Radical new economic system will emerge from collapse of capitalism

[BanTSN]

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/nov/07/radical-new-economic-system-will-emerge-from-collapse-of-capitalism

At the very moment of its ultimate triumph, capitalism will experience the most exquisite of deaths.

This is the belief of political adviser and author Jeremy Rifkin, who argues the current economic system has become so successful at lowering the costs of production that it has created the very conditions for the destruction of the traditional vertically integrated corporation.

Rifkin, who has advised the European Commission, the European Parliament and heads of state, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, says:

With many manufacturing companies surviving only on razor thin margins, they will buckle under competition from small operators with virtually no fixed costs.

“We are seeing the final triumph of capitalism followed by its exit off the world stage and the entrance of the collaborative commons,” Rifkin predicts.

The creation of the collaborative commons

From the ashes of the current economic system, he believes, will emerge a radical new model powered by the extraordinary pace of innovation in energy, communication and transport.

“This is the first new economic system since the advent of capitalism and socialism in the early 19th century so it’s a remarkable historical event and it’s going to transform our way of life fundamentally over the coming years,” Rifkin says. “It already is; we just haven’t framed it.”

Some sectors, such as music and media, have already been disrupted as a result of the internet’s ability to let individuals and small groups compete with the major established players. Meanwhile, the mainstreaming of 3D printing and tech advances in logistics – such as the installation of billions of intelligent sensors across supply chains – means this phenomenon is now spreading from the virtual to the physical world, Rifkin says.

Climate change

The creation of a new economic system, Rifkin argues, will help alleviate key sustainability challenges, such as climate change and resource scarcity, and take pressure off the natural world. That’s because it will need only a minimum amount of energy, materials, labour and capital.

He says few people are aware of the scale of danger the human race is facing, particularly the growing levels of precipitation in the atmosphere, which is leading to extreme weather.

“Ecosystems can’t catch up with the shift in the planet’s water cycle and we’re in the sixth extinction pattern,” he warns. “We could lose 70% of our species by the end of this century and may be imperilling our ability to survive on this planet.”

Convergence of communication, energy and transport

Every economy in history has relied for its success on the three pillars of communication, energy, and transportation, but what Rifkin says makes this age unique is that we are seeing them converge to create a super internet.

While the radical changes in communication are already well known, he claims a revolution in transport is just around the corner. “You’ll have near zero marginal cost electricity with the probability of printed out cars within 10 or 15 years,” he says. “Add to this GPS guidance and driverless vehicles and you will see the marginal costs of transport on this automated logistics internet falling pretty sharply.”

Rifkin is particularly interested in the upheaval currently rippling through the energy sector and points to the millions of small and medium sized enterprises, homeowners and neighbourhoods already producing their own green electricity.

The momentum will only gather pace as the price of renewable technology plummets. Rifkin predicts the cost of harvesting energy will one day be as cheap as buying a phone:

You can create your own green electricity and then go up on the emerging energy internet and programme your apps to share your surpluses across that energy internet. You can also use all the big data across that value chain to see how the energy is flowing. That’s not theoretical. It’s just starting.

[Horvat]

lol zietgiest cop-out

edit: i didnt actually read this, but if you are interested with sort of stuff the you should probably watch culture in decline and the zeitgeist trilogy

[nuck nit]

The masses come from the poorest countries. They are trying to figure out how to feed themselves and live the lives of those in the first world .

Here in Indonesia you see plastic strewn everywhere-in the oceans,rivers,streams,beaches,forests,roadways-everywhere. Nobody cares. Sometimes they burn it when too many dogs and rats start taking over.

The forests disappear,the birds are shot and netted,the builders dump their refuse into the oceans and streams.

These guys dreaming of making a better world should go where the destruction is happening.

The new age is not going to dawn for the first world if the second and third worlds are continuously abused by wealthy nations whom continue that destruction on to their environments and, ultimately,all of us.

[RUPERTKBD]

No one in their wildest imagination, including economists and business people, ever imagined the possibility of a technology revolution so extreme in its productivity that it could actually reduce marginal costs to near zero, making products nearly free, abundant and absolutely no longer subject to market forces

Yeah, someone should tell this to Apple....

[Nuxfanabroad]

Lipstick on a huge, snorting pig.

That waving lunatic is just a distraction, keep yer eye on the ball.

Environmentally, it's hellinna'handbasket. Afraid I subscribe to the likes of Dr Guy McPherson. Indeed, Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts. She's turning into a tempestuous, nasty little vixen; as we've been treating her like a naked pinata.(from the handbook, 50 shades of smog).

The PTB would have us collectively think about ANYTHING other than the deteriorating environment.

