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If you’re already thinking that The Zero Marginal Cost Society belongs to
the genre of techno-futurism that resorts to extreme predictions to attract
attention, then you’d be right. The value of this book, however, doesn’t lie
in the accuracy of its specific forecasts, but rather in the extrapolations of
current trends that enable Rifkin to reach them. On that measure, this is a
thought-provoking read that pushes some of the most important new
technologies to their logical – and sometimes scary – conclusions. Take the
machines that underpin the book’s central argument.
These machines will also be fully automatic and require no human labour
to operate. As a result, they will throw off products at virtually no cost,
save the minimal one of supplying the basic raw materials. This gets to the
heart of Rifkin’s argument. If the marginal cost of producing each
additional item falls to essentially nothing, then everything becomes free.
In their pursuit of profit, businesses will have irrevocably undermined their
own margins: capitalism will have destroyed itself. But don’t despair.
Rising in its place, Rifkin argues, will be a civilisation based on a new and
more fulfilling communitarianism, free of the hang-ups that have
characterised the materialistic individualism of the late capitalist age.
One is that the “sharing economy” (think letting out your spare room on
Airbnb or summoning a car on Uber) will overthrow some of the biggest
companies on the planet. It will only take between 10 and 30 per cent of a
particular market to shift to these self-help networks, argues Rifkin, for the
thin profit margins of giant companies to shrink to nothing. A second
prediction is that a decentralised network of alternative energy sources will
replace the existing vertically integrated, carbon-based energy industry. It
will be made up of “prosumers” generating their own power and networked
together through a smart grid that routes power to where it is needed.
By the middle of this century, says Rifkin, 80 per cent of electricity will be
generated this way – an estimate he claims is conservative. A third trend is
the elimination of work, as the machines take over. According to Rifkin,
workers – and the profitmaking companies that employ them – can look
forward to one last hurrah. This will cover the 40-year period it takes to
build the world’s smart, self-replicating infrastructure. After that, it will be
the end of history for labour: apart from a few people needed to programme
and monitor the machines, it’s all over for the wage slaves and salarymen.
One is that capitalism has proved pretty adaptable so far. When markets are
commoditised and profits evaporate, capitalists have been good at either
monopolising industries or finding new sources of value to build on top of
the commoditised markets of the past. Just because, from the blinkered
present, we can’t see what the markets of the future will be, it doesn’t mean
they won’t exist. A second quibble is with Rifkin’s assumptions about how
human nature will change to accommodate the new realities he describes.
After all, if everything is free, won’t that lead to an even greater
materialism that wrecks the planet for good?
The way Rifkin sees it, replacing scarcity with abundance will spell the
death of materialism. When everything is in plentiful supply, why gather
and hoard? Rather than outright ownership, the humans who populate his
future will be content with access to material goods, many of which will be
shared – just as they are already becoming accustomed to accessing digital
goods in a world of infinite supply.
The millennial generation, as he sees it, is already hankering for this more
collaborative, altruistic society. He also sees an automatic stabilisation that
brings the human race into a permanent equilibrium with the planet. As
living standards rise, birth rates in poorer parts of the world will fall: the
global population will gradually fall back to a sustainable 5bn (though it
isn’t clear why Rifkin picked this level).