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 11 months ago by Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
GBU_28@lemm.ee 11 months ago
masterspace@lemmy.ca 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago
That does not mean everyone has access to it
palebluethought@lemmy.world 11 months 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 11 months ago
I specifically said we are in a post-scarcity information society. I didn’t say everything is post-scarcity.
aesc@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
So a post-information-scarcity society. It means something else with different word-order.
OmegaMouse@pawb.social 11 months ago
So you’re saying that everyone has sufficient and easy access to information? How does that relate to capitalism?
Coasting0942@reddthat.com 11 months 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] 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago
Or sufficiently equally to eliminate scarcity.
OmegaMouse@pawb.social 11 months ago
Yeah I was confused by this. The world is pretty far off post-scarcity! Might need more context here
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 months 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 11 months ago
I like this view of parallel structures
Nudding@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Best we can do is fascism and climate apocalypse.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 months 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 11 months ago
Yeah I totally agree. I’m trying my best to integrate these things into my life today.
Hackattack242@ani.social 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago
Technically, Monarchism falls under that definition as well, which is why it gets a bit more complex than that.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What’s “exclusionary ownership” mean here?
Menteros@lemm.ee 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago
third person checking in here
servobobo@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Unfortunately for the post scarcity information society, the capitalists are in fact moving on — to fascism.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 months 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 11 months ago
ITT : People who want to argue about dictionary definitions and ignore the topic of the post.
Cosmicomical@lemmy.world 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago
What’s that alternative then?
kandoh@reddthat.com 11 months ago
I, and I alone live in a post-info-scarcity world. Everyone else is just dojng the best they can.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 11 months ago
dojng Oh great wise one of infonote information, what does this new word mean?
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Can we stop posting about communism every single day?
GiantChickDicks@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Yeah, probably when the system changes.
Riderzz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Go live in china bro. Noone stopping you…
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
How about no? We already tried Communism and many people died and it fell apart.
Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago
Lol
maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Capitalism won’t overthrow itself.
boredtortoise@lemm.ee 11 months ago
It’s collapsing by itself but I don’t think that’s fast enough
explodicle@local106.com 11 months 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 11 months ago
Do you see any clear paths forward for a transition?