
The World After Capital - sethbannon
http://worldaftercapital.org
======
Ixiaus
We do not live in a post-scarcity world, just the illusion of one. Ecological
systems will collapse because humans' unchecked consumption patterns disrupt
the homeostasis of those systems.

I feel sad that this person writes about "post-scarcity" and "post-capitalism"
because it reinforces for me the fact that this person with the resources and
station in life to help take responsibility for this accelerating,
destabilizing train ride instead chooses to talk about a fanciful Utopia.

~~~
ixtli
I think it's fair to argue that scarcity has been reduced significantly, and
continues to be reduced. It's been replaced by hoarding. I agree that this
book is a little naive in that way (from what i've skimmed) but it's also
important not to dismiss the spirit of the claim just because we haven't
totally solved all of our dependencies on limited resources.

edit: I also wanna point out that i get frustrated when people say "late stage
capitalism" or "post-capitalism" because it's really presumptuous. For one
thing, you have no evidence that you're anywhere near the "end" of capitalism,
or even that it's in decline!

~~~
emodendroket
Average life spans in the first world beginning to actually fall is a sign of
_some_ kind of decline.

~~~
ixtli
Oh there are lots of ways to show that things are declining, but capitalism
has been successful in concentrating wealth in the hands of those who have it.
That system is working for those in power and as such I think it's extremely
presumptuous to say we're living in the "late stage" or that we're anywhere
knowably near the "post-" part of capitalism.

~~~
emodendroket
The question is whether that state of affairs can exist forever, or if the
system can find a way to adapt and head off any cataclysm.

~~~
facingworlds
Genuinely curious, when was the last time humanity pro actively headed off a
huge systemic problem instead of waiting for it to become a crisis?

~~~
emodendroket
I think the Great Depression could plausibly have ended with the total
collapse of the US government if not for the combination of the New Deal and
the WWII-driven stimulus.

I guess the problem with answering this question definitively is the
counterfactual nature. Who's to really say what things _would_ have been
calamitous that ended up not turning out to be?

------
yusee
This is a non-serious piece. Not a single mention of mining/resource
extraction or security. As long as people are fighting over rocks, we live in
a capital-driven world. Key questions are who owns the minerals in the ground
and the airwaves in the sky? "Humanism" has always been an ironic euphemism
for imperialism, and I suppose it still is in "the world after capital."

~~~
imglorp
Even if we had enough rocks, we'd still find something to fight about: ideas
even.

Objectively, the number of wars deaths is going down, but tribalism overall
seems to be going strong. Humanity has some growing to do, still.

------
rufusroflpunch
We're no where close to eliminating scarcity or capital. We're so far from
that there is almost no point in giving it serious merit. Probably centuries
away. Humans being will be limited by scarcity until we're able to convert
matter from one substance to another with ease, and able to freely genetically
engineer ourselves to survive on other worlds.

~~~
commandlinefan
I think that's the most important (and one of the least examined) aspect of
"post-capitalism". It's easy for me and, I assume, anybody else to _envision_
a world where there's no more useful work for humans to do and therefore no
further need for people to "earn a living". However, it seems pretty obvious
that we're not there yet. We might be ten years away, we might be a thousand
years away - but destroying civilization now because we figure we might get
there in the near future strikes me as unwise. While I see lots of people
debating about what to do when we get to the "end of capitalism", I see very
few people trying to find any common ground as to how to figure out when we
get to that point.

~~~
emodendroket
I think most people talking about the end of capitalism are imagining the
system caving in on itself rather than its gentle evolution into a Utopian
post-capitalist state.

------
cko
> We need to figure out how to live in a World After Capital in which the only
> scarcity is our attention.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this issue. I believe that at the end of
the day attention is the only finite resource. Sure, you can say time, but
that’s more relative. For example - waiting in line at the supermarket seems
like a waste of time, but if mind’s attention is uplifted / benevolent / doing
something productive (whatever your values are) then it is a net gain.

Meanwhile I spend so much of my day watching YouTube and reading HN in a
distracted and mindless manner.

Perhaps being Buddhist years ago shaped this perspective.

