How Piketty's Bombshell Book Blows Up Libertarian Fantasies and Exposes Ayn Rand as Fiction

ECONOMY  

AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore

How Piketty's Bombshell Book Blows Up Libertarian Fantasies

Sorry, Ayn Rand. Your fiction has been exposed as, well, fiction. 

 

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

April 27, 2014  |  

 

 

 

Libertarians have always been flummoxed by inequality, tending either to deny that it’s a problem or pretend that the invisible hand of the market will wave a magic wand to cure it. Then everybody gets properly rewarded for what he or she does with brains and effort, and things are peachy keen.

Except that they aren’t, as exhaustively demonstrated by French economist Thomas Piketty, whose 700-page treatise on the long-term trends in inequality, Capital In the 21st Century, has blown up libertarian fantasies one by one.

To understand the libertarian view of inequality, let’s turn to Milton Friedman, one of America's most famous and influential makers of free market mythology. Friedman decreed that economic policy should focus on freedom, and not equality.

If we could do that, he promised, we’d not only get freedom and efficiency, but more equality as a natural byproduct. Libertarians who took the lessons from his books, like Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and Free to Choose (1980), bought into the notion that capitalism naturally led to less inequality.

Basically, the lessons boiled down to this: Some degree of inequality is both unavoidable and desirable in a free market, and income inequality in the U.S. isn’t very pronounced, anyway. Libertarians starting with these ideas tend to reject any government intervention meant to decrease inequality, claiming that such plans make people lazy and that they don’t work, anyway. Things like progressive income taxes, minimum wage laws and social safety nets make most libertarians very unhappy.

Uncle Milty put it like this:

“A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.… On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality.”

Well, that turns out to be spectacularly, jaw-droppingly, head-scratchingly wrong. The U.S. is now a stunningly unequal society, with wealth piling up at the top so fast that an entire movement, Occupy Wall Street, sprung up to decry it with the catchphrase “We are the 99%.”

How did libertarians get it all so backwards? Well, as Piketty points out, people like Milton Friedman were writing at a time when inequality was indeed less pronounced in the U.S. than it had been in previous eras. But they mistook this happy state of affairs as the magic of capitalism. Actually, it wasn’t the magic of capitalism that reduced inequality during a brief, halcyon period after the New Deal and WWII. It was the forces of various economic shocks plus policies our government put in place to respond to them that changed America from a top-heavy society in the Gilded Age to something more egalitarian in the post-war years.

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As you’ll recall, if you watched the movie Titanic, the U.S. had a class of rentiers (rich people who live off property and investments) in the early part of the 20th century who hailed from places like Boston, New York and Philadelphia. They were just as nasty and rapacious as their European counterparts, only there weren’t quite so many of them and their wealth was not quite as concentrated (the Southern rentiers had been wiped out by the Civil War). 

The fortunes of these rentiers were not shock-proof: If you remember Hockney, the baddie in James Cameron’s film, he survives the Titanic but not the Great Crash of ’29, when he loses his money and offs himself. The Great Depression got rid of some of the extreme wealth concentration in America, and later the wealthy got hit with substantial tax shocks imposed by the federal government in the 1930s and '40s. The American rentier class wasn’t really vaporized the way it was in Europe, where the effects of the two world wars were much more pronounced, but it took a hit. That opened up the playing field and gave people more of a chance to rise on the rungs of the economic ladder through talent and work.

After the Great Depression, inequality decreased in America, as New Deal investment and education programs, government intervention in wages, the rise of unions, and other factors worked to give many more people a chance for success. Inequality reached its lowest ebb between 1950 and 1980. If you were looking at the U.S. during that time, it seemed like a pretty egalitarian place to be (though blacks, Hispanics, and many women would disagree).

As Piketty notes, people like Milton Friedman, an academic economist, were doing rather well in the economy, likely sitting in the top 10 percent income level, and to them, the economy appeared to be doing just fine and rewarding talents and merits very nicely. But the Friedmans weren’t paying enough attention to how the folks on the rungs above them, particularly the one percent and even more so the .01 percent, were beginning to climb into the stratosphere. The people doing that climbing were mostly not academic economists, or lawyers, or doctors. They were managers of large firms who had begun to award themselves very prodigious salaries.

This phenomenon really got going after 1980, when wealth started flowing in vast quantities from the bottom 90 percent of the population to the top 10 percent. By 1987, Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan had taken over as head of the Federal Reserve, and free market fever was unleashed upon America. People in U.S. business schools started reading Ayn Rand's kooky novels as if they were serious economic treatises and hailing the free market as the only path to progress. John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged(1957), captured the imaginations of young students like Paul Ryan, who worshipped Galt as a superman who could rise to the top through his vision, merit and heroic efforts. Galt became the prototype of the kind of “supermanager” these business schools were supposed to crank out.

Since the ‘80s, the top salaries and pay packages awarded to executives of the largest companies and financial firms in the U.S. have reached spectacular heights. This, coupled with low growth and stagnation of wages for the vast majority of workers, has meant growing inequality. As income from labor gets more and more unequal, income from capital starts to play a bigger role. By the time you get to the .01 percent, virtually all your income comes from capital—stuff like dividends and capital gains. That’s when wealth (what you have) starts to matter more than income (what you earn).

Wealth gathering at the top creates all sorts of problems. Some of these elites will hoard their wealth and fail to do anything productive with it. Others channel it into harmful activities like speculation, which can throw the economy out of whack. Some increase their wealth by preying on the less well-off. As inequality grows, regular people lose their purchasing power. They go into debt. The economy gets destabilized. (Piketty, and many other economists, count the increase in inequality as one of the reasons the economy blew up in 2007-'08.)

By the time you get to 2010, U.S. inequality, according to Piketty’s data, is quantitavely as extreme as in old Europe in the first decade of the 20th century. He predicts that inherited property is going to start to matter more and more in the U.S. as the supermanagers, the Jamie Dimons and so on, bequeath their gigantic hordes of money to their children.

