[ox-en] keimform.de: The Earth’s the Limit (1)
- From: Christian Siefkes <christian siefkes.net>
- Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:54:41 -0500
URL: http://www.keimform.de/2010/02/09/the-earths-the-limit-1/
The vision of [1]post-scarcity is a popular but controversial meme in the
debates of peer production. Post-scarcity envisions a world where
everything is free as in free beer, where no payment or accounting is
requirement for anything you use. Post-scarcity ideas usually rely very
strongly on advanced technology, postulating that almost everything can be
automated—or at least, everything that’s not fun and pleasant to do.
Post-scarcity theorists also believe that advanced technology can provide
enough natural resources and enough energy in order to satisfy everyone’s
needs and wishes, possibly through [2]extracting resources from space or
through speculative future technologies such as nuclear [3]fusion power.
A weak form of post-scarcity thinking is present in one of the founding
documents of the free software movement, [4]Richard Stallman’s [5]GNU
Manifesto (“weak” because there are still necessary tasks that are neither
fun nor automated away):
In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity
world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living.
People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such
as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required
tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid
prospecting.
More radical visions of “true” post-scarcity are expressed in the writings
of [6]Paul Fernhout and in the [7]Oekonux project’s idea of a [8]“GPL
Society” where “[t]he produced goods would be accessible for free by
everybody who needed them”, while “[p]eople would work autonomously and
voluntarily”. A post-scarcity society (though apparently still mixed with a
scarcity-based [9]attention economy for privileges and luxury goods) is the
background of [10]Cory Doctorow’s first free novel, “Down and Out in the
Magic Kingdom.”
Environmentally concerned people will usually be deeply suspicious of
post-scarcity, because they are aware that nature is already recklessly
exploited as of today and that we [11]use up Earth’s resources faster than
Earth can renew them. Regarding resource use, we’re living at the cost of
future generations, and the idea can future generations can not only
continue this practice, but actually vastly expand it in order to make
“freely available” to everybody what today is luxury for a few, is
evidently absurd for ecologically aware people.
These different viewpoints on post-scarcity are certainly a reason for the
big differences in the worldview of eco activists and peer production
activists, making communication difficult—in spite of the fact that both
rely on the common concept of the [12]commons. In order to bridge this gap,
Michel Bauwens and Franz Nahrada published a [13]joint statement where they
claimed outright that “P2P […] is not about post-scarcity” and argued for a
strategic convergence of the “Open Everything” (peer production) movement
with the environmental and social justice movements.
While I share this wish for a strategic convergence of the three movements,
I would be hesitant to try to discard post-scarcity thinking altogether.
Instead, I’ll take a look at the limitations that any [14]peer
production—based society will face and then consider whether and in what
form something related to the post-scarcity ideas could emerge
nevertheless.
The Earth’s carrying capacity
The [15]ecological footprint of humanity “represents the amount of
biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the
resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the
corresponding waste.” According to the newest available estimates (for
2006), humanity’s ecological footprint is 1.4 planets Earth—we use up
Earth’s resources 1.4 times faster than Earth can renew them. In the long
run, we won’t be able to maintain that lifestyle, unless we find another
half Earth to support it—not very likely.
But of course, not everyone uses Earth’s resources to an equal amount—far
from it. The average personal footprint is 2.6 [16]global hectares (gha)—an
average person uses 2.6 hectares (10.000 m^2) of Earth’s biocapacity. But
in the USA, the average personal footprint is 9.0 gha—more than three times
the global average. In Germany, it is 4.0 gha—50% more than average.
Conversely, the personal (per capita) footprint in Bangladesh and Nepal is
only 0.5 gha, in India and the Philippines it is 0.8 gha (cf. [17]List of
countries by ecological footprint). Clearly, our lifestyle in the developed
nations is only possible because people elsewhere consume much less. We’re
living both at the cost of future generations (consuming Earth’s resources
faster than they can be renewed) and at the cost of people elsewhere.
The available biocapacity per person is 1.8 gha—if everyone used only 1.8
gha (on average), we would need only one Earth, not one-and-a-half as of
now. If we want a sustainable and globally fair lifestyle, we’ll have to
bring our personal footprints down to that level—meaning a reduction by
more than 2 for Germans, by 5 for US citizens.
But the calculated values are for 2006, when the [18]world population was
estimated to be 6.5 billion. About 2050, the world population should reach
9 billion (after which it may stabilize at that level, or it may increase
further—[19]estimates differ). That will bring the available biocapacity
per person down to 1.3 gha, corresponding to the current personal footprint
of people living in Iraq, Morocco, or Uganda.
Clearly, any “post-scarcity” future won’t look like a “luxury for all”
version of current life in Germany or the USA! (But hopefully it won’t look
like life in Iraq either…)
[To be continued…]
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
5. http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
6. http://www.pdfernhout.net/
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oekonux
8. http://www.oekonux.org/texts/meilenstein/english.html
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint
12. http://www.keimform.de/tag/commons/
13.
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-September/004626.html
14. http://www.keimform.de/tag/peer-economy/
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint
16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_hectare
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ecological_footprint
18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates
19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
--
|------- Dr. Christian Siefkes ------- christian siefkes.net -------
| Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/ | Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
| Peer Production Everywhere: http://peerconomy.org/wiki/
|---------------------------------- OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --
For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with
science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought
and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social)
are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the
powerful -- not to mention being desirable human ends in their own
right. The recent turn of many "progressive" or "leftist" academic
humanists and social scientists toward one or another form of epistemic
relativism betrays this worthy heritage and undermines the already fragile
prospects for progressive social critique.
-- Alan D. Sokal, A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies