U.S., and banned because its use can't be "proven safe". Do you really want free, unregulated usage of technology, where things like asbestos, CFC's, DDT (which still pollutes our Great Lakes decades later), sarin gas, Agent Orange, leaded gasoline, and even cigarettes can be used by companies & individuals without testing standards, without ability to ban technology deemed by scientific experts as harmful?

The way forward requires reasonable people that acknowledge that risks exists and need to be properly managed but also understand new technology and infrastructure needs to be deployed to ensure the future well being of our society.

I agree. But there's a spectrum of risks vs benefits with many technologies, and there needs to be a line drawn where risks outweigh benefits of certain technologies to the point where their use needs to either be banned or curtailed (regulated) to only those specific uses where the benefits outweigh risks. Inevitably, controversial technologies like nuclear power and GMO's arise, and hopefully scientific experts and not uneducated mobs get to decide their fate. Nothing worse than an uneducated people like Jenny McCarthy (re: vaccines) dissuading people from using amazingly useful technologies.

[TimG]

Calling environmentalism a "religion" to discredit it is silly. It's an ideology if anything, with many variations.

I use the term religion because of the dogma that no connection to any rational thought process. For example, the premise that the earth without human impacts is an ideal "pristine state" that must be preserved is no different from the belief that use of stem cells in science is inherently immoral. Environmentalism should have no more and no less credibility than any traditional religion.

That's not accurate. You're forgetting that tremendous amounts of new technology, from medicine to consumer/industrial chemicals to food ingredients etc. have been and continue to be tested by its makers and by different authorities, including government ie: FDA or EPA in U.S.

And environmentalists constantly complain about these approvals and call for blanket bans on things like GMOs despite the fact that they have been shown to be safe. The fact that government agencies still have enough of a spine to ignore the scaremongers in some cases does not demonstrate that the scaremongers do not exist.

Do you really want free, unregulated usage of technology, where things like asbestos, CFC's, DDT (which still pollutes our Great Lakes decades later), sarin gas, Agent Orange, leaded gasoline, and even cigarettes can be used by companies & individuals without testing standards, without ability to ban technology deemed by scientific experts as harmful?

It should be clear that I support regulation and even restrictions on technology. What I am complaining about are the demands for blanket bans on things like GMOs or fracking that are not based on a rational analysis but rather based on knee jerk pandering to environmentalists who want tech they don't like arbitrarily banned.

Inevitably, controversial technologies like nuclear power and GMO's arise, and hopefully scientific experts and not uneducated mobs get to decide their fate.

But that is not what happens in practice. The difficulty in getting a pipeline built in this country is a symption of the problem. Logically, oil is needed for the foreseeable future and pipelines are the safest and most cost effective means of transport yet the scaremongers oppose them. The same problem shows up for any large infrastructure project like dams or power plants or even new highways. It is this kind of opposition that seriously threatens the future of the country because our existing infrastructure will eventually wear out/reach capacity and if we can't expand or build new infrastructure then we will be in deep trouble. Edited July 28, 2015 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

First of all, many thanks to Moonlight and TimG for a thought-provoking argument from two sides. I'm getting a lot out of this one.

We have gone through several significant technology driven changes over the past 100 years. From electrification and the automobile to television and the telephone to smart phones and the internet. Throughout all of these transitions capitalism remains the primary foundation for all economic activity even as formally dominate companies collapsed and disappeared. There is no reason to believe that will change in the future which makes the headline of the article extremely silly. I think the author has confused "capitalism" with "business model". i.e. new technology has rendered old business models obsolete, however, it creates new opportunities for new business models that will allow a new generation of companies to emerge. But even as business models evolve, capitalism stays as the foundation.

I thought about your assertion here a lot last night, and I think you're right. "Capitalism" indeed will persist in some form far into the future. To look at the article's point about the change from feudalism to industrialism it's true that capitalism existed in both eras. The so-called business model though will change drastically, as it did when the Catholic Church began to allow lending money, investment, and gave birth to the corporation.

Instead of looking at the word Capitalism, we might start examining how the nature of money changed from the days of Mesopotamia to present day. To my mind, money has started to look more like 'clicks' on a computer screen.