Environment & economy/modern society cannot be simultaneously corrected. It's inconceivable, given our nature, & the fact that we're in the end-game, after 2 centuries of industrial revolution.

What was Malthus again..17th century? His prognosis was infinitely more relevant/powerful than anything these media-blowhards will utter today. Orwell musta' liked him...

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

[RRypien37]

The masses come from the poorest countries. They are trying to figure out how to feed themselves and live the lives of those in the first world .

Here in Indonesia you see plastic strewn everywhere-in the oceans,rivers,streams,beaches,forests,roadways-everywhere. Nobody cares. Sometimes they burn it when too many dogs and rats start taking over.

The forests disappear,the birds are shot and netted,the builders dump their refuse into the oceans and streams.

These guys dreaming of making a better world should go where the destruction is happening.

The new age is not going to dawn for the first world if the second and third worlds are continuously abused by wealthy nations whom continue that destruction on to their environments and, ultimately,all of us.

Unfortunately this is true.

I like the articles positive out look, but this change will take a lot longer than what is being articulated.

The conglomerates won't simply roll over and let this all happen.

It's like the who killed the electric car issue in the 90's. We have had the tools for ultimate sustainability for a while now, but they aren't being given the light of day.

[DonLever]

The masses come from the poorest countries. They are trying to figure out how to feed themselves and live the lives of those in the first world .

Here in Indonesia you see plastic strewn everywhere-in the oceans,rivers,streams,beaches,forests,roadways-everywhere. Nobody cares. Sometimes they burn it when too many dogs and rats start taking over.

The forests disappear,the birds are shot and netted,the builders dump their refuse into the oceans and streams.

These guys dreaming of making a better world should go where the destruction is happening.

The new age is not going to dawn for the first world if the second and third worlds are continuously abused by wealthy nations whom continue that destruction on to their environments and, ultimately,all of us.

And there is the problem. People in 3rd world countries want the high standards of living we have. Can we blame them if they want to better themselves? For wanting the good life? Of course not.

As for the forests disappearing, birds killed, garbage dump everywhere, that happen here in North Amerca too. Millions and millions of buffalo were killed, huge habitats destroyed in 1700's, 1800s, and 1900's. Salmon disappearing, Atlantic Cod decimated. Vancouver was once all forest as we cut down all the trees. So it hardly fair to slag people in the 3rd world for destroying the environment when we did the same to acheive first world status. Those people are merely copying us.

Economic prosperity usually come with a cost and the biggest cost is the environment and we see that in China. China is now the 2nd largest economy in the world but China has one of the worst envionment in the world. Some cities are covered in smog 11 months of the year. Rivers are polluted, chemicals from industrial plants are killing people.

And who is exploiting 3rd world countries? Not big companies but us, the ordinary citizens, in Canada, US, and Western Countries who want the latest comsumer goods at the lowest prices. Or the resources to made the goods.

[RRypien37]

And there is the problem. People in 3rd world countries want the high standards of living we have. Can we blame them if they want to better themselves? For wanting the good life? Of course not.

As for the forests disappearing, birds killed, garbage dump everywhere, that happen here in North Amerca too. Millions and millions of buffalo were killed, huge habitats destroyed in 1700's, 1800s, and 1900's. Salmon disappearing, Atlantic Cod decimated. Vancouver was once all forest as we cut down all the trees. So it hardly fair to slag people in the 3rd world for destroying the environment when we did the same to acheive first world status. Those people are merely copying us.

Economic prosperity usually come with a cost and the biggest cost is the environment and we see that in China. China is now the 2nd largest economy in the world but China has one of the worst envionment in the world. Some cities are covered in smog 11 months of the year. Rivers are polluted, chemicals from industrial plants are killing people.

And who is exploiting 3rd world countries? Not big companies but us, the ordinary citizens, in Canada, US, and Western Countries who want the latest comsumer goods at the lowest prices. Or the resources to made the goods.

I don't think anyone is denying anything of what you said.

I think he/she meant to say it's happening...regardless of who we blame.

Which means what the article proposes will take a lot more work then is portrayed.

Side note: Really disappointed a thread like this has so few posts...

[wiseupsucker]

Honestly, a bit too esoteric and confusing for me.

All I know is that I've made mistakes in the past financially and have lived under the dark cloud spectre of debt for far too long until not too long ago when I worked my ass off and got out of debt.

Now every dollar I put in the bank is mine. This is how I think(for me) I will survive whatever is thrown my way.

I can't offer opinions about the collapse of capitalism and after, only trying to get by and navigate a &^@#ed up world while trying to be happy, sane, prosperous and responsible.

