The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism  (2014)

By:  Jeremy Rifkin

Why I Got This Book: It's pretty curious  that I was drawn to a book that is essentially a publication about economic issues, something I normally stay away from, but after watching Rifkin in a youtube video on the Big Think channel pushing this book and I was fascinated by the central premise of the book which I'm going to share with you guys the thing I found most interesting and I understood, because economy is feild I understand too much.

Central Thymes:
•    The future of Capitalism for Rifkin is a new evolved system a hybrid economy fusing capitalism and collaborative commons. The collaborative commons ( CC) actually predates the representative government and the capitalist market, these social entities formal and informal groups enrich society with its social capital. The CC uses common resource agreed amongst the members to be used collectively, in a democratic fashion. These communes find their genesis in Feudal European society.  This system produces a fascinating economic actor the prosumer and redefines private property. Jeremy establishes the Prosumer and collaborative vs Investors and capitalist.
•    The Internet of Things (IOT) will usher in the change to the economic paradigm, which is composed of a communications internet, a logistics internet, and an energy internet. This will push capitalist economy which is based on scarcity,  will convert and give way to an economy of abundance. 
•    The ever growing trend of sharing goods is taking a deep cut into the retail sector.
•    Author implicitly implies that technological innovation is the true motor of history, which is a very interesting and provocative way of viewing history.
•    Coal leads to steam power and the first industrial revolution, with this new energy matrix brought forth, steam printing making information more accessible and generated the need of a public school system to learn how to read and become professionals that industry  needed, steam trains which compressed time and space and one fundamental aspect they were dependable.     Also, the creation of a national postal service and trains quickened commercial transaction. Later the advent of the telegraphy accelerated this proses even more.
•    In the second industrial revolution was fueled by oil which need high skilled professionals and lots of financial capital, created a new communication matrix with the invention of the internal combustion engine leading to cars and the construction of highway system, which made many people start to move out of cities into suburban lives, especially with electricity becoming more available.
•    The end of the age of privacy and transparency across the board will become the norm. Privacy was a product of capitalism by a life behind closed doors, enclosures and privatization left people fenced off against the world.
•    3 D printers are game changers in the world of manufacturing, the first being open sourced, as they evolve the become more efficient versatile in what the can create and produce much less waste compared to traditional manufacturing. But the most interesting aspect of this invention that thanks to prosumers the cost per unit dropped from 30.000 dollars in 2002 to 1.000 in 2017. It one of the few inventions in the world that it is self-sustainable because it can print its own parts. With inventions like the 3 D printer worker can become owners, consumers into prosumer, with less need to commute to work there for less use of vehicles leading to the decompression of highly dense urban core, people of the future will have less need to cluster.
•    What we call globalization was basically just a phase where the government decided to deregulate international trade and push for the privatization of public services, wrapped in the promise of global connectivity, but the whole process was at the service of privet enterprise, so the author establishes that the Global Commons is something different to Globalization.
•    Cooperatives are major players in the CC, they are none profit are more efficient than the State because they work at a ground level capitalizing on lateral power, and work even better if the State gives it a hand, the book explains how electricity reach every corner of the United State because of the work of Cooperatives. In Europe, Cooperative are pushing the growth of the use of clean energies.
•    Self-driven vehicles that will be a reality sooner than later are another game changers revolutionize human transport and the transport of goods, being a fundamental part of the IOT, once integrated the cost of transport will drop and become much more efficient.

What I liked :
•    Author dives deep into the evolution of Capitalism from a very interesting and unique perspective.
•    Fascinating affirmation that the downfall of Capitalism as we know is a product of its owns downing a natural evolution being push by the progress of cutting edge technology. What I like about the book is an alternative narrative to the end of capitalism, which is pretty much an obsession of the hard left with a revolution against the system and watching it crash and burn. Rifkin illustrates a mutation of traditional capitalism, but I must mention that the transition phase seems to be pretty complicated on a social level, with the growth of unemployment which can lead to social unrest.
•    I found it interesting how the author  gets into  the evolution of privet property, where basically the encloser movement ushered the concept of property  pushing the peasants off the land transformed them into free agents, while at the same time the early phases of the industrial revolution and the market economy, lead to legal protection of property and the right of ownership. This spawn the need for more police and courts.
•    Rifkin explains that companies that own and ran the train are the first modern cooperation, where the owner does not presuppose management, that need highly trained professional and high level of investment that took time to reap the gains.
•    The book  gets into the end a privacy as we know it, and this is something we are dealing with now how every aspect of our lives can be scrutinized from the internet, each person leaves a pretty big digital footprint and much of the information we have given away for dumping all kinds of information in social media pages. 
•    Cars are the ultimate enclosure for the previous generation it was a sign of economic maturity for the economic actor, I was totally surprised of the fact that sharing cars is a thing now, which leads to less carbon emission and fewer cars on the road.
•   
What I didn't like or Debatable Stuff:
The book repeats its self to much and drags in certain parts, I stopped reading it twice.

