Hi Ken,
Rifkin's is a nice article but I feel both little mistaken and very late
to the party in its thinking.
Some thought:
1. Rifkin seems to have a mistaken kind of theoretical and idealistic view
of not-for-profit organisations. A typical business structure for a
not-for-profit organisations comprises a pair of co-managed entities. One
(the not for profit) acquires all the tax, public grants, subsidies, public
service fees, free land, exemptions from charges and controls, charitable
benefits and charitable income. The linked second entity strips the money
out of the not-for-profit entity by charging for providing services and
access to assets (the second entity holds all the assets). This structure is
one of several forms of profit making initiatives involving not-for-profits.
It provides an efficient way for the for-profit side of not-for-profit
organisations to gain direct access to national funds collected from
taxation of workers and other businesses. This two-part organisational and
variants is found widely in religious, educational and charitable and
not-for-profit organisations involved in social services provision. In many
ways it makes more sense to the not-for-profit sector as a different kind of
for-profit sector. Rifkin's reasoning makes a different kind of sense with
this in mind.
2. The idea and practice of reducing the cost of products to as close as
possible to zero with its attendant social benefits is OLD. It is a
well-established idea in engineering design with the ideas of efficient,
centralised and production and service provision. It is the reason why
cities are the most environmentally beneficial places rather than the
countryside. It has been the driver of widespread reductions in poverty,
improvements in social conditions of masses, greater life expectancy and
improved health. One factor that has acted against these benefits has been
craft production and design. Think of hand producing an IKEA fork (ignore
the knife and spoon). How much for a well paid crafts person to produce by
hand ONE IKEA fork. My guess is $500-$1000. How much is an IKEA fork
produced efficiently engineered mass-production? Possibly 1cent each? It is
low prices of everyday things that enable citizens on low incomes to live
without the health disadvantages of poverty. The creation of the
technologies that enable the low prices are themselves capital dependent.
Rifkin apparently doesn't include this capital flow and its needs, which is
much the same as happened in the industrial revolution.
3.Rifkin appears to misunderstand what happens with de-centralisation and
localisation. 3D printers use approximately 100 times the energy to produce
objects than conventional mass production methods. In addition, local
environmental pollution is massively higher. Put simply, replacing
centralised mass-production with local production results in significantly
worse environmental and energy outcomes and costs. This is contrary to
Rifkin's claims. Another example, Rifkin grounds some of his arguments on
the benefits of car sharing - but car sharing of the sort most commonly
practiced only makes sense in terms of centralised work arrangements of the
sort requiring high levels of capital.
Feels to me like an essay that's superficial and hasn't had things worked
through. The implications for design, I suggest, are around increasing
awareness of the importance of designing for mass-production and the role of
the internet of things (outside surveillance) in gaining increased benefits
from centralisation and mass-production and the avoiding of unnecessary
localisation.
... and the maths is coming. . ..
Best regards ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Monday, 17 March 2014 11:25 AM
To: PHD-DESIGN PHD-DESIGN
Subject: The Internet of Things and The Rise of Anti-Capitalism
Dear Colleagues,
Jeremy Rifkin has written an important article in the New York Times on an
issue with important implications for design - and for design research. The
rise of the non-profit sector and the role of design services in social
innovation come to the foreground in this kind of thinking.
You will find the full article at URL
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-anti-capitalism
.html?hp&rref=opinion
Excerpt below
--snip--
We are beginning to witness a paradox at the heart of capitalism, one that
has propelled it to greatness but is now threatening its future: The
inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that
many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer
subject to market forces. While economists have always welcomed a reduction
in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological
revolution that might bring those costs to near zero.
The first inkling of the paradox came in 1999 when Napster, the music
service, developed a network enabling millions of people to share music
without paying the producers and artists, wreaking havoc on the music
industry. Similar phenomena went on to severely disrupt the newspaper and
book publishing industries. Consumers began sharing their own information
and entertainment, via videos, audio and text, nearly free, bypassing the
traditional markets altogether.
The huge reduction in marginal cost shook those industries and is now
beginning to reshape energy, manufacturing and education. Although the fixed
costs of solar and wind technology are somewhat pricey, the cost of
capturing each unit of energy beyond that is low. This phenomenon has even
penetrated the manufacturing sector. Thousands of hobbyists are already
making their own products using 3-D printers, open-source software and
recycled plastic as feedstock, at near zero marginal cost. Meanwhile, more
than six million students are enrolled in free massive open online courses,
the content of which is distributed at near zero marginal cost. [article
continues]
--snip--
Regards,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor |
Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830
462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University |
Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook
University | Townsville, Australia
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