The ironic twist is this: The reason a person like the fictional John Galt would be able to rise from humble beginnings in the 1950s is because the Gilded Age rentiers lost large chunks of their wealth through the shocks the Great Depression and the deliberate government policies that came in its wake, thus loosening their stranglehold on the economy and society. Galt is able to make his fortune precisely because he lives in a society that isn’t dominated by extreme concentrated wealth and dynasties. Yet the logical outcome of an economy in which there is no attempt made to limit the size of fortunes and promote greater equality is a place in which the most likely way John Galt can make a fortune is to marry an heiress. So it was in the Gilded Age. So it may be very soon in America.

Which brings us back to Friedman’s view that people naturally get what they deserve, that reward is based on talent. Well, clearly in the case of inherited property, reward is not based on talent, but membership in the Lucky Sperm Club (or marriage into it). That made Uncle Milty a little bit uncomfortable, but he just huffed that life is not fair, and we shouldn’t think it any more unjust that one person is born with mathematical genius as the other is born with a fortune. What’s the difference?

Actually, there is a very big difference. It is the particular rules governing society that determine who amasses a fortune and what part of that fortune is passed on to heirs. The wrong-headed policies promoted by libertarians and their ilk, who hate any form of tax on the rich, such as inheritance taxes, have ensured that big fortunes in America are getting bigger, and they will play a much more prominent role in the direction of our society and economy if we continue on the present path.

What we are headed for, after several decades of free market mania, is superinequality, possibly such as the world has never seen. In this world, more and more wealth will be gained off the backs of the 99 percent, and less and less will be earned through hard work.

Which essentially means freedom for the rich, and no one else.

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of "Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture." She received her Ph.D. in English and cultural theory from NYU. She is the director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.

Can Thomas Piketty Re-Write the American Dream?

Published on Sunday, April 27, 2014 by The Guardian

Can Thomas Piketty Re-Write the American Dream?

by Heidi Moore

Piketty's immaculate research establishes that the American dream – and more broadly, the egalitarian promise of Western-style capitalism – does not, and maybe cannot, deliver on its promises. Photo: Ed Alcock for the ObserverWhen the movie is made about the fall of Western capitalism, Thomas Piketty will be played by Colin Firth. Piketty, whom the Financial Times called a "rock-star economist", isn't a household name – but he should be, and he has a better shot than any other economist. He is the author and researcher behind a 700-page economic manifesto, titled Capital in the 21st Century, that details the path of income inequality over several hundred years.

This sublime nerdishness is, somehow, a huge hit. It is now No 1 on Amazon's bestseller listand sold out in many bookstores. When Piketty spoke on a panel this month at New York's CUNY with three other economists – two of them Nobel-prize winners, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman – the Frenchman was the headliner. The event was so packed that the organizers had to create three overflow rooms. Weeks after the release of Capital, intellectuals are still salivating, even calling Piketty the new de Tocqueville.

This is quite a burst of stardom for a man who, despite his understated Gallic charm, is very much the bearer of bad news. Piketty's sublimely nerdy book, packed with graphs, statistics and history, is all evidence for an immensely depressing theory: that the meritocracy of capitalism is a big, fat lie.

Piketty's research, which is immaculate, reaches back hundreds of years to establish a simple thesis: the American dream – and more broadly, the egalitarian promise of Western-style capitalism – does not, and maybe cannot, deliver on its promises. That, he writes, is because economic growth will always be smaller than the profits from any money that is invested. Economic growth is what we all benefit from, but profits from invested money accrue only to the rich.

The consequences of this are clear: those who have family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. It's Jane Austen all over again, and we've just fooled ourselves that the complicated financial system has changed a thing.

This is a deep point. Many American households, if they are lucky, will grow their wealth at the same rate as the economy. But, because the wealthy are growing their fortunes at a much faster rate, no one else can ever catch up.

Let's repeat that: no one else can ever catch up.

This is where Piketty adds more nuance: it's not just inequality of wealth and income that we're struggling with, but inequality of opportunity. That's of far more concern. In essence, he is saying, we're lying to ourselves if we believe that hard work will lead to wealth. Mainly, wealth reliably leads to wealth. Everything else is chancy. The middle class is playing the economic lottery to improve their lot in life, while the wealthy have a sure thing.

This is clearly fraught – and to some, like theNew York Times columnist David Brooks, it sounds like class war (he calls it "angry progressivism"). Piketty's purpose is not to point out that inequality exists, or that it's growing – both of which have been established ad nauseum by everyone from President Obama to Pope Francis. Piketty's point is that we are actually doomed to inequality.

It's hard to argue with this, really – Piketty's research is too good, too sprawling, too complete. It's as good as fact. It codifies what many suspected. Piketty's point is accepted wisdom in most of Europe, where, in France and Germany, the morality of capitalism is regularly questioned.

But there remains a lot of controversy anyway. Why? Because Piketty wants to change the lever on income inequality by putting a tax on wealth – not on income, which is the stuff of the middle class, but on fortunes themselves, on the money that is invested and reinvested and compounded and grown.

You can see the problem. Whereas many progressives believe Piketty is the economic Messiah they've been waiting for, many on the right loathe where this is going. They've successfully fought tax hikes for years, especially on the estates of the wealthy (Grover Norquist built his career on it). One struggles to sympathize: the wealthy, like corporations, rarely pay the full burden of tax anyway. The biggest barrier they face is that good accountants are hard to find.

All of this must seem familiar, and that's a good thing. Piketty's book, and his charismatic sweep through the pundit classes, are crystallizing a conversation that America should have already had, seriously, a long time time ago. There are two ways to change a society: from the bottom, and from the top. Occupy Wall Street tried it the first way, and paved the road with populism. Thomas Piketty is going for the second way. He has roiled the pundit classes – as Brookings economist Justin Wolfers observed, Piketty's biggest readers are in New York and Washington DC:

Charts: Explaining Piketty's popularity. It's the rich liberal coastal states. (Full piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/upshot/pikettys-book-on-wealth-and-inequality-is-more-popular-in-richer-states.html?smid=tw-share …)

4:29 PM - 23 Apr 2014

And, yes, Piketty is already talking to the White House.