Calling environmentalism a "religion" to discredit it is silly. It's an ideology if anything, with many variations. Any decision to ban or utilize powerful new technologies without scientific and/or logical investigation is reckless, since they can have profound impacts on humanity & the earth, good and/or bad.

You need to abandon this idea that technology can be 'investigated' in a controlled way, as you imagine. Here's why:

1. It doesn't happen effectively. Technology is the genie out of the bottle, and whether you're talking about marine shipping technology (proposed to be banned by the Ming emperors of China), radar detectors banned by state police, satellite dishes, or nuclear weapons (restricted by those who already had them)... it's relatively useless to restrict humans from acquiring the toys they want.

2. It would be impossible to do. The effects of technology can't be known until they play themselves out. Can you imagine a study on the possible effects of the internet in the 1980s ? How likely would it have been that they would have determined that TV sitcoms or movies would suffer ? The laboratory for these things is the entire world.

A better approach to 'investigation' is to understand that "we don't know what we don't know", and look to the early adopters to see what's coming... be prepared to adapt. Areas of activity that adopt and react to technology quickly include the Military, and visual artists too as observed by McLuhan.

That's not accurate. You're forgetting that tremendous amounts of new technology, from medicine to consumer/industrial chemicals to food ingredients etc. have been and continue to be tested by its makers and by different authorities, including government ie: FDA or EPA in U.S., and banned because its use can't be "proven safe". Do you really want free, unregulated usage of technology, where things like asbestos, CFC's, DDT (which still pollutes our Great Lakes decades later), sarin gas, Agent Orange, leaded gasoline, and even cigarettes can be used by companies & individuals without testing standards, without ability to ban technology deemed by scientific experts as harmful?

Those are applications of the new technology, and there were many years before medicines, and chemicals went untested before society changed to adopt these processes, which are still changing by the way. In this way, yes you're right that new applications can be tested, but these are small iterations of larger technological changes that happened earlier in our history.

It's a subtle difference, though, and probably not worth arguing if "testing" of ANY kind of useless. Yes, it can be useful but adaptation is a great human skill, and to my mind we're better at that than collective imagination of future effects.

I agree. But there's a spectrum of risks vs benefits with many technologies, and there needs to be a line drawn where risks outweigh benefits of certain technologies to the point where their use needs to either be banned or curtailed (regulated) to only those specific uses where the benefits outweigh risks. Inevitably, controversial technologies like nuclear power and GMO's arise, and hopefully scientific experts and not uneducated mobs get to decide their fate. Nothing worse than an uneducated people like Jenny McCarthy (re: vaccines) dissuading people from using amazingly useful technologies.

Again, you're talking about a point at which the broader effects are understood and we already have a framework for testing chemical A vs chemical B but I get your point.

It's a far different thing for somebody to imagine that the effects of Facebook could have/should have been assessed in 2003 prior to launch.

I use the term religion because of the dogma that no connection to any rational thought process. For example, the premise that the earth without human impacts is an ideal "pristine state" that must be preserved is no different from the belief that use of stem cells in science is inherently immoral. Environmentalism should have no more and no less credibility than any traditional religion.

Maybe, but it could also be that they are doing a cost/benefit analysis with far different (and as I'm sure you'd say unreasonable) weights on environmental impact. I would agree with you, though, that if somebody assigns ultimate value to "nature" vs any benefits for human beings then we're talking about a different ideology.

That's not to say that the ultimate goal can't be "zero" environmental impact, just that current-state decisions can't reasonably use those weights and hope to advance any human benefits.

The difficulty in getting a pipeline built in this country is a symption of the problem. Logically, oil is needed for the foreseeable future and pipelines are the safest and most cost effective means of transport yet the scaremongers oppose them. The same problem shows up for any large infrastructure project like dams or power plants or even new highways. It is this kind of opposition that seriously threatens the future of the country because our existing infrastructure will eventually wear out/reach capacity and if we can't expand or build new infrastructure then we will be in deep trouble.

