Jeremy Rifkin: "The Zero Marginal Cost Society" | Talks at Google
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In The Zero Marginal Cost Society, New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin describes how the emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global Collaborative Commons and the eclipse of capitalism. Rifkin uncovers a paradox at the heart of capitalism that has propelled it to greatness but is now taking it to its death—the inherent entrepreneurial dynamism of competitive markets that drives productivity up and marginal costs down, enabling businesses to reduce the price of their goods and services in order to win over consumers and market share. (Marginal cost is the cost of producing additional units of a good or service, if fixed costs are not counted.) While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring marginal costs to near zero, making goods and services priceless, nearly free, and abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. Now, a formidable new technology infrastructure—the Internet of things (IoT)—is emerging with the potential of pushing large segments of economic life to near zero marginal cost in the years ahead. Rifkin describes how the Communication Internet is converging with a nascent Energy Internet and Logistics Internet to create a new technology platform that connects everything and everyone. Billions of sensors are being attached to natural resources, production lines, the electricity grid, logistics networks, recycling flows, and implanted in homes, offices, stores, vehicles, and even human beings, feeding Big Data into an IoT global neural network. Prosumers can connect to the network and use Big Data, analytics, and algorithms to accelerate efficiency, dramatically increase productivity, and lower the marginal cost of producing and sharing a wide range of products and services to near zero, just like they now do with information goods. Rifkin concludes that capitalism will remain with us, albeit in an increasingly streamlined role, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a powerful niche player in the coming era. We are, however, says Rifkin, entering a world beyond markets where we are learning how to live together in an increasingly interdependent global Collaborative Commons. --macmillan.com About the Author: Jeremy Rifkin is the bestselling author of twenty books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. He has been an advisor to the European Union for the past decade. Mr. Rifkin also served as an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain, and Prime Minister Janez Janša of Slovenia, during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. Mr. Rifkin is a senior lecturer at the Wharton School's Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania where he instructs CEOs and senior management on transitioning their business operations into sustainable Third Industrial Revolution economies. Mr. Rifkin holds a degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. This Authors@Google talk was hosted by Boris Debic.
Comments
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but what about when human generated content isnt valued? like the arts, sure, but entertainment could be automated post singularity. so long term 'employment' is only raw artistic talent but in a niche market valuing human art not simply creative talent which may, post singularity, be bested by machines.
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The reason for germanys energy companys to go down is not just the self-energy-providing homes. But mainly because of germanys crazy energy reform program, causing nuclear power stations to shut down, in favor of coal and renewable energy production. Since this energy reform started more and more energy is bought from neighbor countrys, which lead to an extreme increase of energy costs. Most of the energy isn t used by homes anyway but by the industry. (Sorry for language mistakes i am german)
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This is awesome!
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What planet do these technological utopiaists live on ?
Technology enslaves. It does not liberate.
And I see that he has chosen to collaborate with the devil himself i.e. Google Talks.
Finally, a Yank rejected by his own government. All his consultancies are with European governments. -
It crazy listening to lectures and reading comments to see just how much money is slowing the growth of technology. The need to monetize everything is acting like brakes on our culture. And somehow the vast majority of people think this makes any sense.
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He is a communist. He wants to enslave you.
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If people listen carefully to these ideas they may get to the point in realizing, this is brilliant.
This audience uses the word "never" too much and seems to be looking behind instead of ahead. -
Rifkin's work is contradictory from the very start. I think its on page 7
or 8 he states that entropy cannot be avoided and then on the next page
states that sustainability can bring abundance. The rest of the book
goes back and forth from there with the contradictions abounding. He basically greened Keynesian ideas on how to reach the socialist utopia by bringing about the zero marginal productivity of capital. My
book The Singularity and Socialism shows exactly how to get to "utopia"
without violating any valid economics or having contradictions abound. http://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Socialism-Complexity-Techno-Optimism-Abundance/dp/1503034739 -
Near 0 margin already happened. You can see that the skills of the middle level workers are now valued at near 0. Maybe we need to stop this economy and put in inefficiency deliberately. In this case, we need to stop the globalization as Trump is advocating and the large part of the Americans understand him and are following him. WIll he succeed?
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We already do! Then why is there so much hunger and desperation in many parts of the world? We obviously do not either produce enough or distribute it effectively. For a start much of what we produce is perishable.. It's rotten before it can be distributed. To say "we do" is no answer, merely avoids an answer.
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How do we mass produce food from small cooperatives? How do we distribute water to billions of people?
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Commie.
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Wow! He is preaching the TVP and RBE that is great.
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Fascinating that his discussion leads off with Napster...a system for stealing the product of millions of musicians. He later mentions net neutrality...a pretext for limiting the revenue of companies that have spent billions of shareholder dollars to build the communications internet he raves about. Sure, when I steal something my marginal cost is zero.
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great talk, keep up the great work to make the world better !
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this will be amazing for supermarkets, so i know what is the cheapest at each supermarket.
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social commons, human narrative, low cynicism, things can be done. i love this guy so much.
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24:03 -- Yeah, you mean like … 3D-printers?
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03:20
So he is an intellectual. Intellectual’s end products are ideas. Normally they don’t get tested, often enough ending in catastrophes.
He is also active for some time now, luckily. In order to value his ideas: how have his other, older ideas turned out to be? Were they accurate?
Does anyone know? -
The elephant in the room isn't Climate Change. That's a topic that is out in the open and spoken about all the time by almost everyone. The elephant in the room is the root cause of Climate Change, something that nobody ever talks about - Human overpopulation. If we could tackle that problem through legislated human cap and trade, subsidies, HOV lanes for childless people, etc., we wouldn't have a child asking, "Mommy, is a rainforest being destroyed so I can eat my hamburger?" The question he or she should be asking is, "Mommy, why did you bring me into a planet being destroyed by human overpopulation?" That's the real question.
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