It hard to debate to many things in this books because I'm not an economist, but I must say that the author mentions how all of these inventions will revolutionize manufacturing and impact tremendously in the labor market, but totally glosses over the social unrest the transition phase can potentially have.

Overall: The book gets an 8 out of 10, it gets you thinking.

Book Review and breakdown Slavoj Zizek's Trouble in Paradise. From the End of History to the End of Capitalism (2014) Work in progress

Trouble in Paradise. From the End of History to the End of Capitalism  (2014)

Here a link to a brief video that I made on the subject: link to my incredible video review of the Slavoj's book

By Slavoj Zizek

Why I Bought This Book: I actually caught a couple of dissertation of Zizek online, it was recommended to me by my Youtube feed. And immediately I was fascinated with him because even though I do not share most of his views on politics and international relations, he has a refreshing point of view from the left, being very critical of his own political background. So I went out to get one his books and to my surprise, I found about ten published books in Spanish at my local book store, I had no idea that he was such an established author.

What I liked and  Central Thymes:

·         Slavoj establishes that conservatives are not really conservatives, they have latched on to an ever changing capitalism system, becoming reckless. Even if it destroys many traditional social institutions, putting social cohesion under immense pressure. This is very true from my point of view, and it's increasingly evident that many time put ideology over the well being and the way of life, backing policies that are detrimental to them.

·         The real Conservative is the person that admits that there is antagonism in the capitalist system and it has gotten to certain dead ends. It is the person that calls out against out simple minded capitalist progress, so the radical left finds its self-playing the role of being the new conservatives. He's actually onto something here but later abandons this idea later in the book.

·         Rightwing conservatives always defend the freedom of choice but taking away the options.

Slavoj Zizek

·         Neoliberalism has taken market competition into every aspect of life, like in education and health.  

·         Zizek establishes a fascinating concept that in modern capitalism individual people are not seen as parts of the work force, but as entrepreneurs that make use and take advantage of his or hers economic capital. And while their lives progress they most take investments decisions relative to their economic well-being. They make a good and bad investment, like changing jobs, adding or losing their personal capital. After reading this I couldn't help to think about credit cards, and how debt is a possible way of political and financial control. But the book actually goes in this direction after that explain that there is a tradeoff of losing social protection for the debt. So from my point of view but I think Slavoj would be on the same page, be my personal conclusion with this is basically debt ties down social mobility something conservative just love. Slavoj uses the example you do not have the right to a home but must access long term credits.

·         People are free to make financial decisions so they are responsible they are their own capitalist responsible for their own future, but conservative just love to forget about how debt and externalities can ruin people's lives.

·          State must roll back its control to give the system freedom.

·         Slovoj has an obvious soft spot for pop culture and that brings some color to the book.

·         Slavoj expresses that the people that we call Islamic fundamentalist, are Pseudo-fundamentalist who are deeply troubled, fascinated and fixated on the lives of the nonbelievers, they obsess about the sinner and infidels. In their battle against sin, they are actual exteriorizing their lack of faith and conviction fuels the violence. They also secretly consider themselves as inferior, so politically correct discourse from the west towards these people just drives these people off the wall. The cultural difference isn't the issue with these fundamentalists, because are pushed to act  out of how much they have become similar to us.

What I didn't like:

·         It is interesting and frustrating at the same time that this book lacks any kind of focus, while in his dissertations he's much more centered and straight to the point, normally it's the other way around.

·         The lack of focus is so bad at moments where you as the reader actually get lost in what the hell he was talking about. The author is all over the place and just bombards you with information, it hard to keep up with what he's trying to explain.

·         At the book references Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History"  as one of the main concepts that it wants to debunk, but never revisits the idea after the introduction.

·         Zizek accuses Christianity of preparing the groundwork for this situation, one owes God infinite debt for one's life. But for me at least being Catholic I that it religious doctrine does not go hand and hand with hardcore capitalist doctrine, or just ask Francis what he thinks about neoliberalism.

·         Institution like Wikileaks is a true sign of the progressive democratization of information, the author completely ignores the political aspect of this phenomena. Now he's right in how that information will become more ubiquitous as time progresses, from my point of view it will not be a Hacker thing 20 years down the line.

Reading this book you get the feeling that I'm missing out on things because I'm not familiar with the rest of his body of work, you have to know what makes this guy tick to really appreciate what he's trying to convey in this book, I got to read his older stuff. So I can't grade this book.