Quote:Quote:
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
Well, nobody except Karl Marx and co, who predicted this over a century ago. It still hasn't happened, because in the real world materials and machines and manpower costs money.
Quote:Quote:
and absolutely no longer subject to market forces.
What? They won't be subject to supply and demand? What bollocks is this?
Quote:Quote:
“We are seeing the final triumph of capitalism followed by its exit off the world stage and the entrance of the collaborative commons,”
This is just reheated triumph of the proletariat nonsense.
Quote:Quote:
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.
Climate change is bollocks.
We already have a solution for resource scarcity - it's called prices.
And what are we to make of "it will need only a minimum amount of energy, materials, labour and capital". Um, really? Why? Will the new economy be powered by fairy dust?
3D printers and whatnot are great, but they'll still cost money to make and run and repair. They'll still need raw materials to be provided somehow. They'll still require someone's time and trouble to operate them.
Rifkind seems to think 3D printers = Star Trek replicators. If only! At the moment and for the foreseeable future they're just an expensive way to make cheap and shitty simple plastic products. Companies running multibillion dollar fabrication plants don't need to worry about being replaced by homebrew in our lifetimes.
Quote:Quote:
“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.”
Yes, we could lose 70% of our species by the end of the century. Lindy West could also be named "Sexiest Woman Alive". I wouldn't worry too much about either, as there's no actual evidence to suggest Exctincta- or Lindy- geddon are ever going to happen.
Quote:Quote:
“You’ll have near zero marginal cost electricity with the probability of printed out cars within 10 or 15 years,”
Dude! I want what he's smoking!
Printed out cars! Cheap as free electricity! In 10 or 15 years! Far out, man! Will I be hug-closing green skinned Martian babes at my holiday home on the Moon, too?
Do I even need to explain why this prediction is hilariously retarded?
Quote:Quote:
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.
Because
they have subsidies coming out of their arseholes. And as a direct result of that, and because of the inability of most Western governments to get new power plants built thanks to green tape, electricity costs are rising sharply in most Western countries.
Green energy is a monumental scam. The actual market value of electricity produced in most green energy schemes is only a fraction of the cost of subsidising them. And it will never replace current forms of mass energy production because of
the laws of physics.
It doesn't matter how cheap solar panels become -
you will never be able to power your entire home or drive your car using solar power alone. There simply isn't enough solar energy falling on your home to do it, especially in dark winter months when you need things like heating.
Quote:Quote:
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.
This would be great if there was a global electricity grid, so somebody in Sydney could sell cheap solar electricity to your home in freezing cold Aberdeen. Guess what, though? There isn't one. It's not technically feasible. You could have a local, maybe a national market for electricity. But... we already have these.
Quote:Quote:
People think this is off on the horizon but if I had said in 1989, before the web came, that 25 years later we’d have democratised communication and 40% of the human race would be sending information goods of all kinds to each other, they’d have said that couldn’t happen.
O RLY? I'm calling bollocks on that one as well. Many people predicted that the internet or something like it would come about, long before 1989. To name just one example: William Gibson's cyberpunk stuff long predates the fall of the Berlin Wall.
By 1989 we had mobile phones, computers had become affordable to the masses, and modems, BBS systems, email and fax machines all existed. Only an idiot would have said, in 1989, that those technologies wouldn't evolve and spread.
Quote:Quote:
Millennials are already seeing through the false notion that the more we accumulate, the more we are autonomous and free. It seems they are more interested in developing networks and joining the sharing economy than in consumption for consumption’s sake.
Are these the same Millenials I see glued to their iPhones and iPads and buying designer running shoes and complaining that somebody else should pay off their $100,000 student loans for their masters degrees in Basket Weaving?
Quote:Quote:
Rifkin believes the gap left by the disappearance of major corporations will be filled by the nonprofit sector.
So the fat, middle aged, politically correct women who infest big charities will be running things? Won't be long till we devolve into
Mad Max then.