~~~
nradov
High quality land will always be a finite resource. They aren't making any
more of it.

~~~
cko
As a real estate investor, this is kind of true. Though for now there’s a lot
of undeveloped land, if you venture beyond cities. And we could always build
vertically. And some kind of Elysium-like thing. Some of it will have to be
farmland, of course.

~~~
nradov
Most of that undeveloped land is undeveloped for a reason. The high quality
locations (climate, natural resources, waterways) are already developed.

All else being equal, the majority of people prefer to have some space and
privacy rather than being crammed into dense vertical developments.

------
java_script
Started skimming this and immediately started to wonder this guy's
credentials, especially when I got to the parts on UBI and communism and how
"governments distort markets". Like how can you write a book called "The World
After Capital" with such a thin understanding of capitalism and the very very
obvious prior art here, Marxism.

Then went back to the preface for the money shot:

> As a Venture Capitalist (“VC”)....

------
dandare
> One of my fundamental claims is that capital is no longer scarce. There is
> enough capital in the world to meet everyone's basic needs.

When was there not enough capital in the world to meet everyone's basic needs?

The 2015 estimated World GDP per capita is $16,800, or $46/day. The poverty
threshold is $2 per day.

We crossed that threshold long before 1990.

~~~
slx26
Author is talking about different ages there, and reasoning that capital
abundance will lead, amongst others (like technology development), to the
transition from the industrial age to the next one, "the world after capital".
Wikipedia says industrial age began around 1760. I don't understand why you
talk about 1990.

~~~
dandare
Because the worldbank.org GDP per capita data start at 1990 :D. At it was
still about $15 per day. I don't know if the poverty threshold was different
back then.

[[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD)]

~~~
dredmorbius
Angus Maddison's data date back to the year 1 CE. They are frequently used in
historic economic analysis.

[https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/](https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/)

------
narag
Wikipedia defines capital as "a factor of production that is not wanted for
itself but for its ability to help in producing other goods". That's the
definition I learned in high school while studying Marx.

There is not an "after capital" world. To manufacture anything you need
capital first. Even for software services you need software, that's also
capital. So to reach a world of post-scarcity you need _a lot_ of capital.

~~~
aninhumer
The argument being made here is not that we don't need the things we call
capital, it's that we have enough capital now that allocating it is not the
primary problem we need our economy to solve, and that the current system we
use to do so (i.e. Capitalism) is limiting our ability to prioritise anything
other than the creation of more capital.

Therefore I would read the title not as "after capital ceases to exist" but
"after capital ceases to be as relevant".

~~~
gt_
Fair point. But, the concerns with _attention_ are the other part of this
thesis. _How is attention related to capital?_. I think this is a fair
question.

Something worth considering in relating this to Marx is that while Karl Marx
did not live at a time that would have favored a deep awareness of _media_ ,
his work is very concerned with culture. His more economic terminology was
"human relations" and how capital _mediates_ human relations.

These days, what we call _media_ ("mediation" of human communication) is at
the root of our concerns with _attention_.

Having studied Marx, I assume my eagerness to relate his work to contemporary
economics discussions might seem desperate but it seems desperate to me that
others try so hard to do otherwise. I hope you'll forgive me.

Marx did live in a more simple time but the wonder of his work is that he
identified so much of the forces that guide our society. Even living at a time
when attention was at a surplus, his work is robust and thoughtful enough to
translate in _more_ modern times.

~~~
aninhumer
If you're interested in the role of attention under capitalism, I would
recommend Peter Coffin's videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/petercoffin](https://www.youtube.com/user/petercoffin)

Most of his stuff is focused on how attention is used to manipulate people's
worldview in the "Marketplace of Ideas", but his latest video is about
considering attention as labour. (Although, I thought it was a little unclear
tbh)

------
drallison
Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030: World leaders
urged to act as anger over inequality reaches a ‘tipping point’ By Michael
Savage Apr 7 2018 <[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-
ineq...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/07/global-inequality-
tipping-point-2030>)

"The world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the
world’s wealth by 2030, according to a shocking analysis that has lead to a
cross-party call for action."

