Thursday, March 20, 2014

Rifkin's "The rise of anti-capitalism"

See Rifkin's recent article called "The rise of anti-capitalism." He talks about how the sharing economy is undermining capitalism in that it reduces the cost of many goods and services to being virtually free. This will only increase with the emerging Internet of Things, which connects sensors of energy use and flow, natural resources, production lines etc. to the internet. People can then use this information to further reduce the cost and share resources. Combined with in-building green energy production we can give and take energy as needed, sharing this most fundamental of resources globally.


It doesn't eliminate capitalism, just puts it in balance. The later though will have to transform into an aggregator of services rather than monopolistic providers of them. They'll still make loads of money, just not inordinate greedy amounts that strain the rest of the system. If capitalists can learn to live with that then this just might work out. Or rather, they'll have to learn to live with it or face the consequences of their own free market ideology: adapt or die. And this time without government bailouts.

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