Capitalism works when a person has a product or service they can hold hostage that consumers/employers are willing to pay ransom for. Thanks to modern technology however, many products and services are being liberated from these ransoms and made freely distributable to society. But the producers of these freely distributed goods have lost the ability to ransom their wares despite public consumption of their wares being higher than ever. The cultural sector is the first (but certainly not the last) sector to be impacted by this democratization of distribution. Art, music, books, movies and games can be freely represented as data and therefore make ideal candidates for this new system. But with the continued advancement of new technologies like 3D printers and even virtual reality systems, physical goods and sensory experiences will soon be as easily distributed as an mp3. This is not a bad thing. The march of technology is inexorable, but our existing hostage economy breaks down when nothing can be ransomed. Its easy for politicians and businessmen who arent affected by this change to miss seeing the problem. After all, this technology has improved their lives without yet requiring them to experience the economic hardships of the sectors affected by a new ransomless system that is cracking the foundations of the hostage economy. To be fair, this system never worked particularly well for certain segments of the populace anyhow; many producers lost control of their ability to ransom their wares when big companies took control of their means of distribution. The hostage economy resulted in the rise of the middle-man. But this new ransomless system has pulled the carpet out from under some of these middle men which leaves groups like the MPAA loudly crying foul and demanding changes to the system in order to control the technologies that have liberated the distribution they once controlled. This brings us also to the question of net neutrality which is an incredibly important and relevant topic but beyond the intended scope of this post. But the problem here isnt the technology: this is natural progress and the freedom of information to all people is a good thing. The problem is that there is no framework for a new system of democratic economics in this new era. Under the capitalist system, a consumer votes with his or her dollar, and in an ideal world that dollar would go to the producer they voted for. The value of things was therefore determined by a simple calculation: demand divided by supply. But in a post scarcity system, supply is infinite and so the worth of that product becomes zero. Technology has broken modern capitalism by literally introducing a divide by zero error. And this is obviously no longer a fair way to assess the value of a thing. A person with an iphone full of pirated music, hard drive full of pirated movies, computer full of pirated games, e-reader full of pirated books/comics does no less enjoy them than the person who paid for them. But the pirate isnt in the wrong for taking what technology has provided (and I would argue the term pirate isnt fair either), nor is it right that somebody should be punished financially for wanting to support their favourite author by buying their book. And its not fair that the hostage economy has valued that authors book as worthless despite its enjoyment by a number of readers who received it for free. I do not purport to have a solution to this problem, nor do I have much in the way of good news; things are only going to get worse for quite some time. The rich will be getting richer and the poor will be getting poorer, but this disparity gap will be increasing faster than ever. There is however a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Assuming progress is not artificially stifled by government regulation at the behest of big business the number of poor will increase as more sectors begin to feel the effects of this new ransomless age. There will be a tipping point where too many are unsatisfied with the injustices of hostage economics and a new system will be born out of the necessity of the people. With any luck we will begin thinking about, experimenting, and transitioning to post-hostage economic systems before it comes remotely close to violent revolution. But regardless the change will be slow and its only going to get worse before it gets better. I guess all Im trying to say is: buckle up... its gonna get rough.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 22:40:54 +0000
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