Well.com debate on the future of capitalism
Before there was the World Wide Web, there was The Well, one of the first communities and online notice boards. Many legends roamed free here, like Howard Rheingold, Peter Schwartz and Bruce Sterling. The latter has hosted his annual State of the World address on Well.com and it's a very interesting, if occasionally tedious, read. The focus is primarily on economics (isn't everything these days?) and whether the current downturn is a recession or signs of a capitalistic paradigm shift. The discussion ranges between new age-y type arguments, pragmatism and ingenuity. Here are some of my favorite out-takes representing all three types:
business and government leaders adopt behaviors that embrace a new global consciousness. Namely, globalization can be "governed" with larger planetary and human interests in mind."
"Communism, capitalism, socialism, whatever: we've never yet had any economic system that recognizes that we have to live on a living planet. Plankton and jungles make the air we breathe, but they have no place at our counting-house. National regulations do nothing much for that situation. New global regulations seem about as plausible as new global religion."
"The costs of everything have crashed, and the asset bubbles we've had are partially about the problem in establishing stable returns in an economy where prices are naturally always dropping from technological advances."
"I find myself impressed that young people, my students, the Internet natives, they don't seem aware how different the digital commons is from previous ways of organization. Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Facebook even, they simply think that's how the real world works. It's like a HERE COMES EVERYBODY where they're already here."
"One thing to remember about today's do-it-yourself culture is that it's an optional supplement to industrial production. Sure, making clothes is fun sometimes for some people, but not if you have no alternative. Who wants to make their own underwear, as a regular thing?"
"We can't wish the psychic foundations for 'capitalism' away with an 'old-school paradigm' dismissal. And I think what kills the commons is greed, not capitalism."
"American "capitalism" is infused with many socialistic attributes that are taken as givens. We do not have the capitalism of Dickens' London where child labor, or polluting the shared skies or discharging effluent into the rivers or drinking water is tolerated. Pollution control is a form of socialism. In the US we have Social Security and Medicare, clearly socialist measures. Likewise, $700 billion dollar bailouts for the Plutocrats is blatantly socialistic, but justified to bolster capitalism in America."
"I have been wondering if it is possible, symbolically speaking, to take Friedman's dictum about the social responsibility of corporations - namely, "the only social responsibility of a corporation is to deliver maximum profits to its shareholders" - and append three simple words: "WITHOUT DOING HARM..."
"Why is peer-production so bad at doing boring, useful, vital stuff like farming?"
"The Internet is ad-hocratic. We're severely dependent on that system now. The French would love to "civilize" the Internet, but imagine that the French government somehow seized full control of the Internet and imposed a fully-organized, rational MINITEL Internet on the world. Would users gratefully depend on that solution, or would they panic and flee?"
PS! Bruce Sterling is captivating to listen to. He used to host an annual talk at Austin's South By Southwest festival every year. Listen to his 2006 address here and the 2007 one here.