That's a limited scope, though, and Piketty isn't looking for endorsements. He's looking for action. This is why it's important that the conversation about him extends beyond the sniping of pundits wrapped up in their own agendas and their own speaking fees.

Piketty has to do what no one else has yet: win over regular citizens, who have long heard patronizing speeches about inequality but seen very little political action. Piketty's goal is as ambitious as his research – to change the way wealth is distributed. So far, it's a message that a lot of people like to talk about, but very few want to hear.

Copyright 2014 The Guardian

Heidi Moore is the Guardian's US finance and economics editor. Formerly, she was New York bureau chief and Wall Street correspondent for Marketplace, from American Public Media

The New Economic Events Giving Lie to the Fiction That We Are All Selfish, Rational Materialists

  Economy  

AlterNet / By David Bollier

The New Economic Events Giving Lie to the Fiction That We Are All Selfish, Rational Materialists

 

The commons lies at the heart of a major cultural and social shift now underway.

Photo Credit: AllanGregg; Screenshot / YouTube.com

April 14, 2014  |  

 

 

 

Jeremy Rifkin's new book, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society,” brings welcome new attention to the commons just as it begins to explode in countless new directions. His book focuses on one of the most significant vectors of commons-based innovation — the Internet and digital technologies — and documents how the incremental costs of nearly everything is rapidly diminishing, often to zero. Rifkin explored the sweeping implications of this trend in an excerpt from his book and points to the "eclipse of capitalism" in the decades ahead.

But it's worth noting that the commons is not just an Internet phenomenon or a matter of economics. The commons lies at the heart of a major cultural and social shift now underway. People's attitudes about corporate property rights and neoliberal capitalism are changing as cooperative endeavors — on digital networks and elsewhere — become more feasible and attractive. This can be seen in the proliferation of hackerspaces and Fablabs, in the growth of alternative currencies, in many land trusts and cooperatives and in seed-sharing collectives and countless natural resource commons.

Beneath the radar screen of mainstream politics, which remains largely clueless about such cultural trends on the edge, a new breed of commoners is building the vision of a very different kind of society, project by project. This new universe of social activity is being built on the foundation of a very different ethics and social logic than that of homo economicus — the economist's fiction that we are all selfish, utility-maximizing, rational materialists.

Durable projects based on social cooperation are producing enormous amounts of wealth; it's just that this wealth is not generally not monetized or traded. It's socially or ecologically embedded wealth that is managed by self-styled commoners themselves. Typically, such commoners act more as stewards of their common wealth than as owners who treat it as private capital. Commoners realize that a life defined by impersonal transactions is not as rich or satisfying as one defined by abiding relationships. The larger trends toward zero-marginal-cost production make it perfectly logical for people to seek out commons-based alternatives.

You can find these alternatives popping up all over: in the 10,000-plus open access scientific journals whose research is freely shareable to anyone and in community gardens that produce both fresh vegetables and neighborliness. In hundreds of "timebanks" that let people meet basic needs through time-barters, and in highly productive, ecologically minded commons-based agriculture.

Economists tend to ignore such wealth because it generally doesn't involve market activity. No cash is exchanged, no legal contracts signed and no measureable Gross Domestic Product is generated. But the wealth of the commons is not accumulated like capital; its vitality comes from being circulated. As I describe in my new book, "Think Like a Commoner," the story of our time is the rise of the commons as a new way to emancipate oneself from predatory markets and to collaborate with peers to protect and expand one's shared wealth. This is a story that is being played out in countless digital arenas, as Rifkin documents, but also in such diverse contexts as cities, farming, museums, theaters and indigenous communities.

One reason that so many commons arise and flourish is because they help their participants meet important basic needs in fair, responsive and socially satisfying ways. That's quite attractive to those who are otherwise held captive by conventional, predatory markets. Big agriculture is more concerned with efficiency and profit than ecological stewardship. Large transnationals are more interested in rip-and-run resource extraction (mining, fracking, timber) than in the protection of sacred lands and time-honored ways of life. "Copyright industries" like Hollywood and record labels want to treat all of culture as tightly controlled "product," not as something that is freely shared and built upon.

Nowadays the commons has a special appeal for people of the global South who are often victimized by the "enclosures" inflicted by neoliberal investment and trade policies. Enclosures are the act of privatizing and commodifying previously shared resources. For example, millions of acres of land in Africa, Asia and Latin America are currently being seized by investors in a massive international land grab. Hedge funds and even the government of South Korea, Saudi Arabia and China are enacting an eerie replay of the English enclosure movement. Commoners who have worked the land for generations as a customary right are being forced to migrate to cities in search of work, where they often end up as paupers and sweatshop employees: a modern-day replay of Charles Dickens' novels.

By the lights of modern economic theory, it's all for the best because it promotes "development" (i.e., consumerism and other market dependencies). But many commoners are now fighting the dispossession and dependencies that enclosures entail by struggling to retain some measure of dignity and self-determination through their commons. The International Land Alliance estimates that 2 billion people around the world depend upon subsistence commons of forests, fisheries, arable land, water and wild game to meet their everyday needs.

Strangely, the leading introductory economics textbooks in the U.S. virtually ignore the commons except for the obligatory warning about the "tragedy of the commons." They prefer not to recognize that the commons represents an entirely viable but different paradigm of "development" - one that can transcend the unsustainable consumerism, cultural disintegration and economic growth of our time. As the late Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom showed, commons are an entirely sustainable, ecologically friendly model of resource management, contrary to the "tragedy" parable.

Commoners are not all alike. They have many profound differences in their governance systems, management practices and cultural values. And commons are not without their conflicts, struggles and failures. That said, most commoners tend to share fundamental commitments to participation, openness, inclusiveness, social equity, ecological respect and human rights.

The politics of the commons movement can be confounding to conventional observers because political goals are not the paramount priority; protection of the commons is. Commoners tend to be more focused on "prepolitical" social activity and relationships, which is why commons are embraced by such a wide variety of people. As German commons advocate Silke Helfrich notes in The Wealth of the Commons, "Commons draw from the best of all political ideologies." Conservatives like the tendency of commons to promote responsibility. Liberals are pleased with the focus on equality and basic social entitlement. Libertarians like the emphasis on individual initiative. And leftists like the idea of limiting the scope of the Market.

