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Pre-capitalism and post-capitalism

Braudel’s Civilization and Capitalism three-volume series has been in my “to-read” pile for many years. I’d heard many times that it was a classic, and I felt guilty that it continued to stay on the bottom. “After Capitalism” to the rescue – surely, putting together a book on visions of the world after capitalism is an appropriate reason to visit the history of capitalism’s emergence.

Volume 1 is The Structures of Everyday Life. It is essentially a more than six hundred page overview of the rather mundane basics of daily life in the pre-capitalist world. Population, food, housing, clothes get really into the nitty gritty, while technology, money, and town/cities get a little higher-level. It sets the stage for the advent of capitalism, which I’m assuming awaits me in Volume 2.

So, what can pre capitalism tell us about post capitalism?

  1. Capitalism is not inevitable, and in the broad sweep of history, may have had a relatively brief run of less than 300 years — if its demise is met by mid-century.
  2. We are reminded of cycles, with the 15th-18th century being at the end of a very long period of very slow growth. The rapid growth of the industrial revolution and capitalism is the exception, not the rule.
  3. Indeed much economic activity in this period was rather informal, suggesting that economic activity need not be completely formal (granted, increasing complexity makes informal much more challenging)
  4. Even before capitalism, we see the growing systems interconnections emerging that make the study of capitalism one that has to incorporate a much wider consideration of factors beyond the purely economic.
  5. Going through the mundane details of everyday life, I am not a bit nostalgic for a return to these good old days. I suppose it was a pretty good deal for the rich, but for pretty much everyone else, not so good.
  6. Energy, or rather the lack of a convenient and powerful source of energy, is a huge barrier to growth. Expensive energy (e.g., from a carbon tax) and/or a massive scale-up to renewables would have a significant impact on economic activity – devastating to capitalism, but less at odds with the sustainable commons visions.
  7. Finally, the slow pace of life. I’m not advocating that fast-paced lifestyle is better or even desirable. I think we’ve become accustomed to fast, but again, this is a relatively new phenomenon. – Andy Hines

 

 

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Reasonable futures timeframes

What’s an appropriate timeframe for foresight work? It’s a question we futurists often get. It’s usually coming from a concern that a particular project’s timeframe may be too close to the present, or put differently, not sufficiently far enough into the future.

It’s become a lot easier to answer this since the field has been using the updated Three Horizons framework that I first came across in a piece by Andrew Curry and Tony Hodgson, ”Seeing in Multiple Horizons,” which later won an APF MSFW award.

The first horizon covers the existing way of doing things. My view is that futurists ought to be careful about playing in this space. My favorite story here is on “pizza trends.” I was a new internal futurist and asked to gather trend data on pizza consumption. I reasoned that if I answered this request, I’d become the data gathering guy for the exiting business, and I felt it would pigeonhole the foresight activity into the wrong timeframe. So I took the risk of saying “not my job.”

Rather, I reasoned then and advise now, the job of the futurist is to focus on Horizons 2 and 3, the zones of transition and new visions of the future. The vast majority of my work has been in Horizon 2, which probably reflects my focus on the corporate world earlier in my career. Here we focus on the potential disruptions to the existing system that ultimately may portend a new system, but provide the client with insight into what’s next, which is usually their key concern. Of course, I/we try to extend that view into Horizon 3 as practical.

In terms of how many years into the future, it depends on the topic or system. Some topics that are moving very vast or just on the cusp of a transition from H1 to H2, may appropriately suggest a very close-in timeframe, say 3-5 years. Other topics, which are very slow moving, may have a very long H1, where 3-5 years is still firmly in H1 and thus not appropriate.

In thinking back across my project work – mostly H2 work — I would say that H2 is most often 5-10 years (again, keeping in mind the differences according to topic). Clients usually want five, and I’ll do my best to persuade them to extend that to at least 10. But we do some H3 work. We did a project for NASA extending to Horizon 3 with a 2050 timeframe.

So the rule is to first work out the timing of the Three Horizons, and as long as you’re in Horizon Two, that seems like a good starting point for foresight work.

Thanks to Micheal Cooke fo inspiring this piece with a recent comment in Linked in. — Andy Hines

 

 

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Avoiding Used Futures in After Capitalism

Part of my goal in putting together the After Capitalism research into a book (admittedly going too slowly!) is identify positive images or visions of the post-capitalist future. A huge concern of mine is that the debate will be framed as either capitalism vs socialism or capitalism vs communism. In my opinion, both of these framings would be detrimental if not deadly for the debate. My sense is that supporters of capitalism are licking their chops at this framing. Both socialism and communism are backward-looking “used futures” (to use Sohail Inayatullah’s wonderful concept) loaded down with a ton of baggage given their challenging historical implementations.