[taxi]

Unfortunately this is true.

I like the articles positive out look, but this change will take a lot longer than what is being articulated.

The conglomerates won't simply roll over and let this all happen.

It's like the who killed the electric car issue in the 90's. We have had the tools for ultimate sustainability for a while now, but they aren't being given the light of day.

Not even close to true. We do not have the technology to replace fossil fuels.

Widespread electric cars did not come out earlier, because battery technology was sub par.

[:D]

It's evolution, baby

[Buddhas Hand]

And there is the problem. People in 3rd world countries want the high standards of living we have. Can we blame them if they want to better themselves? For wanting the good life? Of course not.

As for the forests disappearing, birds killed, garbage dump everywhere, that happen here in North Amerca too. Millions and millions of buffalo were killed, huge habitats destroyed in 1700's, 1800s, and 1900's. Salmon disappearing, Atlantic Cod decimated. Vancouver was once all forest as we cut down all the trees. So it hardly fair to slag people in the 3rd world for destroying the environment when we did the same to acheive first world status. Those people are merely copying us.

Economic prosperity usually come with a cost and the biggest cost is the environment and we see that in China. China is now the 2nd largest economy in the world but China has one of the worst envionment in the world. Some cities are covered in smog 11 months of the year. Rivers are polluted, chemicals from industrial plants are killing people.

And who is exploiting 3rd world countries? Not big companies but us, the ordinary citizens, in Canada, US, and Western Countries who want the latest comsumer goods at the lowest prices. Or the resources to made the goods.

Good post Don.

Unfortunately the earth cannot support 7 billion people at a European/Canadian/Australian standard of living , according to a doco hosted by David Attenborough titled how many people can live on planet earth , the earth can support 2-2.5 billion at our standard of living and only 1-1.5 at the US standard of living , we have to make sacrifices so that nations/people less fortunate than us can raise their standard of living.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dN06tLRE4WE

Current global population of over 7 billion is already two to three times higher than the sustainable level. Several recent studies show that Earth’s resources are enough to sustain only about 2 billion people at a European standard of living.

An average European consumes far more resources than any of the poorest two billion people in the world. However, Europeans use only about half the resources of Americans, on average.

Currently, over 7 billion of us are consuming about 50% more resources than Earth is producing – during any given time period. For example, in the past twelve months we have consumed the resources that it took the planet about eighteen months to produce. We are consuming our resource base.

Obviously, this 50% overshoot is not sustainable. Another crucial point to understand is this: the longer we overshoot and consume more resources than the sustainable level, the more the long-term “sustainable level” actually declines!

One illustration of this is what’s actually been happening to fresh water aquifers all around the world. Currently over half of us are in countries where aquifers are being overpumped. As “fossil” aquifers are pumped, that water is not replaced. So when that water is depleted, pumping ends since there is no more water flowing in.

Non-fossil aquifers have a “recharge rate” – the rate at which new, fresh water flows in. As long as water is pumped out at or below the recharge rate, the aquifer will continue to supply the same amount of water year after year after year. However, these rechargeable aquifers are being overpumped.

For example, if an aquifer held a million gallons of water, and each year rainfall replenished 100,000 gallons into it, the recharge rate would be 100,000 gallons. As long as everyone collectively pumped no more than 100,000 gallons out, that would be sustainable for years to come. But very frequently people begin pumping more than the recharge rate, let’s say 110,000 gallons the first year, 130,000 gallons the next year and so on. In several more years they might pump over 200,000 gallons out. Eventually they will have pumped all of the million gallons of reserve out. At that point, the annual capacity for that aquifer would fall back to the recharge rate – 100,000 gallons a year. When aquifer reserves are depleted and fall back to the recharge rate, millions of people may suffer! Many other resources are declining in similar fashion.

To become sustainable with Earth’s resources, what are our choices? Reducing overall consumption by 50% would do it for now. Or, reducing population by 3 to 4 billion would do it. It’s more likely that a combination of both – large declines in consumption and human numbers – will be necessary.

Five Earths at American Standard

If all of the world’s 7 billion people consumed as much as an average American, it would take the resources of over five Earths to sustainably support all of them. On average, each American uses nearly 20 acres of biologically productive land and water (biocapacity) per year.

Earth’s 29.6 billion acres of biologically productive land and water could sustainably support only about 1.5 billion people at an 'American standard of living and consumption.'

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the 1.3 billion people in the world’s poorest countries. Even they are unsustainably overshooting and depleting their resource biocapacity – by over 10%!

www.worldpopulationbalance.org/3_times_sustainable

I have seen the evidence of the water table falling in my particular part of the world, 20+ years ago farmers in my area could irrigate when ever they wanted the water table only occasionaly dropped appreciably , but over the last 20 years the gap between watering days has blown out to 5-7 before the water table rises enough to start pumping again.

