We live in a post DATA scarcity society. But information.
We live in a post scarcity information society and we still haven't moved on from capitalism.
Submitted 1 year ago by Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
GBU_28@lemm.ee 1 year ago
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
The idea in relation to capitalism is referring to information from a physics standpoint, not from a data analysis standpoint, as in Information Theory and it’s laws as opposed to the laws that govern matter / energy.
Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I think that we do live in a society where information is not scarce because the ease of replicating any information has increased significantly.
meekah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That does not mean everyone has access to it
palebluethought@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Your premise is wrong in like… A bunch of ways. We sure as shit do not live in a post-scarcity society lol
Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I specifically said we are in a post-scarcity information society. I didn’t say everything is post-scarcity.
aesc@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
So a post-information-scarcity society. It means something else with different word-order.
OmegaMouse@pawb.social 1 year ago
So you’re saying that everyone has sufficient and easy access to information? How does that relate to capitalism?
Coasting0942@reddthat.com 1 year ago
lol. Tell that to the scientific papers you have to pay for otherwise they’ll run out and the researchers won’t be able to research.
wikibot@lemmy.world [bot] 1 year ago
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely. Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services but that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.
PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A post-scarcity society doesn’t mean a post-resource society. We have enough resources to make sure everybody has what they need. None of it is scarce in the slightest. We just need to distribute it equally.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Or sufficiently equally to eliminate scarcity.
OmegaMouse@pawb.social 1 year ago
Yeah I was confused by this. The world is pretty far off post-scarcity! Might need more context here
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Capitalism will collapse eventually, whether planned or not. The best we can do is build up parallel structures that can weather that collapse, like complex networks of Mutual Aid, strong Unions, FOSS software, and more.
ViscloReader@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I like this view of parallel structures
Nudding@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Best we can do is fascism and climate apocalypse.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Fascism is similarly unsustainable, if we fail and can’t achieve Socialism from Capitalism then fascism will take its place, and will also collapse. Same with climate, if we fail to properly handle it we will almost certainly go extinct, but the door remains open for life in millenia.
Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Yeah I totally agree. I’m trying my best to integrate these things into my life today.
Hackattack242@ani.social 1 year ago
We do not live in an post information scarcity society. Also information doesn’t work like electricity, so even if we did this is still stupid.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
We live in a world where it costs essentially nothing to replicate a piece of information 7 billion times and distribute it everyone on earth.
A world where the pirate bay does that for the couple of grand that they get from some porn banner ads.
We live in a world where there is no reason for information to be scarce. The entire systems of copyright and patents and IP are hamfisted ways of creating artificial scarcity so that information retains value in a world where it could be ubiquitous.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 year ago
If you have enough information you have noise, and hence less information. It actually does not work like electricity or any other physics phenomenon.
Hackattack242@ani.social 1 year ago
I see what you are saying but it’s somewhat different that resource scarcity, there is no scarcity in the ability to transmit information, but there is still information scarcity.
However, what makes information still valuable is the difficulty of first discovery. It costs money to go on the ground in a war zone and find out what’s happening, and if nobody did it, we just wouldn’t know.
This doesn’t even factor in the costs of filtering through misinformation and disinformation.
jimbolauski@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Old knowledge is abundant, new is not. If takes effort to discover/create new knowledge. Patents and copyright are there to allow the inventor/creator an opportunity to monetize their invention.
Fleur__@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The reason you are post scarcity is because other people around the world are not. This imbalance in wealth is because of capitalism
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 1 year ago
You fail to understand in your eagerness to jump on a soapbox.
The numbers simply do not lie:
There is not one reason for anyone, anywhere, to go without food, water, or shelter. That some regions lack the production is irrelevant, others over produce and still refuse to meet the needs of their own, much less others.
Fleur__@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s because we’re bad at distributing resources equally. Don’t really care if you don’t like the fact I used the word capitalism.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I’d be willing to bet 3 out of 4 people in this thread couldn’t even define capitalism. I count myself among them.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Capitalism is a Mode of Production by which the Means of Production are bought, sold, and traded among individuals. This results in Capitalists, ie owners of Capital, and Workers, those who Capitalists employ to create Value using said Means of Production.
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
And what’s the problem with owning, buying and selling things? We’ve been doing that for millennia. Obviously, unregulated American style capitalism is very broken, but there are better ways to do business. It’s just that those ways are not that appealing to the greedy.
betheydocrime@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think the simplest way to put it is “an economic system where individuals are allowed to have exclusionary ownership of capital”
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Technically, Monarchism falls under that definition as well, which is why it gets a bit more complex than that.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 year ago
What’s “exclusionary ownership” mean here?