It is important to realize that the commons is not a discussion about objects, but a discussion about who we are and how we treat each other. What decisions are being made about our resources? Does economic activity satisfy basic human needs and honor human rights and dignity? These kind of discussions are not often heard in in conventional business and policy circles, alas.

To conventional minds, the idea of the commons as a paradigm of social governance appears either utopian or communistic, or at the very least, impractical. But a diverse, eclectic universe of commons around the world demonstrates otherwise. It is the neoliberal project of ever-expanding consumption on a global scale that is the utopian, totalistic dream. It manifestly cannot fulfill its mythological vision of human progress through ubiquitous market activity and greater heaps of private consumption, if only because it demands more from Nature than it can possibly deliver - while inflicting too much social inequity and disruption as well.

Fortunately, the Internet and indigenous peoples, the re-localization movement and hackers, community foresters and fishing cooperatives and many, many others, are showing that the commons can be an effective vehicle for social and political emancipation. Jeremy Rifkin's astute analysis of this powerful trend will help open up a much-needed discussion in the stodgy precincts of conventional economics.


David A. Bollier is an author, activist, blogger and independent scholar with a primary focus on “the commons” as a new paradigm for economics, politics, and culture. He is the founding editor of Onthecommons.org (2002-2010), co-founder and principal of the international consulting project Commons Strategy Group, and co-director of the Commons Law Project. Bollier is the author of numerous books, including "Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons."

The End of the Capitalist Era, and What Comes Next

Huffpost Business

The Blog

Jeremy Rifkin

  Author, 'The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism'

The End of the Capitalist Era, and What Comes Next

 

This post is excerpted from Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, published today by Palgrave Macmillan.


The capitalist era is passing... not quickly, but inevitably. A new economic paradigm -- the Collaborative Commons -- is rising in its wake that will transform our way of life. We are already witnessing the emergence of a hybrid economy, part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons. The two economic systems often work in tandem and sometimes compete. They are finding synergies along each other's perimeters, where they can add value to one another, while benefiting themselves. At other times, they are deeply adversarial, each attempting to absorb or replace the other.

Although the indicators of the great transformation to a new economic system are still soft and largely anecdotal, the Collaborative Commons is ascendant and, by 2050, it will likely settle in as the primary arbiter of economic life in most of the world. An increasingly streamlined and savvy capitalist system will continue to soldier on at the edges of the new economy, finding sufficient vulnerabilities to exploit, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a powerful niche player in the new economic era, but it will no longer reign.

What's undermining the capitalist system is the dramatic success of the very operating assumptions that govern it. At the heart of capitalism there lies a contradiction in the driving mechanism that has propelled it ever upward to commanding heights, but now is speeding it to its death: the inherent 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.

The near zero marginal cost phenomenon has already wreaked havoc on the entertainment, communications, and publishing industries, as more and more information is being made available nearly free to billions of people. Today, more than forty percent of the human race is producing its own music, videos, news, and knowledge on relatively cheap cellphones and computers and sharing it at near zero marginal cost in a collaborative networked world. And now the zero marginal cost revolution is beginning to affect other commercial sectors, including renewable energy, 3D printing in manufacturing, and online higher education. There are already millions of "prosumers" -- consumers who have become their own producers -- generating their own green electricity at near zero marginal cost around the world. It's estimated that around 100,000 hobbyists are using open source software and recycled plastic feedstock to manufacture their own 3D printed goods at nearly zero marginal cost. Meanwhile, six million students are currently enrolled in free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that operate at near zero marginal cost and are taught by some of the most distinguished professors in the world, and receiving college credits.

The reluctance to come to grips with near zero marginal cost is understandable.
Many, though not all, of the old guard in the commercial arena can't imagine how economic life would proceed in a world where most goods and services are nearly free, profit is defunct, property is meaningless, and the market is superfluous. What then?

A powerful new technology platform is emerging with the potential of reducing marginal costs across large sectors of the capitalist economy, with far reaching implications for society in the first half of the 21st Century. The Communications Internet is converging with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure -- the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT will connect every thing with everyone in an integrated global network. People, machines, natural resources, production lines, logistics networks, the electricity grid, consumption habits, recycling flows, and virtually every other aspect of economic and social life will be linked via sensors and software to the IoT platform, continually feeding Big Data to every node -- businesses, homes, vehicles -- moment to moment, in real time. Anyone will be able to access the IoT and use Big Data and analytics to develop predictive algorithms that can dramatically increase productivity and reduce the marginal cost of producing and delivering a full range of physical goods and services to near zero just like we now do with information goods.

Lost in all of the excitement over the prospect of the Internet of Things is that connecting everyone and everything in a global network driven by extreme productivity moves us ever faster toward an era of nearly free goods and services and, with it, the shrinking of capitalism in the next half century. The question is what kind of economic system would we need to organize economic activity that is nearly free and shareable?

We are so used to thinking of the capitalist market and government as the only two means of organizing economic life that we overlook the other organizing model in our midst that we depend on daily to deliver a range of goods and services that neither market nor government provides. The Commons predates both the capitalist market and representative government and is the oldest form of institutionalized, self-managed activity in the world.

The contemporary Commons is where billions of people engage in the deeply social aspects of life. It is made up of literally millions of self-managed, mostly democratically run organizations, including educational institutions, healthcare organizations, charities, religious bodies, arts and cultural groups, amateur sports clubs, producer and consumer cooperatives, credit unions, advocacy groups, and a near endless list of other formal and informal institutions that generate the social capital of society.

Currently, the social Commons is growing faster than the market economy in many countries around the world. Still, because what the social Commons creates is largely of social value, not pecuniary value, it is often dismissed by economists. Nonetheless, the social economy is an impressive force. According to a survey of 40 nations, the nonprofit Commons accounts for $2.2 trillion in operating expenditures. In eight countries surveyed--including the United States, Canada, Japan, and France--the nonprofit sector makes up, on average, 5 percent of the GDP. In the US, Canada, and the UK, the nonprofit sector already exceeds 10% of the workforce.