[viking mama]

Western civilizations are just so wasteful.

We completely over produce,... & spoil that which is produced,.. which puts a strain on resource management, land fills and infuriates all of the have-nots in the world. Far more effort should be made to freeze-dry food at peak quality. It would store & travel conveniently, well. Meat, grain, dairy, vegetables & fruit,... could all be stored, delivered & provided to the masses 10, 15, even up to 25 years after it had been canned or packaged. More safe & clean water sources need to be established, safe-guarded & preserved. Decrease waste by legislation, increase recycling measures & replace fossil fuels with more re-newable energy sources. Eliminate speculation & money markets.

I'd just love to live in some Star-Trekian universe - but for that to happen,..there would probably need to be one very peaceful & harmonious world order. Hmmmm,....and just who might be ushering in that, pray tell?

[Brick Tamland]

What year is it?

[The Bookie]

Arg. Capitalism & Climate Change. I'm about halfway through Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything and as good as it is I keep having to stop because it's all so depressing. There's just no way to reconcile infinite growth with resource sustainability, not as we view them now.

There is some hope in the book. Germany has done well, taking back their power grids and banking heavy on solar and wind. Australia somewhat as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-review.html

“Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable.” Thus spoke President Kennedy in a 1961 address to the United Nations. The threat he warned of was not climate chaos — barely a blip on anybody’s radar at the time — but the hydrogen bomb. The nuclear threat had a volatile urgency and visual clarity that the sprawling, hydra-headed menace of today’s climate calamity cannot match. How can we rouse citizens and governments to act for concerted change? Will it take, as Naomi Klein insists, nothing less than a Marshall Plan for Earth?

“This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” is a book of such ambition and consequence that it is almost unreviewable. Klein’s fans will recognize her method from her prior books, “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies” (1999) and “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (2007), which, with her latest, form an antiglobalization trilogy. Her strategy is to take a scourge — brand-­driven hyperconsumption, corporate exploitation of disaster-struck communities, or “the fiction of perpetual growth on a finite planet” — trace its origins, then chart a course of liberation. In each book she arrives at some semihopeful place, where activists are reaffirming embattled civic values.

To call “This Changes Everything” environmental is to limit Klein’s considerable agenda. “There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming,” she contends, “but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed. Which is surely the best argument there has ever been for changing those rules.” On the green left, many share Klein’s sentiments. George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, recently lamented that even though “the claims of market fundamentalism have been disproven as dramatically as those of state communism, somehow this zombie ideology staggers on.” Klein, Monbiot and Bill McKibben all insist that we cannot avert the ecological disaster that confronts us without loosening the grip of that superannuated zombie ideology.

That philosophy — ­neoliberalism — promotes a high-consumption, ­carbon-hungry system. Neoliberalism has encouraged mega-mergers, trade agreements hostile to environmental and labor regulations, and global hypermobility, enabling a corporation like Exxon to make, as McKibben has noted, “more money last year than any company in the history of money.” Their outsize power mangles the democratic process. Yet the carbon giants continue to reap $600 billion in annual subsidies from public coffers, not to speak of a greater subsidy: the right, in Klein’s words, to treat the atmosphere as a “waste dump.”

So much for the invisible hand. As the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson observed, when it comes to the environment, the invisible hand never picks up the check.

[taxi]

^^^

Read some articles about what's currently going on in Germany with their renewable energy program. It's not working.

Germany shut down its nuclear plants to increase renewable energy. The problem is renewable energy was so unreliable that Germany has had to vastly expand its fossil fuel use to make up for the closed down nuclear plants.

Google germany renewable energy failure to read more on the topic.

[aliboy]

3D manufacturing is going to be, "The Industrial Revolution," X1000.

[Hugor Hill]

2016 Chevy Volt is leaner, greener

http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/detroit-auto-show/2015/01/12/chevrolet-volt-leaner-greener/21604913/

[ronthecivil]

^^^

Read some articles about what's currently going on in Germany with their renewable energy program. It's not working.

Germany shut down its nuclear plants to increase renewable energy. The problem is renewable energy was so unreliable that Germany has had to vastly expand its fossil fuel use to make up for the closed down nuclear plants.

Google germany renewable energy failure to read more on the topic.

Hey, lower oil prices can't be making it all THAT bad. Score one for the bad guys?

[ronthecivil]

As for the topic, when was the last time working together over a resource coveted by others ended up being the final answer?

People, as always, will have to learn things the hard way.