The non-virtual elephant in Paul Mason’s postcapitalist sharing-economy room
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Version 0 of 1. Since I can’t sprinkle Wikipedia on my porridge, clothe myself with an open-source pattern for jeans, or access the internet by data alone, I’m puzzled about Paul Mason’s postcapitalist proto-utopia (Welcome to a new way of living, Review, 18 July). How does he propose dealing with the non-virtual elephant in the middle of his sharing economy: ie that the means of production – the factories, mines, farms and power plants that make the stuff we need and use – are all owned by someone who expects payment? Is the missing detail to his argument the abolition of private property? Because surely it would take that, even to access the internet and its wealth of data for free, and be clothed, housed, etc. It has taken thousands of years of human ingenuity to build a smartphone, and every link in that vast chain – from rare-earth mines to polymer labs to the farmers who feed the delivery drivers who put the smartphone through your letterbox – expects payment for their property and their effort. Much, not all, technological innovation depends on the desire to make profit. Is the proposition, seriously, that the myriad corporations and companies and individuals who build the robots that will make work vanish and abundance continuous, will give up their robots, and their robots’ products – be these phones or fishmeal – for free? In the meantime, for every robot that comes online, that’s several humans who lose their wages, unable to buy what the robot is making or vending. It doesn’t add up, does it? Please come out of your peer-to-peer data cloud and tell us the answer, Paul Mason.Nigel PollittLondon |