While the capitalist market is based on self-interest and driven by material gain, the social Commons is motivated by collaborative interests and driven by a deep desire to connect with others and share. If the former defends property rights, caveat emptor, and the search for autonomy, the latter promotes open-source innovation, transparency, and the search for community.

What makes the Commons more relevant today than at any other time in its long history is that we are now erecting a high-tech global technology platform whose defining characteristics potentially optimize the very values and operational principles that animate this age-old institution. The IoT is the technological "soul mate" of an emerging Collaborative Commons. The new infrastructure is configured to be distributed in nature in order to facilitate collaboration and the search for synergies, making it an ideal technological framework for advancing the social economy. The operating logic of the IoT is to optimize lateral peer production, universal access, and inclusion, the same sensibilities that are critical to the nurturing and creation of social capital in the civil society. The very purpose of the new technology platform is to encourage a sharing culture, which is what the Commons is all about. It is these design features of the IoT that bring
the social Commons out of the shadows, giving it a high-tech platform to become the dominant economic paradigm of the twenty-first century.

The Collaborative Commons is already profoundly impacting economic life. Markets are beginning to give way to networks, ownership is becoming less important than access, and the traditional dream of rags to riches is being supplanted by a new dream of a sustainable quality of life.

Hundreds of millions of people are transferring bits and pieces of their economic life from capitalist markets to the global Collaborative Commons. Prosumers are not only producing and sharing their own information, entertainment, green energy and 3D-printed goods at near zero marginal cost and enrolling in massive open online college courses for nearly free, on the Collaborative Commons. They are also sharing cars, homes, clothes, tools, toys, and countless other items with one another via social media sites, rentals, redistribution clubs, and cooperatives, at low or near zero marginal cost. An increasing number of people are collaborating in "patient-driven" health-care networks to improve diagnoses and find new treatments and cures for diseases, again at near zero marginal cost. And young social entrepreneurs are establishing socially responsible businesses, crowdfunding new enterprises, and even creating alternative social currencies in the new economy. The result is that "exchange value" in the marketplace is increasingly being replaced by "shareable value" on the Collaborative Commons.

In the unfolding struggle between the exchange economy and the sharing economy, most economists argue that if everything were nearly free, there would be no incentive to innovate and bring new goods and services to the fore because inventors and entrepreneurs would have no way to recoup their up-front costs. Yet millions of prosumers are freely collaborating in social Commons, creating new IT and software, new forms of entertainment, new learning tools, new media outlets, new green energies, new 3D-printed manufactured products, new peer-to-peer health-research initiatives, and new nonprofit social entrepreneurial business ventures, using open-source legal agreements freed up from intellectual property restraints. The upshot is a surge in creativity that is at least equal to the great innovative thrusts experienced by the capitalist market economy in the twentieth century.

While the capitalist market is not likely to disappear, it will no longer exclusively define the economic agenda for civilization. There will still be goods and services whose marginal costs are high enough to warrant their exchange in markets and sufficient profit to ensure a return on investment. But in a world in which more things are potentially nearly free and shareable, social capital is going to play a far more significant role than financial capital, and economic life is increasingly going to take place on a Collaborative Commons.


Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. Rifkin is an advisor to the European Union and to heads of state around the world, and is the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC. For more information, please go to www.thezeromarginalcostsociety.com.

More:

Marginal Cost Society Collaborative Commons 3D Printing DIY Prosumerism Prosumer

How to Live Like a Minimalist

Edited by Logoht, Salty Solutions, Maluniu, Leila and 3 others

Living like a minimalist is different from having a minimalist home by a long shot. Being a minimalist is a lifestyle that changes a lot of our habits in daily basis.

Steps

1. Being a minimalist starts with the idea. You have to believe that you are a minimalist, that you are above material goods.

2.  Start with the little things. Ask yourself: Do I really need this?

3.  To motivate yourself think about the advantages. Cleaning is easier, when you don't have so much stuff laying around.

4.   Categorize. Memories, necessities, etc. This helps the process.

5.   After your living space - your home - has reached a minimum, think about what to do with all the extra stuff you are going to get rid of. You can sell them, or give them to the church or "flea market" so that someone else may enjoy them. You can also put an advert to a local paper that you give away furniture and stuff to students for free or so on.

6.   Minimalistic thinking is quite easy. The whole idea is that you have only the things you actually need. This doesn't mean that they can't be expensive or anything, mainly that there isn't much of the stuff.

7.   When you are cleaning and you come up with an item you just recognized, you don't need it. If you could live without it without even remembering that particular item, then you can also give it up.

8.   When shopping for clothes and stuff, always ask yourself, do you really need it? And how long are you going to actually use it? If it's just something you want because someone else has the same item, is it really worth it? If you don't use it for yourself but for others, so that others could see that you have this or that, is it really worth it?

9.   It will save you a lot of money, when you don't buy anything that you don't really need. You can save this money to buy better quality things and live a better quality life in general.

10.   Organize. Keep your stuff (minimal as it might be) in order. This makes it so that even if you don't have a lot of stuff, you will still always find your things very easily and without effort.

11.   Now that you don't have that much furniture and general stuff, think about a smaller apartment. What use is it to pay yourself sick for an apartment that is at its best only half full? You don't need that much space.

12.   What about clothes? When did you actually use that particular shirt? Are those shorts too small? Give up the clothes you don't wear and are torn, too small, too big, too whatever. You don't need them.

13.   Do you have stuff in a warehouse or somewhere else?`Sort it out, if they are there, you seriously don't need them, or you just didn't have enough space in your home to keep them all in there. Give up those items you don't use and need and move the rest to your new apartment.

The Evolution of Social Consciousness

IONS

painting: Fariba Bogzaran, 3 Awakened Lines, 1999-2000©

Noetic Now

Cultivating Social Consciousness

 

by Marilyn Schlitz

What does it mean to be part of a greater whole? How does our worldview, or model of reality, impact what we understand about who we are and how we relate to others? And how can we become more aware of all the ways we are part of an interrelated, global community?