You're talking here about the dialogue, and to my mind the good news is that intelligence will prevail in a system with open dialogue. People are irrational, but they respond to ration.

Another example of what you're talking about is the Nestle plant in BC that bottles water, but is not even the biggest user of fresh water. They are targeted because of Nestle's past crimes, not because that plant was the worst offender. In a system of open dialogue then these things will get resolved.

I'm generally unsure of the future that technology will bring us, however I'm optimistic that online/social discussion will be a better platform for collective decision-making.

[bush_cheney2004]

.... Nothing worse than an uneducated people like Jenny McCarthy (re: vaccines) dissuading people from using amazingly useful technologies.

No...Jenny McCarthy has helped to educate health care consumers so they can make informed choices about vaccines....just as many celebs leverage their media access for any number of causes. Technology will always have advocates and critics.

[WIP]

I had the great fortune to go camping with a chemistry prof last weekend. He liked to talk, and I knew nothing about chemistry... what a boon for me.

One of the myriad topics that came up was R&D for drug costs, and his perception that this is actually owed, in a large part, to government bureaucracy like FDA being cumbersome. In some cases, drugs are 'fast tracked', but the risk/benefit analysis that goes into reviewing drugs seems counterintuitive and all too political to me.

Just an aside, but it's indeed part of the revolution...

Just an aside, medical research in Canada and the US is increasingly becoming the province of big pharma; since governments are cutting back on research funding and allowing the "private sector" to step in and build the new university wings and equip the labs and make the hiring decisions for staffing the new, improved departments.

So, every new state and public university in North America has new business and economic departments staffed by neoliberal drones who brainwash the next generation of economists and MBA's with their crap! (no wonder every so called expert from right to left is just twiddling with the dials of market capitalism!)

When it comes to Big Ag, whadoyaknow, Monsanto has generously provided the money to fund the bulk of the research on safety and potential harms of GMO seeds!

In climate research, we have that monstrosity built by the Koch Bros. in Huntsville Alabama for UAL- Huntsville and staffed with the handful of AGW-denying climatologists...or if they don't believe it...those who are willing to go along and just pick up the cheques....sort of like Huntsville's long history of collecting money from the military contractors...especially the multibillion dollar "Star Wars" sinkhole created by Ronnie Rayguns!

And in medicine, it's Big Pharma...all over the place! Because with public dollars receding, multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies are more than willing to leap in and support the research that arrives at the conclusions they desire...because if a pharmaceutical company is allowed (as in a recent scandal of a dangerous pain relief drug) to sponsor 13 tests of their product, and just pick the best one and bury the rest (even holding researchers to confidentiality agreements to guarantee their silence), then how much confidence can the public place on any new drug that's approved for public consumption? Not much more than zero in my estimation!

[bush_cheney2004]

Just an aside, medical research in Canada and the US is increasingly becoming the province of big pharma; since governments are cutting back on research funding and allowing the "private sector" to step in and build the new university wings and equip the labs and make the hiring decisions for staffing the new, improved departments.

OK...just when did such massive R&D ever occur in Canada on the government dime compared to the United States ? This is a well known shortfall in Canada, and has hampered economic development.

Edited July 28, 2015 by bush_cheney2004

[Michael Hardner]

Just an aside, medical research in Canada and the US is increasingly becoming the province of big pharma; since governments are cutting back on research funding and allowing the "private sector" to step in and build the new university wings and equip the labs and make the hiring decisions for staffing the new, improved departments.

I just had a conversation about this... the testing on the drugs still has to happen in the private realm but we all pay for it.

As for the rest of your post, it's old right-vs-left thinking which is beside the point of the thread IMO. Capitalism will change due to technology, and lefty protesting in the old way won't have anything to do with that.

[bush_cheney2004]

I just had a conversation about this... the testing on the drugs still has to happen in the private realm but we all pay for it.

As for the rest of your post, it's old right-vs-left thinking which is beside the point of the thread IMO. Capitalism will change due to technology, and lefty protesting in the old way won't have anything to do with that.

True...but "we" pay a lot more for the research in the U.S. than in Canada. Better capitalism ?

[WIP]

Not my philosophy, these are theories of people far wiser than me.

