Debunking Postscarcity: 5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.
Paul D. Fernhout
http://apprehendingpostscarcity.blogspot.com/2010/10/debunking-postscarcity-5-reasons-future.html
which links to this cracked.com article by David Wong (which has 1254
comments by the way):
"Debunking Postscarcity: 5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S. "
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
From there:
"Which brings me to an amusing story. In the last few decades, thousands
[millions? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott ] of babies
in Third World countries have died from contaminated baby formula. Wait,
did I say amusing? I typed the wrong word there. Anyway, what happens is
the mothers mix the baby formula with contaminated water, because
sanitation is poor. So why the hell do the mothers feed their infants
poison formula when they can just produce milk, for free, from their own
bodies? The answer is that they do it because the manufacturer of the
formula, Nestle, ran lots of ads telling them to. If you want to know
what the future looks like, there it is. The future is going to hang on
whether or not businesses will be able to convince you to pay money for
things you can otherwise get for free. ... Now think about how many
people you know who live in apartments or trailers barely big enough to
host a game of Twister but who don't care because they spend every
waking moment at home either playing World of Warcraft or surfing the
Internet. They're not looking for a two-story house with a swimming pool
and a white picket fence. With a $300 netbook and a $20-a-month Internet
connection they can connect with friends, meet girls, get their
entertainment, pursue their hobbies and stay in contact with family or
co-workers. They may even work from home. Look at how many of Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs they're getting digitally: ... Everything from that
second tier to the capstone, they can get at a cost that rounds down to
zero, if they so choose. We Internet types are so busy haggling over
video games with DRM that we're not grasping the scale of this. We're
like a dog who's been cooped up behind a fence his whole life, and now a
storm has knocked down the gate. The dog looks out and thinks, "Wow, out
there is the front yard!" No, Fluffy. Out there is the whole world."
Lot's more good stuff there at that cracked.com article:
"To keep all that stuff up and running, the publisher is resorting to
what experts call FARTS--Forced ARTificial Scarcity. Or they would call
it that, if they were as awesome at naming things as I am. Mark my
words: The future will be ruled by FARTS. ... It works the same way with
all digital goods -- from entertainment to communication to the software
you use to do your job. A significant chunk of our economy runs on FARTS
now. And as time goes on, more and more of what we use and rely on day
to day will be enveloped by that invisible cloud. ... So hate ACTA all
you want, along with the MPAA and the RIAA. But you, like them, are
getting paid in FARTS. And so, here we are. We're celebrating that we
don't need to pay greedy corporations because technology means we can
get more and more of what we want for free, but at the same time, we're
moving toward an era when corporations won't need to pay us. ... And no,
don't give me that old line about, "If you do good work, society will
always be happy to pay for it!" I live on the Internet. I've seen how
that works. I've seen too many of my favorite websites go under because
they were so popular that the traffic crashed the server, but PayPal
fundraising drives brought in nothing but the sound of crickets. ... And
so, to save society, we're going to have to rely on our old friend, the
invisible force that has saved humanity again and again. It's a little
thing I like to call bullshit. Bullshit is the next growth industry.
People who deal in it are going to be more valuable than surgeons --
yes, the same people who convinced us that bottled water comes from an
enchanted mountain spring and made uneducated mothers believe that
contaminated baby formula was a life-giving health potion. Only they can
save us. ... And if someday we do perfect cold-fusion reactors or
nanotech manufacturing and everyone has 100 GB/second Wi-Fi connections
downloading data into a computerized contact lens, the bullshitters will
be the guardians of the Old Way, convincing you that you shouldn't use
those shoes that your replicator spits out for three cents a pair. You
need to buy their shoes, for $80. Because they're handmade. Maybe
they'll build the concept of "paying just to be paying" into a new
morality. Or a new religion -- one based entirely around FARTS. Well,
unless we figure out something else."
The article ignores people will pay for convenience and quality
assurance and social status issues (thus the purchase of bottled water
or Macs when free or cheaper alternatives exist). However, even those
niches may erode when printing anything in 3D or having your robot fetch
you a cup of water is very convenient or when almost everything has high
quality by default coming out of a 3D printer or a robotic workshop.
"Veblen goods", ones that are more valuable for social status the more
they cast, like scratchy handmade shoes or expensive but
hard-to-maintain cars, may also fall into disfavor when social status
definitions change (as James P. Hogan illustrates in Voyage from
Yesteryear).
Also, the cracked.com article does not acknowledge the gift economy, or
democratic resource-based planning, or local subsistence production, or
a basic income as alternative ways to implement things. Related:
"Gift Economy: Refuting the Market Logic "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4hFVcl6Vo
Or my:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
Sadly, the latest comment of 1254 at the moment there (Posted on
11/16/2010 1:32 PM by aprylsaurus) suggests "the only way for society to
be fixed and we're not all f**ked in the end is pretty much more than
60% of humanity would have to die or disapear in some freak accident,
along with all the money. we could go bacl to trading and eventually
start trading our skills and professions, ..."
Or in short, the implication there is that we should throw away all our
material and social progress so we can start the whole thing over based
on scarcity again (or maybe so there will be more natural resources
again per person, like in hunter/gatherer times)? It's not clear exactly
what their point is. But, it seems to echo a theme some radical
environmentalists are pushing about overpopulation, but coupled now to
economic issues.
With all these posts here and there by different people, more sites,
more blogs, more projects, it seems to me like our society is passing
some inflection point on some curve. That does not mean the forces of
artificial scarcity will not fight back aggressively. As David Wong at
cracked.com points out, most people person have a job that depends on
artificial scarcity in some way. It's not just some of the elites trying
to keep people down while everyone else is ready to revolt:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
it's the societal ideology and everyone's faith in artificial scarcity,
as a sort of religious thing.
Some of the elites may actually get that things need to change, but they
face a vast social momentum going in another way. It's hard to spend
eight hours a day as a supermarket checkout clerk (or a financial
analyst on Wall Street) and not think there is some meaning in all that
rationing. And pretty much everyone is going through the artificial
scarcity motions too, like some sort of catechism of money, like some
sort of social knot that people are tied up in from first grade onwards:
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
And, no doubt, it was for the most part, mostly well-meant.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gatto/gatto-uhae-16.html
Well, much of it, excepting some parts:
http://rushkoff.com/books/life-incorporated/life-inc-movies/
A central problem being:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
"Based on these findings, it seems likely that everyday people don't opt
for social change in good part because they don't see any plausible way
to accomplish their goals, and haven't heard any plans from anyone else
that make sense to them. ... They have loved ones they like to be with,
they have hobbies and sports they enjoy, and they have forms of
entertainment they like to watch. ... They don't want to see those
positive aspects messed up."
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
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The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies
of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.