Recently my colleagues and I explored these questions in a report titled “Worldview Transformation and the Development of Social Consciousness” for the Journal of Consciousness Studies (Schlitz, Vieten, and Miller; 17, no. 7–8 (2010): 18–36). Based on decades of research on consciousness transformation, IONS researchers have developed a theoretical framework for understanding social consciousness. In this way, we have sought to understand the ways in which people are both conscious and unconscious about the world around them. And, more importantly, we seek to understand the powers and potentials of individual consciousness to move toward collective well-being.

It’s clear that we are social beings from the very beginning of life. Social relations impact every aspect of our being. Of course, there is developmental variability in the extent to which each of us is aware of culture’s impact on us. It takes a level of perceptual acuity, for example, to realize how all those car commercials impact what we drive and how we feel about it.

The complex dynamics of our social identity unfold through five nested levels of social consciousness. These in turn relate to transformations in worldview.

• The first level of social consciousness is what we refer to as embedded. Here consciousness is shaped without our awareness by social, cultural, and biological factors. It’s a kind of presocial consciousness that serves as a baseline for our own development. Social factors interact with our cognitive and biological processes, limiting our ability to know what shapes our inner experiences. Studies of inattentional blindness by psychologists, for instance, illustrate how our human brains are often “hard-wired” to exclude information that does not fit into our current meaning system. We see what we expect to see – and can consistently miss things we are not anticipating or that don’t support our belief system.

• With greater human choice and creativity, we may begin to express our human spirit in the face of on-going social and political influences. This leads to Level Two, which we call self-reflexive social consciousness. Here people gain awareness of how their experiences are conditioned by the social world. This can be accomplished through personal reflection and contemplative practices such as meditation. Scientists and spiritual teachers alike are working together to broaden our awareness of the world and our place in it. Psychologist and religious historian Louise Sundarararajan emphasizes that it is the capacity for self-reflexivity – the ability to step back and reflect on our thought process – that stimulate shifts in our mental representations. From insight meditation to the confessional in the Catholic tradition, to taking inventory of one’s behavior in the 12-step programs, each practice can help us to become more self-aware. In this process, we can begin to analyze our own biases and remove our perceptual blinders.

• Level Three is what we term engaged social consciousness. At this stage, we are not only aware of the social environment but begin to mobilize our intention to contribute to the greater good. There is a movement from “me” to “we” as our awareness moves us to actively engage in the wellbeing of others and the world. There is also an expansion of perspective-taking, in which we get better at seeing things from another person’s point of view. Scientific data from interpersonal neurobiology suggests that our brains develop through our connections to others. Additional data point to built in drives within us that lead us to search for purpose in our lives, suggesting that our brains are social organs.

• Level Four involves what we call collaborative social consciousness. Gaining greater awareness of ourselves in relation to the social world may lead us to participate in co-creating solutions with others. Here we begin to shape the social environment through collaborative actions. Within education, for example, we find an increasing focus on participatory learning, service learning, and project-based learning – each was developed to enhance the nature of collaborative social consciousness through discourse and conversation. Wisdom Cafes, Open Space Technology, and Bohmian Dialogue Groups offer collaborative explorations and life-affirming actions.

• Level Five is what we call resonant consciousness. At this stage of development people, report a sense of essential interrelatedness with others. They describe a “field” of shared experience and emergence that is felt and expressed in social groups. Mystical states of interconnectedness, deep rapport, unspoken communication, have all been expressed by spiritual teachers, educators, and psychologists alike, as a stage in social consciousness. These notions are further developed by research, such as that conducted at IONS, that speak to measurable links between one person’s intention and another person’s physiological activity, revealing an underlying entanglement between us. Such studies are evocative and provide an empirical basis for connections that lie beyond our physical relations.

Scientists, scholars, and contemplative teachers are finally beginning to work together to explore the ways in which people are conditioned by the biological, social, and physical world in which they are embedded, and in so doing to recognize a broader picture of our collective human potential.

Categories:

Collective Intelligence, Worldview

Topics:

Collective Consciousness, Community and Society, Worldviews

The Yah Way or the Laws of Karma

Saturday, September 14, 2013 12 Little Known Laws of Karma (That Will Change Your Life) 1K+ What is Karma? Karma is the Sanskrit word for action. It is equivalent to Newton's law of ‘every action must have a reaction’. When we think, speak or act we initiate a force that will react accordingly. This returning force maybe modified, changed or suspended, but most people will not be able eradicate it. 12 Little Known Laws of Karma (That Will Change Your Life)This law of cause and effect is not punishment, but is wholly for the sake of education or learning. A person may not escape the consequences of his actions, but he will suffer only if he himself has made the conditions ripe for his suffering. Ignorance of the law is no excuse whether the laws are man-made or universal. To stop being afraid and to start being empowered in the worlds of karma and reincarnation, here is what you need to know about karmic laws. THE GREAT LAW - "As you sow, so shall you reap". This is also known as the "Law of Cause and Effect". - Whatever we put out in the Universe is what comes back to us. - If what we want is Happiness, Peace, Love, Friendship... Then we should BE Happy, Peaceful, Loving and a True Friend. THE LAW OF CREATION - Life doesn't just HAPPEN, it requires our participation. - We are one with the Universe, both inside and out. - Whatever surrounds us gives us clues to our inner state. - BE yourself, and surround yourself with what you want to have present in your Life. THE LAW OF HUMILITY - What you refuse to accept, will continue for you. - If what we see is an enemy, or someone with a character trait that we find to be negative, then we ourselves are not focused on a higher level of existence. THE LAW OF GROWTH - "Wherever you go, there you are". - For us to GROW in Spirit, it is we who must change - and not the people, places or things around us. - The only given we have in our lives is OURSELVES and that is the only factor we have control over. - When we change who and what we are within our heart our life follows suit and changes too. THE LAW OF RESPONSIBILITY - Whenever there is something wrong in my life, there is something wrong in me. - We mirror what surrounds us - and what surrounds us mirrors us; this is a Universal Truth. - We must take responsibility what is in our life. THE LAW OF CONNECTION - Even if something we do seems inconsequential, it is very important that it gets done as everything in the Universe is connected. - Each step leads to the next step, and so forth and so on. - Someone must do the initial work to get a job done. - Neither the first step nor the last are of greater significance, - As they were both needed to accomplish the task. - Past-Present-Future they are all connected... THE LAW OF FOCUS - You can not think of two things at the same time. - When our focus is on Spiritual Values, it is impossible for us to have lower thoughts such as greed or anger. THE LAW OF GIVING AND HOSPITALITY - If you believe something to be true,then sometime in your life you will be called upon to demonstrate that particular truth. - Here is where we put what we CLAIM that we have learned, into actual PRACTICE. THE LAW OF HERE AND NOW - Looking backward to examine what was, prevents us from being totally in the HERE AND NOW. - Old thoughts, old patterns of behavior, old dreams... - Prevent us from having new ones. THE LAW OF CHANGE - History repeats itself until we learn the lessons that we need to change our path. THE LAW OF PATIENCE AND REWARD - All Rewards require initial toil. - Rewards of lasting value require patient and persistent toil. - True joy follows doing what we're suppose to be doing, and waiting for the reward to come in on its own time. THE LAW OF SIGNIFICANCE AND INSPIRATION - You get back from something whatever YOU have put into it. - The true value of something is a direct result of the energy and intent that is put into it. - Every personal contribution is also a contribution to the Whole. - Lack luster contributions have no impact on the Whole, nor do they work to diminish it. - Loving contributions bring life to, and inspire, the Whole. Read more at: http://www.social-consciousness.com/2013/09/12-little-known-laws-of-karma-that-will-change-your-life.html Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SocialConsciousness

