I've been told over the years by many people that our mercantile way of life is the best way to regulate scarce resources. There isn't enough wealth in the world for everyone to have everything, they say, and capitalism is as good a way of determining who gets what as any other economic system.
I would prefer not to argue that point, but to sidestep it entirely. Capitalism may be the most efficient system yet invented for handling the problem of scarcity. I don't know. What I do know however is that capitalism in many ways depends on scarcity to function, and that we are headed into a future in which scarcity of energy and resources is less relevant by the year.
The Internet Age is just the tip of that iceberg. Everyone knows that any piece of software can be replicated a billion times over at almost no cost. You simply download it, install it, and the replica you have on your computer's hard drive is just as perfect as what was on the server you downloaded it from. There is no problem of scarcity when it comes to digital software. And capitalism is having immense problems dealing with that fact.
Businesses are doing everything in their power to ignore the fact that digital resources are nearly infinitely abundant, and instead create an artificial sense of scarcity when it comes to software. In particular, it comes prepackaged with access-control tools designed to limit its functionality until money is paid to the company. They call it Digital Rights Management (DRM), and in many ways it resembles more a hostage standoff than any type of traditional financial transaction. But it's there as an attempt to create a sense of scarcity, so that there can be a profit incentive to create and distribute the software in the first place.
The corporate world has also invented creative language to describe circumvention of this DRM technology. They call it piracy, copyright infringement, violation of intellectual property, etc, and such copies of the software are treated as a form of contraband. Again, this is an attempt to create and enforce an artificial sense of scarcity of goods, so that market-based profit incentives can still be considered relevant.
A huge problem arises with this approach though. It is at its core based on a lie, because the truth of the matter is that there is no natural profit incentive whatsoever to create digital content. It's like coming up with a secret recipe for your favorite brownies, and then finding out that the entire world has learned about it, and that everyone can simply make the batter and cook it in their own ovens without your help. Would you still go into business selling your brownies if that were the case? Probably not, as there would be no profit in it that didn't entail dictatorial powers over what everyone could and couldn't bake in their own kitchens.
This is currently the way the Internet works. For-profit corporations are fighting a losing battle against the forces of nature, trying in vain to create and enforce scarcity where none was meant to exist. And soon this is the way the entire global economy will work.
Energy costs are continuing to plummet by the year. This is part of a centuries-long trend that will continue as alternative sources of renewable energy are discovered and perfected. At the same time, non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels are quite simply that: non-renewable. That means at some point in the future they will no longer exist, and humanity will be forced to rely on the alternative energy sources it is currently developing.
Meanwhile, new technologies such as 3D printing will soon allow consumers to download the schematics of an item, plug it into their printer, and manufacture it in their own living room without having to rely on the complex market forces that currently govern the world we live in. As with computers, all they will need to purchase are the 3D printer itself, the raw resources, and the power, all of which will likely be as cheap as printer cartridges and printers are today.
Where will capitalism fit into this future? Where will the profit incentive be for the invention of new gadgets and technologies? I see only two possibilities: either capitalism gradually fades away into irrelevancy until it is finally given a death blow, or it morphs into a totalitarian abomination that tries to maintain the illusion of scarcity through force of arms. Either way, what we today think of as "Capitalism" will be no more.
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