Last edited Fri Jul 17, 2015, 07:53 PM - Edit history (1)
The reason we're not all working less for a higher standard of living is that the 1%'s figured out – at least temporarily – how to scrape off all the excess value we've created during the last several decades. They did this through regressive tax changes; the vitiation of labor laws; "free trade" agreements that ensured a race to the bottom w.r.t. wages, work conditions, and environmental protections; the repeal of Glass-Steagall and other regulations/enforcement that, for a while, had made various kinds of looting more difficult; and perhaps most importantly, through the acquisition of some 95% of traditional media worldwide; etc.
But there's nothing that says it has to remain that way.
And I think the author has interesting points in the ideas that information may be harder to possess and control than physical products and infrastructure, AND that there are an attraction inherent in the power of info-sharing, as well as exponential progress/gains created when information is freely shared . . .
and that the capitalist need to own/possess/control all that info-product is, in some sense, fighting the tide . . .
My main concern is that we've experienced similar flourishings when new info-sharing technologies were invented in the past (e.g., the Gutenberg printing press), and the results were indeed disruptive to the existing power structures . . . until eventually, the 1% got control of it.
And the 1% are doing everything possible to try to get control of the internet, and have already had considerable success.
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