Menteros@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Capitalism: The best system for harnessing the greed inherent in humans for the benefit of others. Capitalism produces the most wealth, and it’s spread more evenly, than any other system.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Not sure how anyone can sanely argue that Capitalist wealth is spread more evenly than any other system when disparity is rising everywhere it’s practiced, even if at slower rates in Social Democracies.
lobelia581@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
third person checking in here
servobobo@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Unfortunately for the post scarcity information society, the capitalists are in fact moving on — to fascism.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Fascism is the violent reaction to the fall of Capitalism, just as fascism is on the rise, so is Socialism. The fight against fascism is critical, as that which replaces Capitalism will be either Socialism or fascism.
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
ITT : People who want to argue about dictionary definitions and ignore the topic of the post.
Cosmicomical@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Well I think it’s normal since the common meaning of the central word is misrepresented. Post-scarcity means there is no scarcity, which is not the situation right now. Also the title says “post information scarcity” which i didn’t now was a thing and that we still don’t have. Factually correct information is not very easy to come by nowadays, and not easy to verify. And if we talk about scarcity of goods and services we certainly have a shitload of factories but some key jobs are not automated yet and in case nobody noticed we have some serious problems with natural resources.
blahsay@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The problem is that while we have infinite information we do not have infinite energy/resources yet. The shift when we get it to remove power from the structures will be larger but reminiscent of the piracy/copyright battles lately
PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 1 year ago
We absolutely have enough to shower every single person in lavishness. Its just not distributed. We agent post resource, but we are posy scarcity.
blahsay@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You’re confusing wealth with resources. If we evenly distributed wealth everyone would be wealthy but it turns out farmers would still have to farm etc.
We don’t have the resources to give everyone on earth a palace. We don’t even have the resources on earth to give everyone a western lifestyle sadly.
Infinite resources/energy is waaay past what you’re thinking. Think startrek and replicators
Menteros@lemm.ee 1 year ago
we do not have infinite energy/resources yet.
And we never will. At least not in the hands of the general public.
It’s FAR to dangerous.
blahsay@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Eh not really. Lock replicators from weapons. More resources means adequate mental health support. No scarcity will remove most war justification.
Religion will be the last thing we need to kill for peace. It’s inherently divisive and anti science
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The rubes need something to collect so they can lord over you. They don’t want an intelligent society. They want something they can game to get big numbers.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 year ago
In 1980, ‘middle class’ was still defined as one job paying for a family of four. In those days $1 million was still considered a vast fortune. By the time Bush Sr. left office ‘middle class’ was two salaries to support a family and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
To be fair, “middle class” isn’t a real class, the closest is petite bourgeoisie. What’s thought of as the middle class doesn’t necessarily have the same class interests, as they vary in social relation to the Means of Production.
doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Yes, we do live in a post-scarcity information society. Unfortunately, we will not for much longer. The time to make the most of it has already come and passed. We chose capitalism over sustainability when it mattered most (before many of us here were even born).
therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
What’s that alternative then?
kandoh@reddthat.com 1 year ago
I, and I alone live in a post-info-scarcity world. Everyone else is just dojng the best they can.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 1 year ago
dojng Oh great wise one of infonote information, what does this new word mean?
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Can we stop posting about communism every single day?
GiantChickDicks@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Yeah, probably when the system changes.
Riderzz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Go live in china bro. Noone stopping you…
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
How about no? We already tried Communism and many people died and it fell apart.
Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 1 year ago
Firstly, capitalism isn't going to just "poof" away just because there are more resources available. The rich will just hold them back to create artificial scarcity - like is done with diamonds.
Secondly, even discounting that, there are plenty of resources that are genuinely scarce no matter how much money you have to throw at the problem.
But if you're referring to just the scarcity of information - then you're still not quite right as not all that information out there is good information - a lot of it is misinformation (i.e. propaganda, etc.)...
And even that discounts the fact that for many people, they don't have the tools/capability to access the information, or simply can't access the information full stop (I.e. due to censorship, etc.).
intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Capitalism incentivizes production so well that the mere charity of individuals provides more for free than all the redistribution the government can manage under a controlled economy.
Capitalism’s primary activity is commerce, with a tiny sliver of charity on the side. That tiny sliver of charity is the biggest pool of resources made available for free under any system.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
In what unicorn world are you living in? There are so many subsidies for so many sectors that it isn’t even funny. Capitalism is parasitic at its core and the only reason there is charity from the rich is for the good publicity.
The society is already wealthy, but all the wealth is drained in the hands of a few.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 year ago
We’re in a post information scarcity society and there are still people out there who think the Earth is flat.
GilgameshCatBeard@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Lol
maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 1 year ago
Capitalism won’t overthrow itself.
boredtortoise@lemm.ee 1 year ago
It’s collapsing by itself but I don’t think that’s fast enough
explodicle@local106.com 1 year ago
And for the accelerationists in back - no, a crash doesn’t imply anything nice will come later. We could end up back at feudalism.
– Buckminster Fuller
tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net 1 year ago
Do you see any clear paths forward for a transition?