This article is an addendum to “Post-Capitalism: Rise of the Collaborative Commons”
Given recent policy proposals and directions taken up by governing bodies and advocacy groups across the globe, it seems necessary to reiterate that the position of this article is in no way advocating for a dissolution of capitalist principles in the short-term, and especially not for an increase in centralized control and statist dependency.
The general trends explored here are long-term, where a new socioeconomic paradigm will gradually emerge over the coming decades as capitalist markets reach peak efficiency and drive marginal costs to zero (at which point a UBI could be brought about in response). In contrast to the highly manipulated and inefficient, crony-capitalist driven markets that currently exist and serve the privileged few, what is required in the near-term is a move towards open, transparent, fair, free and efficient markets to provide the means for accurate price discovery and effective resource distribution.
It is due directly to the current corrupt and inefficient state of the markets that economic inequality is surging, and the wealth gap continues to widen as the middle class is dissolved. The status quo is not only unsustainable but rapidly approaches a breaking point.
In response, there are increasing calls for policies which in effect result in greater dependencies on the state while buttressing and entrenching a bureaucratic socialist order. As history shows, centralizing power in the hands of the state is not only economically inefficient, but exceptionally dangerous politically and democratically.
Rather than endless money printing (ie. currency devaluation), government handouts, corporate bailouts and an increasing reliance on state intervention, surveillance and control; businesses must be allowed to fail, monopolies broken up, corporate lobbyists reined in, individual privacy protected, and government overreach checked.
One of the defining features of a Collaborative Commons is its distributed and decentralized nature. An open and distributed nature is what allows the Collaborative Commons to break the monopolistic holds of centralized corporations on capitalist markets and enable peer-to-peer production to scale across lateral global networks at near zero marginal cost.
Notably, such networks are currently being developed and deployed in the cryptocurrency, or ‘blockchain’, space. It is likely that blockchain-based networks will be the drivers which bring about the adoption of truly open, transparent, free and fair markets with an inherent efficiency that the global economy has never before known. Further, such networks essentially eliminate third-party trust and enable control over personal data to be placed back into the hands of the individual, where it is unable to be accessed or sold without personal consent (eg. self-sovereign ID).
With truly free and open markets, society is equipped to transition over the coming decades towards a more efficient means of resource distribution where the marginal costs of production approach zero; and ultimately, to a more equitable, prosperous and sustainable global society, such as described in Post-Capitalism: Rise of the Collaborative Commons. Any move to sacrifice personal liberties and freedoms in a reversion to the contrary risks no less than history repeating.
