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

Mon Apr 13 17:08:08 CEST 2015

Hi Bob,

Perhaps what has so far not been part of the discussion is that Rifkin has already helped to set up 5 areas where the principles of the Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) are already being implemented, the latest being that of Nords-pas-de-Calais in France, in 2013. All the reports are online, and can be read. I agree with you about the need to have something which is practically possible now, and this is what drew me to TIR. Yes it will take many years for this to be rolled out globally, but it is already beginning on a regional level.

Rifkin envisages 20-30 years to transition to a more collaborative and sustainable economy. That does not mean just continuing with what we have. Changes are already taking place which is why we are already in transition. However the transition will not happen overnight, nor is it guaranteed. What is guaranteed is that if we continue as we are for another 20-30 years, it will probably be too late to turn things around.

You are preaching to the converted about more labour intensive agriculture and less mechanisation. Sorry I gave an example which was open to that sort of interpretation. I was trying to illustrate to clarify marginal cost. Now Roberto has given a much better explanation. ( I am helping to organise the next national gathering of UK Food Sovereignty which is taking place in Hebden Bridge where I live)

Anna

On 13 Apr 2015, at 12:47, Bob Haugen <bob.haugen at gmail.com> wrote:

Just to be clear:

> On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Anna Harris <anna at shsh.co.uk> wrote:
> 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.

Nor do I. Nor do I agree with Raymond's whole attitude toward the
world, which (as possibly a caricature) is libertarian capitalist. I
am more or less the opposite.

> If you really want to understand Rifkin there is no substitute for reading
> his books.

I have a large stack of books to read, several recommended in this
list. Part of engaging in discussions like this is deciding if (for
example) Rifkin should be added to the stack. So far, probably not.
(Although I found Michel's note about the Chinese leaders reading
Rifkin to be interesting. But I am not the Chinese leaders....
And I did appreciate the article Anna cited, gets me a bigger
selection of Rifkin's ideas without reading several books.)

> poking holes for the sake of it is a waste of time.

I know that's annoying. But in my partial defense, I come from an
implementor's viewpoint. While Raymond and I are on opposite fences
politically and ideologically, we are both implementors. I mean, our
jobs are to make ideas work in the real world. So when we see a very
ambitious set of ideas with a lot of handwaving about how they will be
implemented, we immediately ask, well, how will that actually work?

You may remember my first foray onto this list was something I wrote
about how an actually better economic system might be implemented. It
still had a lot of handwaving, but my focus was on things that I
thought could actually be practically implemented. Whether I was
correct or not, I was eager to have people poke holes in my thinking.

But if somebody who is passionate about an idea can tell me where I am
missing the boat, I promise (and usually fulfill) that I will listen
to reason and be ready to be wrong.

In this case, I can see from the article that Anna cited that Rifkin
is not delusional, and understands that his proposals will take many
years and massive capital investments to work. So at least some of
Raymond's criticisms are unfair. But more skepticism below...

> 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.

The farm workers might disagree.

I understand that the argument is that the work can all be automated.
That would imply to me, at least in the short to medium term,
increasing monoculture and Monsanto-ization. And more production in
regions like California, which are running out of water. Mechanical
tomato pickers, for example, require changes to plant varieties (bred
for toughness of skin rather than flavor) and soil conditions
(relatively dry but easy to irrigate) and larger fields (to amortize
the expensive machinery).
http://www.boomcalifornia.com/2013/06/thinking-through-the-tomato-harvester/

Mechanization in agriculture might be still in the stage of
industrialization and centralization (Rifkin's second industrial
revolution) rather than the stage of decentralization that
manufacturing ~might~ go through. Ag right now is still following the
so-called green revolution ideas of large scale monoculture, but now
with roundup-ready GMO seeds and larger and larger applications of
roundup to kill the soil better. That book Michel talked about
recently has a wonderful article by Richard Levins about a dialectical
view of agriculture coming from his experiences in Cuba. Maybe Michel
has a handy excerpt or two? And the book Dirt will explain the
importance of the life in the soil.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185157.Biology_Under_the_Influence
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/587916.Dirt
Both of those viewpoints require, I think, a lot more labor-intensive
ag, and lot more attention paid to the life in the soil in detail. And
less dispossession of the indigenous inhabitants.

Anna wrote:
> For number 3 read
> http://www.eib.org/attachments/general/events/20150302_momentum_for_europe_rifkin_en.pdf

Thank you, that was just what I needed. I hope the capitalists do what
he says. But he envisions 20-30 years of the same economic system,
with massive investments and jobs to produce the conditions for his
proposed zero-marginal-cost economy. Why would capitalists do that?
Where are the profits? As it is, they are having trouble making money
producing things and have turned to making money on money.

From another angle, is this Wallerstein's next stage?

I can understand the Chinese actually doing it. They don't need to
worry about profits as much.