The Zero Marginal Cost Society, Book Review Example

Book Overview

The book is about businesses operating in a trend that did not exist during the industrial era that must have “drives” in order to deliver its finished product.  A trend in the 21^st Century, the X-generation who are the next Baby Boomers of the Information Age has monopolized the operating “drives” into exile. The “drives” are the costs of marketing, distributing, publishing, wholesalers, retailers, and communications in which accounts for the expenses spend to be paid to zero. Actually, the author tried to explain that the system of capitalism communicated in channelshas been fragmented; thus, the sales of goods and services per unit sold could produce a “near zero” marginal cost. In contrast, the author is obviously a Baby Boomer who wants to restore capitalism as to restore the virtue of human contact in a collaborative manner based on the Capitalist theory. The book has many technical terminologies in almost every sentence. So, acknowledging them will help the reader to understand what terms mean.

Economic Outlook

There is a call for the economy exchange to reshape its economic performance measures in the capitalist marketplace; that is, with no attempt to look at the GDP metric growth, but to learn the new “quality of life” metrics as a measure for quantity of economic output. Meaning, that the emphasis of Collaborative commons of the “quality of life” is an application on social proprieties including education, health care, environmental stewardship, sustainable development, human rights, democracy, volunteerism, and leisure. This reason is because GDP metrics is likely to decline in market exchange economy and its economic performance in the future by midcentury as predicated. It looks like in the future the goods and services will have no incentive in costs upfront. Yet, the consumers or “proconsumers” enjoy the advantage of free useof the information technology collaboratively as a form of a compressed media (mass) communications in their social commons (p.23). The style and the purpose of the book is that this author attempts to do this byrestoring capitalismand byunearthing the world on the capitalist dynamics shifting the energy paradigm in reusing the natural resources for consumption and entropy. The economic value of nature resources is seen as whole economic externalities affecting the laws of thermodynamics govern an economic activity (p.14). This is one dimension of capitalism. Another dimension of attention is the zero marginal cost before the fixed costs for intelligent communication/entry matrix and infrastructure. A call for a continental Energy Internet to save half of the manufacturing costs to a fraction of a cost that is priced at the global level.Recently, a brief discussion on the laws of thermodynamics govern the economic activity in which the statement suggests that a company expects a satisfactory productivity on the finished products as an economic activity competing against time  along with the fixed costs or the cost “drives”  (i.e., machine and labor) contributing to the productivity tasks at the same time.These newly created innovation businesses have evolved small businesses to a startup cost for both production costs and prices of their products and services to nearly zero marginal cost.  At the end result, Author believed that the goods and services will become free, profit decreases, economy exchange disperses, and the capitalist system disperses as well. This hindsight stance has a different economic growth outlook —-that is, a loss of knowledge of 86% responsibility for growth compared to 14% of acknowledged responsibility (i.e., machine and labor) for growth, according to American Economist Association.  The author argued to make a point that 86% is a “measure of ignorance,” and that the Energy is the actual source responsible for economic growth to 86%. Finally, the third dimension of attention is a Second Industrial Revolution infrastructure—the electricity grid, telecommunications, network, road system, oil and gas pipelines, water and sewer systems, and public school systems. Some of these are thermodynamic products and its efficiency is nearly impossible to exhaust 100% productivity (p.61). Instead, a goal for infrastructure is to conceive an aggregate energy efficiency to 40% that can amount to an increase in productivity beyond the response for energy efficiency in the first Industrial revolution. The reader will find the book interesting although it has too many fallacies to analyze. The originality is grammatically correct and justified.

Reference

Rifkin, J. (2014) The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism. New York, NY; Published by Palgrave MacMillian.