The Zero Marginal Cost Society Quotes

“For the materialist, advertising becomes the powerful drug that feeds the addiction. Advertising prays on one’s sense of inadequacy and loneliness. It promises that products and services will enhance a person’s personality and identity and make him or her more appealing,”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“The democratization of manufacturing means that anyone and eventually everyone can access the means of production, making the question of who should own and control the means of production irrelevant, and capitalism along with it.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“globalization, a grossly misnamed metaphor that disingenuously cloaked government deregulation and the privatization of public goods and services in the wrap of a new global “interconnectivity.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not enough for every man’s greed.”56”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Studies conducted around the world have shown a close correlation between materialist values, depression, and substance abuse.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“When you and I feel empathy toward another being-be it human or one of our fellow creatures-it's tinged with the whiff of their eventual death and the celebration of their existing life. In experiencing their joy, sorrow, hopes, and fears I am constantly reminded of the precarious nature of each of our lives. To empathize with another is to recognize their one and only life as I do my own-to understand that each of the moments, like my own, are irreversible and unrepeatable and that life is fragile and imperfect and challenging, whether it be a human being's journey in civilization or a deer's journey in the woods.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“The capitalist era is passing . . . not quickly, but inevitably.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being’s worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world where much of life is lived on the Collaborative Commons.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“But what if I were to say to you that 25 years from now, the bulk of the energy you use to heat your home and run your appliances, power your business, drive your vehicle, and operate every part of the global economy will likewise be nearly free? That’s already the case for several million early adopters”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Automobiles consumed “20 percent of the steel, 12 percent of the aluminum, 10 percent of the copper, 51 percent of the lead, 95 percent of the nickel, 35 percent of the zinc, and 60 percent of the rubber used in the U.S.” by 1933.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“He asks, “how hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay, and Google?”33 Wu is putting his finger on a disquieting new reality—that the new communication medium a younger generation gravitated to because of its promise of openness, transparency, and deep social collaboration masks another persona more concerned with ringing up profit by advancing a networked Commons.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“When I empathize, I feel the frailty and transitory nature of another's existence. To empathize is to root for the other to flourish and experience the full potential of their short abide.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“The global financial collapse exposed the longstanding myth that commercial exchange is a primary institution. There are no examples in history where people created commercial markets and exchange before creating a culture.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“stability of the capitalist system is shaken by the alternation of attempts to stop economic progress in order to protect old investments and tremendous collapses when those attempts fail.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“The late Jonathan Rowe, one of the visionaries of the new networked Commons, best explained the idea of what a Commons is all about. He wrote: To say “the commons” is to evoke a puzzled pause. . . . Yet the commons is more basic than both government and market. It is the vast realm that is the shared heritage of all of us that we typically use without toll or price. The atmosphere and oceans, languages and cultures, the stores of human knowledge and wisdom, the informal support systems of community, the peace and quiet that we crave, the genetic building blocks of life—these are all aspects of the commons.41”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“suggest that the millennial generation, deeply affected by the Great Recession and a stagnant global economy, has begun to shift its psychic priorities from material success to living a meaningful existence.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“people who strongly value the pursuit of wealth and possessions report lower psychological well-being than those who are less concerned with such aims.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“consider the fact that a journey from New York to Chicago by stagecoach would have taken three weeks or more in 1847. By 1857, that same trip by rail would have taken 72 hours.12”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Yochai Benkler says that while an inordinate amount of attention is being placed on free software, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode “Commons-based peer-production,” to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based modes of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.43”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“if information goods are to be distributed at their marginal cost of production—zero—they cannot be created and produced by entrepreneurial firms that use revenues obtained from sales to consumers to cover their [fixed set-up] costs. If”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“a Cisco report uncovered the fact that only 35 percent of mobile data use was “on the move,” while 40 percent was from home, and 25 percent from work.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“If the steam engine freed human beings from feudal bondage to pursue material self-interest in the capitalist marketplace, the Internet of Things frees human beings from the market economy to pursue nonmaterial shared interests on the Collaborative Commons. Many—but not all—of our basic material needs will be met for nearly free in a near zero marginal cost society. Intelligent technology will do most of the heavy lifting in an economy centered on abundance rather than scarcity. A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being’s worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world where much of life is lived on the Collaborative Commons.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“An e-book can be produced and distributed at near zero marginal cost.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“new technologies are going to make the airwaves “so abundant that there would be no justification for the government to ration access to spectrum or to give some services priority over others.”46 In the near future, everyone will be able to share Earth’s abundant free air waves, communicating with each other for nearly free, just as we will share the abundant free energy of the sun, wind, and geothermal heat.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Keynes believed that “a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these [economic] needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.”8 He looked expectantly to a future in which machines would produce an abundance of nearly free goods and services, liberating the human race from toil and hardships and freeing the human mind from a preoccupation with strictly pecuniary interests to focus more on the “arts for life” and the quest for transcendence.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“In the summer of 2009, a heat wave across France led to a shortage in cooling waters, forcing one-third of the nuclear power plants in the country to shut down.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Each rise in temperature of 1°C results in a 7 percent increase in the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere.36 This causes a radical change in the way water is distributed, with more intense precipitation but a reduction in duration and frequency.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Stuart Williams, a scientist at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute in Louisville, Kentucky, is experimenting with taking fat-derived cells extracted during liposuction and mixing them with glue to print a heart. Williams believes that a 3D-printed “bioficial” heart may be possible in ten years.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“Tie Society, a start-up in Washington, D.C., stocks more than 300 designer ties—each of which, if bought, would cost an arm and a leg. For a monthly fee of $11, subscribers receive a box of sanitized ties to use, and they can change their tie selection monthly.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

“The coming together of the Communications Internet, the Energy Internet, and the Logistics Internet in an Internet of Things provides the cognitive nervous system and physical means to integrate all of humanity in an interconnected global Commons that extends across the entirety of society.”
― Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism