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

Sun Apr 12 01:10:24 CEST 2015

For number 3 read 

http://www.eib.org/attachments/general/events/20150302_momentum_for_europe_rifkin_en.pdf

Anna

On 11 Apr 2015, at 18:24, 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?