Well, that's a pretty dismal comment on your intellectual abilities then! Because you're responding to MG's critique of of the general lack of will to hold new tech and its creators to account when the usual unexpected secondary consequences arise.

No doubt the modern religion of secular humanism (which most fundamentalist Christians also belong to whether they know it or not) believes that any attempts to restrain the application of new technologies is an attack on our expected brighter, better world just beyond the horizon. As our machines and our avaricious systems of economics have painted us into a corner early in the 21st century, every so called 'skeptic' and 'rationalist' starts droning on about their hope and even faith in some as yet undiscovered invention saving the day for the human race. It's a faith not much different than climbing up on your roof and waiting for the Rapture!

Destroy us or change our very being little by little, yes I agree.

Exactly how fast or how quickly do you believe the process of evolution by natural selection occurs? Because...on the subject of climate change, a number of biologists have pointed out that the reason why our present day tinkering with the dials of atmospheric gases has already set off an extinction event on a grand scale, is because the rate of change is much greater (10 times the PETM) than past warming events....which did allow many species of land animals enough time to make adaptations and migrate away from the intensely hot equatorial zone. Not only do all the human barriers in place today make it difficult to migrate, but only the smallest creatures like insects...which are often the ones wreaking havoc as they move north, the ones who are most likely to make the adaptations to survive in a hotter world.

As for us....we're screwed if we keep following present trends. In every other major and minor extinction event in Earth's history, the dominant orders of animals and dominant species are the ones most seriously impacted! Because they have spent too long, too comfortably adapted to having a relatively easy time acquiring food and having offspring.

When a large, dominant species (and humans are unprecedented based on the percentage of total land, water & resources that we use for our own needs) experiences a population crash...which we can expect if the global system of industrial agriculture begins to fail on a grand scale because of climate change, groundwater depletion, soil erosion etc., then a collapse in numbers of the total human population will have a cascading effect that will drive our numbers down very low...even lower than the estimated numbers of a permanently sustainable population.

When other species go through that kind of collapse, it is often the end and they go completely extinct, because surviving members of the species are too weak, too sick from pandemics, and too isolated to restart a healthy growing population.

It seems that in our time, we have kept doubling down on what we can take from the biosphere, rather than thinking through what we need for sustainability; and as our food production and economic activity has become globalized so that no region of the planet can escape a major disaster, the future calamity will be global and more likely to end our species in a few generations. So much for new tech making a better and brighter future!

[TimG]

That's not to say that the ultimate goal can't be "zero" environmental impact, just that current-state decisions can't reasonably use those weights and hope to advance any human benefits.

My point was that the 'zero-impact baseline' is an assertion derived from ideology/dogma and should not be given any more consideration than assertions on the ethics of using stem cells.

I'm generally unsure of the future that technology will bring us, however I'm optimistic that online/social discussion will be a better platform for collective decision-making.

Well, I am not so optimistic since the online world is largely composed of non-intersecting echo chambers where narratives are constructed with facts carefully selected to support the narrative. Very few people take the time to look at narratives other than the one they prefer based on their personal ideology/view points. Edited July 28, 2015 by TimG

[WIP]

Typically if the mitigation costs more, the companies have no interest in it. Why make something less harmful, but more expensive? When I can make it more harmful and cheaper? Corporations often care less about long term harmful effects and more about short term profits. Asking corporations to mitigate harmful effects is not in their best interests and a corporation will always put it's best interests over those effected by it's products. So instead of asking them, we must tell them what to do. It may be a knee jerk reaction but it's better than no reaction at all.

I'm reminded of a couple of psychologists in recent times, who have openly stated that the modern business environment...especially on Wall Street, favours the psychopath over a normal person. One study set up using the typical trading environment of a low to mid-level stock and bond trader, showed that the most successful subjects (who did not profile beforehand as psychopathic) would begin acting more like psychopaths the longer they stayed at the job. One other psychologist...who's practice was on Wall Street and treated many of the top executives, found a much higher than normal number of clients that he would categorize as psychopathic or sociopathic. In a normal environment, a person with such lack of empathy and understanding of others usually finds himself ostracized and out of the group. But in the new business environment, where success is demanded on short term quarterly reports, no executive plans or expects to be with the same company for more than a couple of years anyway.

