[P2P-F] [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: Update from the Office of Jeremy Rifkin

Sat Apr 11 22:37:03 CEST 2015

Hi Bob,

I've briefly looked at the piece by Eric Raymond. 

Rifkin quotes many instances where the marginal cost of production is near zero, online magazines and newspapers, university study courses, music, etc. But I don't think he would maintain that everything will follow that trend. So quoting instances where it doesn't apply doesn't disprove what he is saying. 

Food appears at the moment to be an exception, but we have to remember that he is talking about marginal cost, not cost of production. The cost of producing another unit, once the basic infrastructure is in place, can be minimal in many cases. With automation and mechanisation, the cost of producing 20 tons of tomatoes may be very little different from producing 21 tons of tomatoes. 

Eric says Rifkin ' wishes away capital expenditure', but it is because capital expenditure does not necessarily increase with the production of another unit, that marginal costs can approach zero. For example, since wind and sun are free, once the capital costs of renewable energy have been met, producing more units of energy costs nothing.

Quoting the cost of skilled labour, eg a plumber, really shows that Eric has no grasp of what Rifkin is talking about. Rifkin is not saying everything will be free.

Private property? Well we could have much discussion about whether owning your own toothbrush is akin to owning land that you can stop other people from using. Don't know quite what he is accusing Rifkin of here, but I sense I don't agree with him.

If you really want to understand Rifkin there is no substitute for reading his books. I am no authority to defend his ideas. But poking holes for the sake of it is a waste of time.

Anna

On 11 Apr 2015, at 18:34, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:

dear Bob,

rifkin worked with merkel but the germans decided the energiewende independently,

the chinese case however is clearer, since the chinese leaders themselves said that reading the rifkin book was instrumental

rifkin also played a role as consulant for the nord pas de calais energy transition,

Michel

> On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 12:24 AM, Bob Haugen <bob.haugen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for continuing, Anna.
> 
> I have a few followup questions and comments.
> 
> 1. Do you have any evidence of Rifkin's actual influence in the ruling
> capitalist circles? It's one thing to hear an interesting speaker give
> them some food for thought. It's yet another to change their economic
> and political practices accordingly. (I'm not saying he has no actual
> influence, I'm just wondering if anybody knows anything of substance.)
> 
> 2. Rifkin's Zero Margin Cost story has a lot of holes, as criticized here:
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/contra-rifkin-1-food-and-manufacturing-will-never-be-zero-marginal-cost/2014/09/30
> (I hate to quote Eric Raymond, with whom I fundamentally disagree on
> most things, but I do agree with a lot of that.)
> 
> Several posters on this list have explained the exploited labor in the
> computer value systems (in mining, for example). I used to work in a
> plastics factory (now feedstock for 3D printing), where they had a lot
> of signs reminding me that I would get cancer for working there. And
> recycling is a toxic badly-paid job.
> 
> 3. Do you know what Rifkin's actual political-economy proposals are
> like? Does he have any? What kind of economic system does he think we
> will be moving into?
> 
> 
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 2:53 AM, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:
> > These are really good questions Bob. Rifkin has said that his ideas are generally not welcomed in US where the military industrial complex has such a strong hold. As Roberto Verzola has pointed out in his comment on grid parity
> >
> > 'Since solar rooftos are a *distributed* form of generation, the whole
> > p2p concept applies! Of course, as on the Internet, the two major
> > trends, p2p and client-server, will continue to fight it out for
> > supremacy. and it is by no means certain which trend will become
> > dominant.'
> >
> > Rifkin writes about trends that are already happening, like Roberto Verzola, not hypotheses about what might happen, based on what has happened in the past. That I think is a reason why he appeals to those who make powerful decisions. And like Orsan says he sees how their business interests can best be served by aligning with what is already happening.
> >
> > However, capitalists are also human beings. They don't just think as their class dictates, although that may be a very large influence. To treat them as the enemy ignores the possibility that there might be a part of them that actually agrees with you. Rifkin explores that part. I see him as an undercover activist, and I applaud what he is doing.
> >
> > Orsan, your objections to green energy won't stand up to the practically free electricity being produced now in parts of Germany, and whatever harm is done by wind turbines cannot be compared to the co2 smog produced by coal fired power stations. Our biggest threat as Naomi Klein points out is climate warming, rarely mentioned on this list, and devastating in its suicidal implications.
> >
> > I agree with you Orsan, that historical analysis is useful to understand the past, but actually we face a totally new situation, with totally new tools which never existed before. We have to find our common humanity to overcome the threat of extinction.
> >
> > Anna
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On 8 Apr 2015, at 23:40, Bob Haugen <bob.haugen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:
> >> I don't think much good would be served by initiating a discussion on this list,
> >
> > I can understand from the first responders (including me) why you
> > might think so, but I was not being sarcastic when I thought it was a
> > great discussion topic. And were the discussion to continue, and you
> > to explain why you respect Rifkin's ideas, I promise to refrain from
> > further knee-jerk responses and cheap shots at his expense.
> >
> > But here's Rifkin apparently talking about "the beginning of the end
> > of the capitalist era" to a bunch of rulers of the capitalists. I am
> > aware that some of those people do see the end of fossil fuels, but I
> > have not seen any signs that they see the end of capitalism. So why
> > are they listening to him? What does it mean about the world today?
> >
> > Brian Holmes wrote something on this list awhile ago where he thought
> > the leaders of the Chinese CP were watching the failures of the US and
> > Europe and did not want to repeat them. Possibly part of the same
> > story?
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