So what pays our bills, debt, taxes, rent, while we adjust to this collaborative commons? Sharing our lives isn’t earning us any income.
It’s easy to talk about it on paper but pay our bills and then talk about a new economy.
I don’t see food becoming nearly free. I don’t see rent or taxes going down. I don’t see the cost of living decreasing. So sharing doesn’t really work if you don’t own anything to share in the first place. And I’m talking about the physical stuff that people need to live or digital assets.
When they talk about materializing or 3d printing it still requires resources. Those resources still aren’t free. You have to pay for all the electricity and natural resources so where is it all supposed to come from?
He talks about sellers and buyers. If we are going with a collaborative economy then what is there to sell? Isn’t everything supposed to be free and shared?
It sounds nice but I don’t see the world he is talking about just yet. Until we start seeing it impact the real world it is wishful thinking economics.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to have a collaborative economy or even a resource based economy. I am saying it’s unrealistic to expect to go from what we have now to that without some sort of economic collapse in between.
The old system still exists and isn’t compatible with either a resource based economy or the zero marginal cost society. We still have everyone working, earning salaries, to make an income. We still have an economy built on infinite growth. The whole capitalist economy has to collapse for the collaborative commons to rise up (this is where I disagree with Rifkin).
Google, Facebook, and these other entities are horrible examples. They exploit the consumer. The consumer doesn’t earn a profit for giving their information to Google, Facebook, etc. So if all the businesses worked on similar models how would consumers pay their rent while companies exploit them?
The only answer is the economy will collapse completely before we see a zero marginal cost economy. The two economies cannot co-exist because they oppose each other. Infinite growth is required for Facebook to function but the collaborative economy or resourced based economy does not require that.
Profit making organizations that he talks about are all centralized. That is a problem because they profit while we share our lives. We receive nothing, they receive our data. MaidSafe allows us to own the shares of Facebook so that we profit as users of the platform and can pay our rent. That might be the only way we could try to make it work and still it wont work for everyone equally.
The energy Internet can be promoted and SAFE Network should team up with the Solarcoin and Genercoin community to farm electricity.
http://solarcoin.org/
http://www.genercoin.org/