Saturday, September 14, 2013 12 Little Known Laws of Karma (That Will Change Your Life) 1K+ What is Karma? Karma is the Sanskrit word for action. It is equivalent to Newton's law of ‘every action must have a reaction’. When we think, speak or act we initiate a force that will react accordingly. This returning force maybe modified, changed or suspended, but most people will not be able eradicate it. 12 Little Known Laws of Karma (That Will Change Your Life)This law of cause and effect is not punishment, but is wholly for the sake of education or learning. A person may not escape the consequences of his actions, but he will suffer only if he himself has made the conditions ripe for his suffering. Ignorance of the law is no excuse whether the laws are man-made or universal. To stop being afraid and to start being empowered in the worlds of karma and reincarnation, here is what you need to know about karmic laws. THE GREAT LAW - "As you sow, so shall you reap". This is also known as the "Law of Cause and Effect". - Whatever we put out in the Universe is what comes back to us. - If what we want is Happiness, Peace, Love, Friendship... Then we should BE Happy, Peaceful, Loving and a True Friend. THE LAW OF CREATION - Life doesn't just HAPPEN, it requires our participation. - We are one with the Universe, both inside and out. - Whatever surrounds us gives us clues to our inner state. - BE yourself, and surround yourself with what you want to have present in your Life. THE LAW OF HUMILITY - What you refuse to accept, will continue for you. - If what we see is an enemy, or someone with a character trait that we find to be negative, then we ourselves are not focused on a higher level of existence. THE LAW OF GROWTH - "Wherever you go, there you are". - For us to GROW in Spirit, it is we who must change - and not the people, places or things around us. - The only given we have in our lives is OURSELVES and that is the only factor we have control over. - When we change who and what we are within our heart our life follows suit and changes too. THE LAW OF RESPONSIBILITY - Whenever there is something wrong in my life, there is something wrong in me. - We mirror what surrounds us - and what surrounds us mirrors us; this is a Universal Truth. - We must take responsibility what is in our life. THE LAW OF CONNECTION - Even if something we do seems inconsequential, it is very important that it gets done as everything in the Universe is connected. - Each step leads to the next step, and so forth and so on. - Someone must do the initial work to get a job done. - Neither the first step nor the last are of greater significance, - As they were both needed to accomplish the task. - Past-Present-Future they are all connected... THE LAW OF FOCUS - You can not think of two things at the same time. - When our focus is on Spiritual Values, it is impossible for us to have lower thoughts such as greed or anger. THE LAW OF GIVING AND HOSPITALITY - If you believe something to be true,then sometime in your life you will be called upon to demonstrate that particular truth. - Here is where we put what we CLAIM that we have learned, into actual PRACTICE. THE LAW OF HERE AND NOW - Looking backward to examine what was, prevents us from being totally in the HERE AND NOW. - Old thoughts, old patterns of behavior, old dreams... - Prevent us from having new ones. THE LAW OF CHANGE - History repeats itself until we learn the lessons that we need to change our path. THE LAW OF PATIENCE AND REWARD - All Rewards require initial toil. - Rewards of lasting value require patient and persistent toil. - True joy follows doing what we're suppose to be doing, and waiting for the reward to come in on its own time. THE LAW OF SIGNIFICANCE AND INSPIRATION - You get back from something whatever YOU have put into it. - The true value of something is a direct result of the energy and intent that is put into it. - Every personal contribution is also a contribution to the Whole. - Lack luster contributions have no impact on the Whole, nor do they work to diminish it. - Loving contributions bring life to, and inspire, the Whole. Read more at: http://www.social-consciousness.com/2013/09/12-little-known-laws-of-karma-that-will-change-your-life.html Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SocialConsciousness

Saturday, September 14, 2013

12 Little Known Laws of Karma (That Will Change Your Life)

What is Karma? Karma is the Sanskrit word for action. It is equivalent to Newton's law of ‘every action must have a reaction’. When we think, speak or act we initiate a force that will react accordingly. This returning force maybe modified, changed or suspended, but most people will not be able eradicate it.

This law of cause and effect is not punishment, but is wholly for the sake of education or learning.

A person may not escape the consequences of his actions, but he will suffer only if he himself has made the conditions ripe for his suffering. Ignorance of the law is no excuse whether the laws are man-made or universal.

To stop being afraid and to start being empowered in the worlds of karma and reincarnation, here is what you need to know about karmic laws.

