Thursday, January 3, 2013
Izabella Kaminska — Why a “free” market changes everything
On the evolution of capitalism beyond capitalism. One of Izzy's best yet.
The Financial Times | FT Alphaville
Why a “free” market changes everything
Izabella Kaminska
(h/t Andy Blatchford via FB)
See also:
OuiShare — Creative Community For The Collaborative Economy
Yes, the collaborative economy is destroying jobs. So what’s next?
Stanislas Jourdan
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21 comments:
I don't think this will last. The collaborative economy is itself a giant, distributed luxury good sitting on top of a conventional labor contract-based economy. The value this new economy generates comes from the capital investment of free time, a good that has in many cases been exploited from others. Only people whose more basic and more material needs have been met by the conventional labor of other human beings can afford to barter pleasure with one another in an informal economy.
Over time, informal economies tend to become more structured and contract-based.
"Over time, informal economies tend to become more structured and contract-based."
Tend to become? Not sure what you mean unless you're describing the movement from pre industrial to industrial society? But that puts the cart before the horse and makes little sense.
I think a synthesis is not only possible but probable going forward. Collaborative and contract based labor economies don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Neo Luddites and workerists like yourself can co exist. Jacques Ellul pointed this possibility out some 40 years ago. Still, there are many moving parts here. In my less sanguine moments I can see a JH Kunstler type world going forward, which is not the kind of synthesis I'd pine for. At any rate, like it or not, the world of work is changing right before our eyes. To my mind that's a damn good thing, rough transition notwithstanding.
And I think it is the new frontier. Once one gets embedded a bit in the cooperative community, one is not likely to go back to the old way of doing things. It would be a step backward. While I have at the tip of the spear on this since the Sixties, I have seen a lot of people happily drop out of the existing system and very few go back other than to raid the existing system for $. The tricky part now is positioning oneself at the interface so that one can have one foot out for freedom and creativity, and the other in for $. Many people now do this and the increase in temp and contract work at all level makes this entirely possible for a lot of people. Others join the non-profit world. But many live in the underground economy, too. We are talking about a sizable section of the population now.
At any rate, like it or not, the world of work is changing right before our eyes. To my mind that's a damn good thing, rough transition notwithstanding.
Yes, it's "creative destruction" taking place wrt to the prevailing cultural-institutional economic model, and this is where significant change happens.
Human life — individual lives in society — is based on ideas that take form as cultural rituals and institutional arrangements. As collective consciousness shifts, so do the cultural rituals and social, political and economic institutions.
There is now a shift in global conscious underway that began back in the Sixties. The yeast is rising worldwide.
There is always creative destruction. And there are always "commons" of some kind. And there is always a need for secure incomes as well, which requires formal agreements and contracts - either private or socialized. I just don't think anything fundamental is changing here.
If you look at the Republic of Letters in the 17th and 18th century, you might regard it as a similar form of P2P sharing. You have a class of aristocrats and gentry who were materially supported by rents generated from the work of others, and who possessed the "leisure" time to engage in intellectual work and share it in an informal network of "free" intellectual product.
Yes, there is certainly still a broad intellectual commons in which a certain amount of intellectual product is "freely" available. But mostly what we see as having grown out of that movement is a massive body of scientific, academic, engineering and publishing enterprise, organized in a structured, law and contract-based, industrial forms, with both private and state-based components.
A sophisticated and just economy cannot be based on an improvised network of voluntary sharing. An advanced, highly complex and prosperous society of billions of people can't be organized like an Inuit hunting village. The anarchist-libertarian camp is stubbornly refusing to engage with hard questions of power, control, governance, justice and ownership of the means of production.
There might indeed be a new techie class emerging in history, as significant as the rise of the bourgeoisie in the early modern period. But like that early modern period, the laissez faire ethos of "freedom" will be used to build privately controlled networks of privilege, exploitation and control. Let's see what all this "sharing" looks like in 20 or 30 years.
Let's see what all this "sharing" looks like in 20 or 30 years.
I look back fifty years and see huge incremental progress in the development of the sharing economy. It started with the DFH's, which admittedly was "problematical." But It really took off with the development of open source and the Internet. Once systems thinkers got involved it exploded. There are many high-powered players now.
Tom,
I don't think there is any shift in global consciousness underway. In the 60's there was temporary upsurge in bohemianism driven by the coming into adulthood of an extraordinarily large generation of secure and affluent young people. But now that generation is much older and the America they have built is more capitalist that ever, with a weaker social contract than the America they inherited.
Yes, but Dan, you and I live in different worlds.
"A sophisticated and just economy cannot be based on an improvised network of voluntary sharing."
It can in part. It might not be as sophisticated as you'd like, but that really doesn't matter. Whether it can be more or less just is debatable. Buzz words like sophisticated and just are ideological wax noses anyways. Way too nebulous for sophisticated minds to wrap themselves around.
BTW, do you really think 7 billion people can live in a sophisticated and just world remotely at the level we here in America imperfectly live at? That's magical thinking, you know?
"An advanced, highly complex and prosperous society of billions of people can't be organized like an Inuit hunting village."
Yeah, well a MODERN collaborative economy is in no way comparable to an Inuit hunting village, so your point here is nonsensical; a false choice. It certainly doesn't preclude a synthesis going forward to achieve a semblance of your stated goals for society.
"The anarchist-libertarian camp is stubbornly refusing to engage with hard questions of power, control, governance, justice and ownership of the means of production."
Broad brushed generalization.
I think your real problem is that you don't like these questions being raised, probably because it might have an effect on your level of comfort at present. Nothing wrong with protecting your self interest, but the inertia leading to change will (has, in part) run you over nonetheless. Unless you're willing to employ force to exact your ideal technocratic way of life, I'm afraid the evolving "worker" horse is long out of the barn. Like Tom said above, change has been happening right before your eyes. Where it ends up no one quite knows, but it won't likely be either a left leaning, Situationist or a right leaning Austrian utopia. I see large pockets of life somewhere in between.
