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Business/Finance See other Business/Finance Articles Title: The Sharing Economy "If you want to understand why we are in the midst of a massive paradigm shift from an age of top-down, centralized institutions to a world of distributed and collaborative power, I would highly recommend reading Jeremy Rifkin's new book. He clearly joins the dots on how the likes of 3D printing, crowdfunding, and online education platforms are all connected and describes the disruptions that lie just around the corner for most sectors." - Rachel Botsman, author of What's Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing The Way We Live"Jeremy Rifkin understands that it's people and communities who are at the heart of the new economic paradigm. People all over the world are building the collaborative economy and Rifkin's thoughtful analysis further illustrates that this is an idea whose time has come." - Natalie Foster, Executive Director of peers.org The Zero Marginal Cost Society The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism Hardcover (368 pages) £17.99 + delivery ISBN 9781137278463 Publication Date April 2014 Formats Hardcover Publisher Palgrave Macmillan The capitalist era is passing - not quickly, but inevitably. Rising in its wake is a new global collaborative Commons that will fundamentally transform our way of life. Ironically, capitalism’s demise is not coming at the hands of hostile external forces. Rather, The Zero Marginal Cost Society argues, capitalism is a victim of its own success. Intense competition across sectors of the economy is forcing the introduction of ever newer technologies. Bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin explains that this competition is boosting productivity to its optimal point where the marginal cost of producing additional units is nearly zero, which makes the product essentially free. In turn, profits are drying up, property ownership is becoming meaningless, and an economy based on scarcity is giving way to an economy of abundance, changing the very nature of society. Rifkin describes how hundreds of millions of people are already transferring parts of their economic lives from capitalist markets to global networked Commons. "Prosumers" are producing their own information, entertainment, green energy, and 3-D printed products at nearly zero marginal cost, and sharing them via social media sites, rentals, redistribution clubs, bartering networks, and cooperatives. Meanwhile, students are enrolling in massive open online courses (MOOCs) that also operate at near-zero marginal cost. And young social entrepreneurs are establishing ecologically sensitive businesses, crowdsourcing capital, and even creating alternative currencies in the new sharable economy. As a result, "exchange value" in the marketplace - long the bedrock of our economy - is increasingly being replaced by "use value" on the collaborative Commons. In this new era, identity is less bound to what one owns and more to what one shares. Cooperation replaces self-interest, access trumps ownership, and networking drubs autonomy. Rifkin concludes that while capitalism will be with us for at least the next half century, albeit in an increasingly diminished role, it will no longer be the dominant paradigm. We are, Rifkin says, entering a world beyond markets where we are learning how to live together collaboratively and sustainably in an increasingly interdependent global Commons. Discussed on CBC' Ideas: Thursday, December 11 THE SHARING ECONOMY AND THE PUBLIC GOOD, Part 1 Who wins, who loses and what's destined to change if a sharing economy is sustainable: business, society or the state? Join IDEAS host Paul Kennedy for a special 2-part event produced by IDEAS in partnership with The Munk School of Global Affairs. Featuring economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism along with a stellar panel of economic and political thinkers, including lawyer, mediator and political leader Bob Rae, economist and author Anita M. McGahan, and moderator Janice Stein, Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs. Part 2 airs Thursday, December 18. (Available as podcast: www.cbc.ca/ideas/podcasts/ ) Thursday, December 18 THE SHARING ECONOMY AND THE PUBLIC GOOD, Part 2 Who wins, who loses and what's destined to change if a sharing economy is sustainable: business, society or the state? Join IDEAS host Paul Kennedy for a special 2-part event produced by IDEAS in partnership with The Munk School of Global Affairs. Featuring economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism along with a stellar panel of economic and political thinkers, including lawyer, mediator and political leader Bob Rae, economist and author Anita M. McGahan, and moderator Janice Stein, Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs. Poster Comment: Rifkin's collaborative economy sounds too inefficiently communistic. Better a meritocracy in which everyone works (or prepares) for free; all get survival basics plus merit points, depending on value of contribution in wealth production or service, for additional privileges. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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