The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (47 page)
Authors: Jeremy Rifkin
The point is that while the entrepreneurial spirit of the marketplace is helping drive the economy to near zero marginal cost and near free goods and services, it’s doing so on an enabling infrastructure made possible by the creative content of all three sectors—the government, the social economy on the Commons, and the market. The contributions from players in all three sectors suggest that the new economic paradigm will likewise continue to be a hybrid venture of the government, the market, and the Commons, although by midcentury the Collaborative Commons is likely to define much of the economic life of society.
I’d like to address my final remarks to those ensconced in the heart of the capitalist system who fear that an approaching society of nearly zero marginal cost will spell their own ruin. Economies are never static. They continually evolve and occasionally metamorphose into entirely new forms. Likewise, business enterprises come and go as economies change. Peter Senge of the MIT Sloan School of Management points out that the average life span of a Fortune 500 Company is only around 30 years. Indeed, only 71 companies that appeared in the original Fortune 500 list of biggest companies in 1955 were still on the list in 2012.
2
It’s not that we wake up one day and suddenly the old economic order has been routed and a new regime has slipped into place. Recall that the Second Industrial Revolution emerged in the 1890s while the First Industrial Revolution was in full throttle and ran parallel to it for another half century until it eventually became the dominant economic force. During the long transition, many First Industrial Revolution industries and companies withered and died—but not all. Those that survived reinvented themselves along the way and found the right balancing act that allowed them to be in two industrial eras simultaneously, while carefully retiring the old model and easing into the new one. Many more start-up companies seized hold of the new opportunities that the Second Industrial Revolution made possible and quickly filled up the remaining playing field.
Similarly, today many Second Industrial Revolution companies are faced with a comparable opportunity, and a choice. Some are already making the leap into the Third Industrial Revolution, incorporating the new business models and services into their existing portfolios and developing transitional strategies to keep pace with the paradigm shift into a hybrid economy made up of both the Collaborative Commons and conventional capitalist marketplace.
The powerful social forces unleashed by the coming zero marginal cost society are both disruptive and liberating. They are unlikely to be
curtailed or reversed. The transition from the capitalist era to the Collaborative Age is gaining momentum in every region in the world—hopefully, in time to heal the biosphere and create a more just, humane, and sustainable global economy for every human being on Earth in the first half of the twenty-first century.
Notes
Chapter 1
1. Jean-Baptiste Say,
A Treatise on Political Economy
(Philadelphia: Grigg & Elliot, 1843), 134–35.
26. Salamon, “Putting the Civil Society Sector,” 198.
27. “Collaborative [1800–2000], English,” Google Books NGram Viewer, http://books.google.com
/ngrams/ (accessed June 12, 2013); “Google Books Ngram Viewer,” University at Buffalo, http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/pdp/index.asp?ID=497 (accessed December 16, 2013).
Chapter 2
5. Rubenstein,
The Age of Triage,
43; Slater,
The English Peasantry,
6.
6. Thomas More,
Utopia
(Rockville, MD: Arc Manor, 2008), 20.
7. Rubenstein,
The Age of Triage,
46.
8. Lynn White,
Medieval Technology and Social Change
(London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 129.
9. Karl Marx,
The Poverty of Philosophy
(Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1920), 119.
13. White,
Medieval Technology and Social Change,
87.
14. Debeir, Deléage, and Hémery,
In the Servitude of Power,
79.
18. Debeir, Deléage, and Hémery,
In the Servitude of Power,
90.
19. White,
Medieval Technology,
128–29.
Chapter 3
3. Adam Smith,
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1843), 20.
9. Eric J. Hobsbawm,
The Age of Capital, 1848–1875
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 40.
10. Eric J. Hobsbawm,
The Age of Revolution,
1789–1848
(New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 298.
15. A. Hyma,
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(Ann Arbor, MI: George Wahr, 1953).
17. Chandler,
The Visible Hand,
120.
25. Chandler,
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230.
36. “Milestones in AT&T History,” AT&T, http://www.corp.att.com/history/milestones.html.
37. Thierer, “Unnatural Monopoly,” 274.
39. Noobar Retheos Danielian,
AT&T: The Story of Industrial Conquest
(New York: Vanguard Press, 1939), 252.
45. Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther,
Edison as I Know Him
(New York: Cosmopolitan Books, 1930), 30.
46. Nye,
Electrifying America,
186.
47. Daniel Yergen,
The Prize
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 208.
48. Q. A. Mowbray,
Road to Ruin
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969), 15.
49. Kenneth R. Schneider,
Autokind vs. Mankind
(Lincoln, NE: Authors Choice Press, 2005), 123.
50. “The Dramatic Story of Oil’s Influence on the World,”
Oregon Focus
(January 1993): 10–11.