One of the other maladaptive characteristics of the psychopath, aside from the empathy gap, is a reckless lack of concern for consequences. These are risk-takers, and no risk is too great, if the near term rewards are high. Take Tony Hayward for example...the CEO of BP, who's reckless disregard for the dangers of drilling holes deeper under the seafloor, led to the Gulf Oil Disaster, that has devastated and continues to damage fish and marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico. BP was apportioned 67% of the blame for the disaster, largely because Hayward blew aside engineers who had some safety concerns prior to the blowout. It was all about the money! Same attitude from the CEO's running oil companies...any environmentalists who think they can reason with the executives at Exxon or Chevron about the dangers for their children are just kidding themselves! The world could blow up tomorrow, and this class of people couldn't care less as long as today's profit numbers were good.

[TimG]

As for us....we're screwed if we keep following present trends. In every other major and minor extinction event in Earth's history, the dominant orders of animals and dominant species are the ones most seriously impacted

I have looked at the science and I find that such claims are not remotely plausible.

[WIP]

The poor in North America today have smart phones. Nuff said.

Try eating your smart phone! FWIW, I haven't bought a cell phone since I had my last one stolen when my car was broken into 15 years ago. And I won't buy another one until every last payphone is gone!

[Michael Hardner]

True...but "we" pay a lot more for the research in the U.S. than in Canada. Better capitalism ?

Not sure... do you know ? Tell me.

[bush_cheney2004]

Not sure... do you know ? Tell me.

I know that grouping Canada and the U.S. in the same sentence for government and private R&D is a non-starter.

[Michael Hardner]

Well, that's a pretty dismal comment on your intellectual abilities then! Because you're responding to MG's critique of of the general lack of will to hold new tech and its creators to account when the usual unexpected secondary consequences arise.

How is it a reflection on me ? I'm giving you the findings of those far more expert than either of us.

... So much for new tech making a better and brighter future!

I'm just saying that humans do not reject technology. It feels like you're shooting the messenger on that point.

[Michael Hardner]

My point was that the 'zero-impact baseline' is an assertion derived from ideology/dogma and should not be given any more consideration than assertions on the ethics of using stem cells.

Well... such values are given some consideration, though, as are opinions/beliefs of any significant group.

Well, I am not so optimistic since the online world is largely composed of non-intersecting echo chambers where narratives are constructed with facts carefully selected to support the narrative. Very few people take the time to look at narratives other than the one they prefer based on their personal ideology/view points.

You are clearly not my facebook friend !

[Shady]

Try eating your smart phone! FWIW, I haven't bought a cell phone since I had my last one stolen when my car was broken into 15 years ago. And I won't buy another one until every last payphone is gone!

Perhaps the $80 dollars a month for the phone could be used for food instead?

[Moonlight Graham]

Hi Moonlight...

I think you're right that the specifics are quite vague, but since we're talking about a revolutionary change it's probably to be expected. Imagine speaking to people in feudal times about the industrial revolution and they wouldn't be able to understand many of the things to come.

Of course, there will still be commodities, production, and so on but I think wondering about the things that will be the same is missing the point.

I have read a few articles that encompass these topics, and this is more coherent than a lot of them.

It's just that the author is stating that "postcapitalism" (this new system as he calls it) will replace capitalism. He's making a claim of certainty, not just a "it might happen" observation. When you make such a bold statement, you have to come prepared with better evidence to back it up. Its not that the specifics are vague, it's that almost everything he presents in the article is vague, and it's a long article so he has space to bring in serious economic analysis, instead of things like "people share ideas on the internet for free, so this kind of free sharing can replace capitalist markets" (paraphrased). He could have used this article as a thorough abstract (summary) for his book. IMO he failed. I'd be embarrassed if i wrote this article because it reads like a naive hipster 2nd-year university student wrote it the night before it was due. It has some great ideas to explore but this isn't fun and games, let's get serious in our analysis if we're to take it seriously.