Talk:Post-scarcity/How do we get from here to there?
The way I see it, the world is an ecosystem with competing organizational models. If I want to execute some project - regardless of what it is - I have a choice of vehicles to hop into:
- Capitalism: I could set up a private enterprise. This is privately owned and privately funded.
- Charity: I could set up a non-profit. Privately owned, publicly funded on a voluntary basis.
- State socialism: I could try to arrange a state-run, tax-funded project. Owned by the state, publicly funded on a compulsory basis.
- The commons: I open up the project to everyone. Owned by the crowd (or you could say ownerless), requires minimal funding which can come from donations (e.g. Kickstarter) or capitalism (selling ads/hardware)
(This is not an exhaustive list. There are other models, like coercion/slavery, or informal good-faith collaboration.) The interesting thing is that these vehicles all currently exist alongside one another, and they compete. People say we live in a capitalist society; this is mistaken black-and-white thinking. Sure, many ventures use capitalism, but it's not the only game in town. There is the welfare system, public health and education, Wikipedia, charities etc. These non-capitalist ventures are a part of humanity's value-creating ecosystem.
Michael Bauwens has said that the revolution that created the first civilizations (Babylon etc.) was that coercion/slavery proved more to be a more effective organizational model than informal good-faith collaboration. Then in the Middle Ages, capitalism, based on mutually-beneficial agreements, proved more effective than coercion, and capitalism became dominant. We see a third transition of this kind in these interesting times: commons-based manufacturing is starting to look like it is more effective than capitalism. It is becoming cheaper, it is tackling more sophisticated problems (like space-travel), it is stockpiling all kinds of things of value. This trend looks set to continue. What happens when open-source becomes radically more appealing than capitalism? Well, in a word: AdCiv happens. Open-source takes over from capitalism as the dominant way of supplying food, medicine, hardware, software etc. Scarcity ceases to exist, because value is created within a model based on sharing (the commons), rather than one based on rationing (capitalism).
The transition does not happen all at once, but one industry at a time. It is at different stages in different industries:
- There are industries where the fight is over and capitalism has lost to the commons. Music is the big one. The encyclopedia industry is another; no one will be able to run a successful private business selling encyclopedias ever again.
- There are industries where commons-based and private ventures compete, with greater or lesser market shares depending on the industry. In computer operating systems, the commons has about a 1-2% market share. In web browsers it has about 50%. In 3D printing it is growing at breakneck speed.
- There are industries where commons-based manufacturing controls a tiny speck of the market. How much of the world's energy is generated by open-source wind turbines? How much of the world's food is grown in Windowfarms and community gardens? But things change so fast nowadays, and the commons builds on its successes so inexorably, that it could go from a 0.0001% share to being a serious player within a decade.
How do we get from here to there? Survival of the fittest. The new co-operative model that has evolved simply outcompetes the old competitive model. --Balatro 02:37, 9 February 2012 (CET)