Hard to rationalize the inequalities in the distribution of wealth in a "World
After Capital" where the commodity in short supply is attention.

From the webpage for the TL;DR folk: Technological progress has shifted
scarcity for humanity. When we were foragers, food was scarce. During the
agrarian age, it was land. Following the industrial revolution, capital became
scarce. With digital technologies scarcity is shifting once more. We need to
figure out how to live in a World After Capital in which the only scarcity is
our attention.

~~~
Can_Not
> the only scarcity is our attention.

I'm surprised nobody brought up artificial scarcity. Debeer's diamond cartel
is one of the most recognized early examples of artificial scarcity. Lots of
places have artificial land shortages. There's plenty of capital to solve
societies big problems but instead we have economic waste like 20 companies
cloning the latest candy crush app.

------
teawithcarl
Albert - Ignore the naysayers and keep writing your book and ideas. I have
followed your writing for years, and share many of your hunches. As did Aaron
Schwartz. It's a bold attempt at a future worth working on. Abundance is
indeed here now, and attainable in a more equitable distribution. Not easily -
indeed it's hard work - harder still allowing the negativity on Hacker News.

------
gimmeDatCheddar
If you add a billion users to Youtube or to Facebook or to any other major
platform, the marginal costs won't be 0 or close to 0. They'll be substantial.
Existing servers won't account for the new demand. Electricity needs to be
generated, new hardware needs to be procured, more employees need to be hired,
etc. So I'm having trouble understanding how we're entering an age where the
digital entities have marginal costs approaching 0. For a single additional
customer, that's true - their costs are effectively zero. But if you start
adding millions of users, the costs are not approaching zero.

~~~
ameister14
As soon as I saw the author wasn't being precise I suspected that this wasn't
a serious paper - you can't handwave numbers and say they are 0 when they are
provably not 0, then build an entire argument on it.

------
georgeecollins
If you want to read an economic examination of a world without scarcity, I can
recommend Trekomics _. The title may sound fanciful, but the subject is not.
Some of the trends discussed and the social phenomena do seem to be happening.

_[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6USVP0/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6USVP0/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

------
pmilot
From the FAQ:

    
    
        It is a work in progress. The current version is a rough draft with many problems and placeholders. I am using gitbook and github to keep track of versions of this website and the book itself.
    

You definitely do not get that impression just looking at the homepage.
Beware!

~~~
lucideer
Beware of what?

What impression do you get looking at the homepage?

~~~
chaosite
The impression that this book is a finished product and not just a rough
draft.

------
purple-again
Capital can’t be eliminated because it’s an extension of what we are in the
natural world.

You might look at Bill Gates billions of dollars and think it’s an excessive
amount that could never been needed. Yet what does he do when he and Jeff
Bezos both want to own the Mona Lisa? It can’t be shared and it can’t be
copied. One man will take it back to his house and the other will go empty
handed.

