Dark Mountain Review of Kate Raworth's recent look at 21st century economics.

Yes-Heart of Balance is into Post Marxist Integral Acclerationism! 

Here's an interesting post from Dark Mountains Blog.  If you haven't come across Dark Mountain I would strongly recommend it as of potential interest.  It's also cited on the blog list here, all of which I recommend.  Here I have pillaged a quote from Chris Smaje's review of Kate Raworth's latest dissection of culinary economic theory for greedies.
The main point made by Chris is the crucial distinction between digital circulation and production which just gave me a mini aha moment!

Chris Smaje works a small mixed farm in Somerset and blogs at smallfarmfuture.org.uk. He’s written on environmental and agricultural issues for publications like The Land, Permaculture Magazine and Dark Mountain, and also in academic journals (Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems; the Journal of Consumer Culture; the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture). Trained in anthropology and social science, he previously worked at the Universities of Surrey and London.

Kate Raworth writes:

'The triumph of the commons is certainly evident in the digital commons, which are fast turning into one of the most dynamic arenas of the global economy. It is a transformation made possible, argues the economic analyst Jeremy Rifkin, by the ongoing convergence of networks for digital communications, renewable energy and 3D printing, creating what he has called ‘the collaborative commons’….Once the solar panels, computer networks and 3D printers are in place, the cost of producing one extra joule of energy, one extra download, one extra 3D printed component, is close to nothing, leading Rifkin to dub it ‘the zero-marginal-cost revolution’. The result is that a growing range of products and services can be produced abundantly, nearly for free, unleashing potential such as open-source design, free online education, and distributed manufacturing (pp.83-4)'

"One issue that goes unexamined here is the extent to which this highly technological commons, with its solar panels, computer networks and 3D printers, is sustainable in the light of the need for a sufficiently decoupled global economy discussed above. Another is that Raworth confuses the marginal costs of circulation, which indeed in the digital age have now sometimes diminished towards zero, and the costs of creative production, which aren’t necessarily much different than pre- ‘digital commons’ times. It takes as much hard thought and hard work to put together a good curriculum, a good political essay, a good poem or a good tractor design as it ever did. But once it’s put together, it can now be distributed almost costlessly around the world, potentially to an audience of billions. The zero-marginal-cost-revolution, if there is one, is a revolution of circulation, not production. No doubt it’s a fine thing, but it’s worth considering its major beneficiaries. Those who control the circulation are in a position to effortlessly siphon off wealth, whereas those who control the production aren’t – which is why Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are a lot richer than any political essayist, poet or tractor designer, delivering a ‘collaborative commons’ based on privately owned, and possibly ‘enclosed’, means of circulation. Meanwhile, much of what really matters to people as physical, biological beings – such as staple foodstuffs and bulky construction materials – doesn’t enjoy zero marginal costs of circulation, and isn’t usually best produced via commons."  (Chris Smaje 2017)

Heart of Balance writes:

The upshot then is that the tech revolution has been producing stuff that is markedly changing human behaviour, perhaps even human nature.  On the platform opposite at a busy London station I observe around two hundred humans all staring at their phones.  Just thirty years ago not one of these humans would have possessed such an object.
Has there been any impact assessment?  Has there been an 'how do we want tech to affect us' discussion?  Is it the subject of ethics?  Is it taught in schools from a critical evaluative perspective?  Or have we become uncritical consumers of tech products with their built in obsolescence and endless updates.  Have we considered the costs of such products in terms of precious metals, and environmental damage.  Have we considered such products in terms of their potential damage to our attention, to our awareness both internally and socially and developmentally?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Luddite.  I'm just asking if this is what we really want?  (What we really really want!)  If this is what we really need right now?
And that segues neatly (too neatly?) into my next major point which is the theft of our visual commons by advertising, shit films and TV, architectural vandalism, and inequality politics.  But that's for another time.  
Meanwhile dear reader, please continue to consider the lobster.