Tom, I don't think this is a difference between your world and my world. It's an empirical question about the broader world and whether or not there has been a shift in consciousness. It seems to me that contemporary America is more capitalist than ever, so I really can't discern the shift.
BTW, do you really think 7 billion people can live in a sophisticated and just world remotely at the level we here in America imperfectly live at?
No, not at all. We need more democratic governance, more organized cooperation, a stronger social contract based on equality, a larger role for the public sector, more worker governance of the enterprises they man, and a fairer distribution of both the national product and the ownership of capital. This "neo-socialist" agenda is worlds away from the anarchist model based on voluntarism and primitivism.
Where it ends up no one quite knows, but it won't likely be either a left leaning, Situationist or a right leaning Austrian utopia. I see large pockets of life somewhere in between.
Yes, we are in the midst of an developmental ("evolutionary") shift, as Izzy notes. Where it is headed, what the fits and starts will be, and the eventual outcome is unclear. A great deal will hinge on technological innovation and changes in the global energy system.
One thing seems clear though. The world is moving beyond the nation state model, albeit slowly.
Malmo's Ghost, I think you understand pretty close to zero about my present level of comfort and/or discomfort.
When we are standing in the surf and a large wave is cresting, we cannot see much of the wave rising behind it. Not only is the wave cresting for neoliberalism, but the tide is also turning.
We need more democratic governance, more organized cooperation, a stronger social contract based on equality, a larger role for the public sector, more worker governance of the enterprises they man, and a fairer distribution of both the national product and the ownership of capital. This "neo-socialist" agenda is worlds away from the anarchist model based on voluntarism and primitivism.
I can see a move to some form of this "neo-socialist" world over time, although there are significant impediments to its realization. However, when and if it does come about, I see it as a default condition more than one in which the masses enthusiastically embrace-- embrace absent significant antecedent breakdowns in the existing social order as a causative function.
No matter what happens, I don't feel powerless in gaming the system (legally) if you will in the interim. I live a very contentedly life absent the rat race existence of most Americans. I can and have created my own "progress" absent the silly notion of so called "societal progress", whatever that even means.
My life is an ongoing synthesis in itself. I work a little, play a little, think a lot. I eat, sleep and I interact with whomever I please. I feel no shame or guilt whatsoever in whether I meet some moralizer's notion of how one should live, and I really do pity those who are trapped in the slavish workerist milieu and all its pathological trappings. I've come to realize that most of life is anarchical in spite of one's larger environment anyways. The state was never a force that bothered me much. My bosses over the years did more to impede my liberty than any cop or bureaucrat did, which is why I've largely moved to a living arrangement beyond daily interactions with the boss man. Hopefully, if we come upon the neo socialist or the collaborative way of life, significant others can also have the ability to choose (not be forced) to pursue a similar route to mine. If not, that would be unfortunate indeed.
I think you understand pretty close to zero about my present level of comfort and/or discomfort.
You're right. That was presumptuous of me. Sorry.
Ravi Batra makes the point that historically there are four classes, warrior, intelligentsia, acquisitive, and laborers. Historically only the first three accede to rule and Batra finds a pattern in this. He opines that laborers never come to power, that is, there is no socialism, because to date laborers are not fit for rule, being largely uneducated. Should that change, then the laboring class be fit for rule and we would have socialism in the mix.
Malmo's Ghost, I think the main effect of my move from academia to the corporate world seven years ago is a more oppressive sense of the reality of exploitation in our society.
As a result, I don't just want a life of individual freedom, lived on my own terms. In fact, I don't really believe such a world is possible. We're all part of the continent of humanity, and almost everything we have was produced by the work of someone else. It seems to me that either we are striving to build a world in which people receive a fair share in exchange for a fair contribution, or we are exploiting others.
I read a lot of books myself. But since i work in the book industry, I now have a better appreciation of where books come from. You might think that because you have paid a fair market price for whatever books you own, you have made good on your obligation to the people who made them. But I don't think market prices get it right. The "market" means that some do backbreaking work for a little, while other do much less and get much more depending on how well nature and fortune have favored them. That's not good enough for me.
At my company, we have an annual indoor "cookout" during inventory time, and the whole company is invited. The last time I went I realized that because I am a "manager", I have the freedom just to get up from my desk on my own schedule and recognizance, and walk over to get the food. I can do that any time during the day. The folks who work in the warehouse however, have to "punch out". And of course, they get paid less than me too, even though their work is physically more demanding and draining. For some reason, the older I get the more I find that hierarchical disparity and experience humiliating and degrading - both for me and the people who are on the lower end of it. Increasingly, it seems to me that nobody is free as long as some are exploited.
To the degree the laboring class is unfit to rule, that is because all of the other classes consign laborers to the class they are in, exploit their labor, and do nothing serious about providing them with the opportunity to participate in social and educational life at a higher level.
To the degree the laboring class is unfit to rule, that is because all of the other classes consign laborers to the class they are in, exploit their labor, and do nothing serious about providing them with the opportunity to participate in social and educational life at a higher level.
In the past, this was the agenda. At least, it is less so today. I recall being in London in the early Sixties and talking to a working class kid my age. I had already graduated from college and completed a master's degree. He said to me that people of his class couldn't go to college. I was pretty shocked and it made me think. I also remember by Gaelic speaking Irish great-uncle saying that when he was a child the British did not permit the Irish children to learn to read and write, let alone attend school.
So this is fairly recent memory in the developed world, not ancient history or the developing world.
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