No amount of wealth in the world will change its property of relativity in
problem solving.

~~~
aaron_m04
> It can’t be shared and it can’t be copied. One man will take it back to his
> house and the other will go empty handed.

It can be shared, and is currently being shared -- it's in a museum.

------
rmorey
In case anyone is unaware, OP (Seth Bannon) runs Fifty Years (fifty.vc) a VC
firm supporting some really awesome and important businesses, like Memphis
Meats

------
isthatart
From the Author page: "a New York-based thesis-driven venture capital firm
investing in in networks" attention is is scarce.

------
Qasaur
Lots of shaky assumptions and economic misconceptions in this book. Every
decade there is always a utopian or a group of idealists who claim that we
have the means to meet everyones needs and that capitalism and its economic
laws are no longer capable of providing the goods and services that we demand.
But these ideas are always incoherent and boil down to arbitrary assumptions
about human nature.

Let us, for the sake of the argument ignore the fact that capitalism,
voluntary exchange, and the free market is the _only_ system that is capable
of rationally allocating resources in a society and instead assume that we
have somehow surpassed the need for capital-based economics. What do the
central planners like the author of the book have in mind to "replace"
capitalism? The proposed solutions always boil down to some form of common
ownership of the means of production. Private ownership is considered obsolete
and common ownership of resources with a rational distribution system where
everyone receives what they need. In the past people proposed that this
rational distribution system would be controlled by a committee of experts,
and today the same people say that a highly intelligent computer system would
marshal the resources. Human needs can be objectively determined, and damn
those who demand more than what they are entitled to from the rational
distribution system.

Sounds familiar? That is because it is. Socialism _always_ fails because a
central authority cannot, objectively, plan an economy better than the
collective decisions by acting men in the free market. Hayek wrote about this
in his essay _The Use of Knowledge in Society_ [1] This is the same fallacy
that caused the collapse of every single planned economy in the past and will
in the future. Without prices there is no economic calculation, and the best
pricing system is one that is based on private property. Frankly, after
skimming the book, I find that his entire argument boils down to the fact that
he believes that certain things should be worth more and others should be
worth less, and damn the market for telling me why they cost the way they do.
There is a reason space travel costs as much as it does, but luckily for us we
have a system that allows for entrepreneurship where innovative individuals
and corporations who are able to arbitrage between the cost of factor inputs
and the prices of their output get rewarded with a handsome profit. Since it
is in their interest to maximise their spread they always tend to discover
ways cut costs while still delivering the product that their customers demand
(just look at Elon Musk and his space venture).

While I agree with the author that enabling people to widely access
information will speed up the process of entrepreneurship, time is
unfortunately an element in entrepreneurial discovery and there is no coming
around that.

[1]
[http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html)

~~~
erikb
> the fact that capitalism, voluntary exchange, and the free market is the
> _only_ system that is capable of rationally allocating resources in a
> society

Wow. Before one is the _only_ <something> shouldn't one be first _one of_
<something>? Afaik it's quite clear by now that capitalism and free market are
not rationally allocating resources, or is your definition of "rationally"
equaling "give more to those who already have too much"?

~~~
RickHull
Rationally can be understood to mean something like:

* Put goods to their highest use

* Allocate capital to those who can produce more rather than consume it

In general, nothing is given to anyone. Increasing capital (i.e. by a single
individual or within a single firm) is quite difficult and getting moreso
every day. If 1% of the population is a super-producer, 9% are regular
producers, and 90% are largely consumers, then the consumers are best off when
the 10% producers have most of the capital. Allocating capital to consumers
starts fun and ends poorly.

~~~
aninhumer
>* Put goods to their highest use

That's just dodging the question. What is the "highest use"?

>* Allocate capital to those who can produce more rather than consume it

And thus the optimally rational world as conceived based on this premise is
one where no one ever consumes anything.

~~~
RickHull
Everyone consumes. It's the basis of the economy. The producers produce that
which is consumed. The best thing for consumers is for producers to produce
more goods at lower cost.

If one of those goods is a bicycle, then the highest use might be for a
nominal consumer to use it to kickstart a delivery service and join the ranks
of net producers. The revenue generated by his service, or credit extended on
the expectation of future revenue, can allow him to outbid a pure consumer
from purchasing the bicycle as a leisure device, leisure being a lower use
than that of delivery.

~~~
aninhumer
>Everyone consumes. It's the basis of the economy.

Yes that's my point. You can't just say production is a better use of
resources than consumption, because people need to consume.