1. THE GREAT LAW

   - "As you sow, so shall you reap". This is also known as the "Law of Cause and Effect".
   - Whatever we put out in the Universe is what comes back to us.
   - If what we want is Happiness, Peace, Love, Friendship... Then we should BE Happy, Peaceful, Loving and a True Friend.

2. THE LAW OF CREATION

   - Life doesn't just HAPPEN, it requires our participation.
   - We are one with the Universe, both inside and out.
   - Whatever surrounds us gives us clues to our inner state.
   - BE yourself, and surround yourself with what you want to have present in your Life.

3. THE LAW OF HUMILITY

   - What you refuse to accept, will continue for you.
   - If what we see is an enemy, or someone with a character trait that we find to be negative, then we ourselves are not focused on a higher level of existence.

4. THE LAW OF GROWTH

   - "Wherever you go, there you are".
   - For us to GROW in Spirit, it is we who must change - and not the people, places or things around us.
   - The only given we have in our lives is OURSELVES and that is the only factor we have control over.
   - When we change who and what we are within our heart our life follows suit and changes too.

5. THE LAW OF RESPONSIBILITY

   - Whenever there is something wrong in my life, there is something wrong in me.
   - We mirror what surrounds us - and what surrounds us mirrors us; this is a Universal Truth.
   - We must take responsibility what is in our life.

6. THE LAW OF CONNECTION

   - Even if something we do seems inconsequential, it is very important that it gets done as everything in the Universe is connected.
   - Each step leads to the next step, and so forth and so on.
   - Someone must do the initial work to get a job done.
   - Neither the first step nor the last are of greater significance,
   - As they were both needed to accomplish the task.
   - Past-Present-Future they are all connected...

7. THE LAW OF FOCUS

   - You can not think of two things at the same time.
   - When our focus is on Spiritual Values, it is impossible for us to have lower thoughts such as greed or anger.

8. THE LAW OF GIVING AND HOSPITALITY

   - If you believe something to be true,then sometime in your life you will be called upon to demonstrate that particular truth.
   - Here is where we put what we CLAIM that we have learned, into actual PRACTICE.

9. THE LAW OF HERE AND NOW

   - Looking backward to examine what was, prevents us from being totally in the HERE AND NOW.
   - Old thoughts, old patterns of behavior, old dreams...
   - Prevent us from having new ones.

10. THE LAW OF CHANGE

    - History repeats itself until we learn the lessons that we need to change our path.

11. THE LAW OF PATIENCE AND REWARD

    - All Rewards require initial toil.
    - Rewards of lasting value require patient and persistent toil.
    - True joy follows doing what we're suppose to be doing, and waiting for the reward to come in on its own time.

12. THE LAW OF SIGNIFICANCE AND INSPIRATION

    - You get back from something whatever YOU have put into it.
    - The true value of something is a direct result of the energy and intent that is put into it.
    - Every personal contribution is also a contribution to the Whole.
    - Lack luster contributions have no impact on the Whole, nor do they work to diminish it.
    - Loving contributions bring life to, and inspire, the Whole.

The 10 Most Important Things to Simplify in Your Life

Becoming Minimalist

The 10 Most Important Things to Simplify in Your Life

Written by joshua becker · 266 Comments

 

“Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.” – Thomas Kempis


Simplicity brings balance, freedom, and joy. When we begin to live simply and experience these benefits, we begin to ask the next question, “Where else in my life can i remove distraction and simply focus on the essential?”

Based on our personal journey, our conversations, and our observations, here is a list of the 10 most important things to simplify in your life today to begin living a more balanced, joyful lifestyle:

1. Your Possessions - Too many material possessions complicate our lives to a greater degree than we ever give them credit. They drain our bank account, our energy, and our attention. They keep us from the ones we love and from living a life based on our values. If you will invest the time to remove nonessential possessions from your life, you will never regret it. For further reading on this, consider Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life.
2. Your Time Commitments – Most of us have filled our days full from beginning to end with time commitments: work, home, kid’s activities, community events, religious endeavors, hobbies… the list goes on. When possible, release yourself from the time commitments that are not in line with your greatest values.
3. Your Goals – Reduce the number of goals you are intentionally striving for in your life to one or two. By reducing the number of goals that you are striving to accomplish, you will improve your focus and your success rate. Make a list of the things that you want to accomplish in your life and choose the two most important. When you finish one, add another from your list.
4. Your Negative Thoughts – Most negative emotions are completely useless. Resentment, bitterness, hate, and jealousy have never improved the quality of life for a single human being. Take responsibility for your mind. Forgive past hurts and replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
5. Your Debt – If debt is holding you captive, reduce it. Start today. Do what you’ve got to do to get out from under its weight. Find the help that you need. Sacrifice luxury today to enjoy freedom tomorrow.
6. Your Words – Use fewer words. Keep your speech plain and honest. Mean what you say. Avoid gossip.
7. Your Artificial Ingredients – Avoid trans fats, refined grain (white bread), high-fructose corn syrup, and too much sodium. Minimizing these ingredients will improve your energy level in the short-term and your health in the long-term. Also, as much as possible, reduce your consumption of over-the-counter medicine – allow your body to heal itself naturally as opposed to building a dependency on substances.
8. Your Screen Time – Focusing your attention on television, movies, video games, and technology affects your life more than you think. Media rearranges your values. It begins to dominate your life. And it has a profound impact on your attitude and outlook. Unfortunately, when you live in that world on a consistent basis, you don’t even notice how it is impacting you. The only way to fully appreciate its influence in your life is to turn them off.
9. Your Connections to the World - Relationships with others are good, but constant streams of distraction are bad. Learn when to power off the blackberry, log off facebook, or not read a text. Focus on the important, not the urgent. A steady flow of distractions from other people may make us feel important, needed, or wanted, but feeling important and accomplishing importance are completely different things.
10. Your Multi-Tasking - Research indicates that multi-tasking increases stress and lowers productivity. while single-tasking is becoming a lost art, learn it. Handle one task at a time. Do it well. And when it is complete, move to the next.