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:
- Informal good-faith collaboration: I get together with my mates and we do it. This was the dominant organizational model in prehistory, until slavery proved more a more powerful vehicle.
- Coercion/slavery: I force or intimidate people to do the project for me. This replaced informal collaboration at the dawn of civilization (around Babylonian times) and reigned until the Middle Ages. Then mutually-beneficial agreements proved more effective and capitalism became dominant.
- Capitalism: I set up a private enterprise that is privately owned and privately funded. We make agreements (whether honest or dishonest) with others entities like customers and suppliers.
- Charity: I set up a non-profit. This is privately owned and publicly funded on a voluntary basis.
- State socialism: I 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.) The interesting thing is that these vehicles all exist alongside one another, and they compete for market share. 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, ecovillages etc. These non-capitalist ventures are a part of humanity's value-creating ecosystem.
Slavery outcompeted informal collaboration 6000 years ago. Capitalism outcompeted slavery 500 years ago. In these interesting times commons-based manufacturing is starting to look like it might outcompete capitalism. With every month that goes by, commons-based manufacturing becomes cheaper, it tackles more sophisticated problems like space-travel, it stockpiles all kinds of things of value. This trend looks set to continue.
What happens when commons-based manufacturing becomes radically more effective than capitalism? Well, in a word: AdCiv happens. commons-based manufacturing takes over from capitalism as the dominant vehicle for supplying food, medicine, hardware, software etc. Scarcity ceases to exist, because value is created within a model based on sharing, rather than one based on rationing.
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 would even consider setting up a private business selling encyclopedias.
- 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. The open-source AK-47 is probably the biggest player in the machine gun market.
- 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? What percentage of all cars are open-hardware cars? 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 02:52, 9 February 2012 (CET)