The real question is what's the best trade-off between expanding productive
capacity, and producing consumer goods? Given that we seem to have vast
productive capacity, and yet many people in the world seem to still live in
poverty, perhaps we're not making the best trade-offs there?

~~~
crankylinuxuser
> Yes that's my point. You can't just say production is a better use of
> resources than consumption, because people need to consume.

Exactly. We'll put a cost on how much it is to live per day, and if you fail
to exceed that, capitalism will slowly kill you.

And for a great many people, it does.

It kills by pollution in communities that don't have enough to fight the
corporations.

It kills by depriving basic health care.

It kills by malnutrition.

It kills by subsidization of refined carbohydrates and sugars.

It slowly kills by locking people in jobs in which the upkeep for their bodies
is higher than what they make.

It further injures the future generations by depriving education to those in
impoverished areas.

"But hey, we made a killing on the markets. And stock prices went up for the
next quarter. And those low wagers we employ, well, ehh, turnover's a thing.
It's just another externalization we don't have to care about!"

~~~
aninhumer
And of course, people will ignore most of these deaths when comparing
capitalism to the alternatives, because the responsibility is distributed, and
can often be placed on individuals.

------
chb
Capital's not going anywhere. Not until the world implodes.

------
franzmafka
The world after centralised capital might be a thing.

------
aj7
You see whether scarcity is “attention” if you’re 59, “retired” due to
“technological obsolescence,” and develop a medical problem in the U.S.

~~~
aninhumer
Is that a problem of scarcity though?

In most other developed countries, there is some form of universal healthcare,
and this hasn't caused these countries to come grinding to a halt. Which
suggests that the problem in the US is not "scarcity" but how the existing
resources are allocated.

~~~
emodendroket
Unless we institute a worldwide, universal commune where all resources are
equally available to everyone, people are going to experience localized
scarcity. I think it's a fair example.

~~~
aninhumer
But the question is, is the lack of access to healthcare in the US result of
an inherent shortage of capital, or is it due to the system used to allocate
healthcare to individuals?

Given that the majority of the developed world seems to be mostly able to
deliver universal health care with relatively little difficulty, it seems more
likely that the problem is the system, not a need for more capital.

~~~
emodendroket
I guess it depends what "post-scarcity" is supposed to mean, but I don't
consider a situation where people die because of lack of access to resources
post-scarcity, even if someone is hoarding all the necessary resources
somewhere.

------
gt_
The foremost claim of Karl Marx was that capitalism would eventually secede to
socialism.

Most HN readers were indoctrinated to simplisticly demonize Marx despite
ignorance of his nuanced academic legacy, and might overlook the glaring
similarities here. They should be reminded that Marx laid these foundations
~150 years ago and offers a lifetime of critical research on this very
discussion.

~~~
narag
Marx had a good bullshit detector. But as a prophet... let's say that I've
seen better.

~~~
Tchakra
Please do elaborate.

~~~
sewercake
He's probably referring to Marx's Historical determinism. Marx claimed that
there were stages of the development of labour and capital that would
inevitably happen based on the forces that govern both. For most people, I
would say, even those who study Marx, these ideas have been dismissed, or
proven wrong by the failure of the 'working class' to seize the means of
production in most countries where such attempts took place.

However, his predictions are only a part of a very rich body of work that
still provides productive economic analysis.

~~~
erikb
One might also argue that the real thing didn't happen yet though. Just
because a lot of people attach a label to themselves and then other people
come and use that label to do PR against them doesn't mean it was correct in
the first place.

That said, I also don't believe in it. From what I'm seeing around me, people
usually grab small short term advantages over other people even if they suffer
long term consequences together after the "success". Also people really love
to give power over themselves to other people. Until these two misconceptions
are overcome there can't be any real attempt at communism.

~~~
aninhumer
>From what I'm seeing around me, people usually grab small short term
advantages over other people even if they suffer long term consequences
together

I would argue this is a symptom of capitalism, not an inherent property of
human nature. We live in a system that requires us to compete to sell our
labour in order to survive. This leads us to think of everything in terms of
competition.

This is why so many people in creative jobs (including software development)
end up feeling like they can't do their work efficiently because their manager
won't let them. Because the employer-employee relationship is based on
exchange, it is fundamentally antagonistic.

