Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

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daniel_reetz
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Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

Post by daniel_reetz »

Most interesting speech I've seen in a long while:

http://rushkoff.com/2009/11/21/radical-abundance/
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Re: Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

Post by StevePoling »

I disagree with Mr. Rushkoff's thesis that pre-Renaissance currencies were abundance-based. Currencies were on the gold standard because nobody used paper money and coinage was in precious metals. Gold was didn't rust and rats didn't eat it. It's always been scarce. Monetizing schemes were accomplished by adding dross to the materials used in coinage. You'd bite a coin to verify its gold content.

And I doubt that the Black Death was a scheme to restore scarcity to a labor market.

Mr. Rushkoff would like to replace the US Dollar (and every other currency) with another medium for wealth transfer for <wave hands> digital stuff. I doubt that the US Government will allow this: How would they tax it? How would the government borrow against it?

Nevertheless, he's got his finger on something. There is not enough gold in the world to sustain a return to the gold standard. The government has turned on the printing presses to continue spending in spite of collapsing tax revenues, the price of gold has skyrocketed, and no other currency is stepping up to take the Dollar's role in international commerce. During the Carter administration inflation was nuts, interest rates exceeded 20%, and some businesses went to barter schemes not unlike what Mr. Rushkoff failed to elaborate.

Walking with my wife tonight, I told her, "no matter what happens to the economy, it won't change our lifestyle." She thought it was b/c our mortgage is paid, but I'd just picked a VCR out of a neighbor's trash. "No, we'll just make or fix stuff." Here's what I'd hoped Mr. Rushkoff would have said: We live in a time where the best stuff is cheap and getting cheaper. Makers can get along quite nicely by putting together the little bits of kit that leverage it into better stuff. We just need cheap electricity.
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Re: Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

Post by rob »

Well... my own personal philosophy is that the Age of Scarcity will come to an end between 2025 and 2035 with the start of advanced nanotechnology and artificial intelligence... culminating in the technological singularity (the Rapture for Geeks) in 2045.

Incidentally, one of Ray Kurzweil's predictions from 2007 recently came true: an application on a mobile phone that translates from one spoken language to another "by 2010": (Spanish <-> English) Jibbigo.
The Singularity is Near. ~ http://halfbakedmaker.org ~ Follow me as I build the world's first all-mechanical steam-powered computer.
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Re: Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

Post by StevePoling »

I became a lot less sanguine about Post-Scarcity when I had a conversation with a friend about human nature. There's something in human nature that's just a little spiteful in that we'll find SOMETHING that's scarce and use that to lord it over one another. We just have to make sure that something isn't something folks need to live, like food, heat, shelter, etc. I'm an anti-copyrights fundamentalist b/c I believe it's morally wrong to create artificial scarcities. It's annoying when those artificial scarcities keep books, movies, tunes, or jewelry expensive, but it's ungodly to artificially make food expensive like the Department of Agriculture used to do during/after the Depression. (Although back then my dad would get free welfare cheese when he went on strike.)
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Re: Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

Post by daniel_reetz »

I think whether or not you agree with his thesis, the idea that a new distribution system warrants a new form of currency is a pretty interesting one. I, for one, would like to see the development of almost any kind of system that makes scarcity an undesirable property and actually values human labor. My background is in Art, and there people pull all kinds of idiot tricks with reproducible media (printmaking/photography being the worst offenders) -- taking a medium that is fundamentally reproducible and doing "limited editions" with it, in my opinion, flies in the face of Art and sanity.
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Re: Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

Post by StevePoling »

daniel_reetz wrote:...taking a medium that is fundamentally reproducible and doing "limited editions" with it, in my opinion, flies in the face of Art and sanity.
It depends upon what you mean by "limited editions." Last week a fellow on the news said he stood in line to get a signed copy of Sarah Palin's book, not because he's a fan, but because a signed copy has collectible value. Any author only has the time to sign a few thousand copies. This one kind of limited edition that I'm happy about. Conversely, some artists create a lithograph, print N copies, then break the stone. I think this is wrong and stupid.
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Re: Douglash Rushkoff talks about "Radical Abundance"

Post by daniel_reetz »

Conversely, some artists create a lithograph, print N copies, then break the stone.
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, but I'm talking about it where there isn't even a litho stone to break. Limited editions of digital prints? Come on.
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