I suspect most futurists would agree with the above diagnosis, but what’s the prescription? In my research so far, the main three buckets of visions are:

  • Tech-led Abundance. The core idea is that this is the tech-fix scenario.
  • Non-workers’ Paradise. This play on worker’s paradise focuses on concepts around a “post-work” world in the sense of paid work being the primary distribution mechanism for accessing goods and services. It may be dangerous in that it evokes the communist boogeyman noted above.
  • Sustainable Commons. The works comprising this concept sort into environmentally inclined or morality-based or purpose driven – often combining the two. The “commons” idea is key here, but again this sounds like communism (even though it’s not).

A challenge is that awareness of these future-oriented visions are not as well-known as the used futures of socialism and communism, nor are they worked through in enough detail to compare favorable to capitalism, which is supported by massive bodies of research and real experience. There is a growing body of research and evidence and support suggesting that capitalism has some serious issues and there are more and more alternative ideas emerging in just the last several years. Not too long ago, UBI (universal basic income) was seen as way too out there, but is now practically in the mainstream as a discussion topic.

Perhaps it’s too early to frame the debate, as the alternatives need to be shaped up! In the meantime, we may be best served by steering clear of bringing in the used futures.  – Andy Hines

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Exploring the future of learning and education

I need your help in exploring the future of learning and education! Our work on the future of student needs for Lumina Foundation piqued my interest in the topic, and I suppose I should get to know more about this sector I work in now — given my position with the University of Houston Foresight program. So, after organizing a special issue last year, I agreed to join On the Horizon (OTH) as Editor-in-Chief, with  a goal of sharpening the journal’s focus on the future of post-secondary learning and education.

There are some exciting possibilities for the future of learning and education — from student-centered learning to MOOCs to Edtech to funding to policy and beyond. Yet there are also many obstacles on the pathway to better futures. We want to focus on the emerging changes, the challenges, and the visions of the future and how it might be different.

My first move is to bring aboard futurist colleagues with education chops to the Editorial Advisory Board:

The lofty vision: “to establish On the Horizon as the academic home for the future learning and education.”

The short-term tactical needs:  there are plenty of these — the big four:

  • Writers: submit a piece on some aspect of the future of learning and education
  • Reviewers: review submissions to make sure they align with our future focus and provide real value to readers (looks good in the resume!)
  • Guest editors: we do special issues in which you organize a team of contributors to do a deep dive on a particular topic
  • Tipsters: let us know where the future is emerging, the hot conferences, blogs, websites, and most importantly the topics we should be covering

Email Andy  Hines (ahines@uh.edu) on any of these topics! —  Andy Hines

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After Capitalism Concepts

The After Capitalism research started by collecting interesting “new or next economy” concepts. They’ve been analyzed, clustered, and re-grouped a few times. To the right is the pretty close to done version, as it’s time to move on the next phase of the project: creating the futures using the archetype approach (more on that later). The main buckets of concepts:

  • Horizon 3 “Transformation” Visions. The transformation archetype involves changing the rules of the game and a new system emerging. The visions attempt to characterize a new economic system or era at the highest level — they seek to explain a new socio-economic order.
  • Horizon 2 “New Equilibrium” Transitions. The new equilibrium archetype involves a challenge to the existing system in which the response is to compromise but keep the essential structure intact. The transitions explain emerging variations of capitalism that are still part of existing capitalism with some new elements, and are bridges to the visions.

Some of the key updates since the last version:

  • Introduced three horizons framework and sorting of concepts into:
    • H3 visions
    • H2 transitions
    • H1 signals (not shown here)
  • Added, pruned or combined concepts to attempt to keep each distinctive — at one point the list hit 57!
  • Added a subset of sustainability transition concepts – several concepts that appeared to be transformational visions were actually suggestions on how to make capitalism more sustainable, which fits better as a transition concept.

— Andy Hines

 

 

 

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The Gig Dichotomy: Gigging because we want to or have to?

I was working my way through the Horizon 2 transition concepts for After Capitalism when a wonderful  listserv conversation on the topic sprung up on APF  on the gig economy. To set the debate:

• supporters suggest the gig economy represents greater flexibility and freedom of choice;
• critics suggest it is a way for companies to save money with less pay and benefits.

I suspect most of us are in the middle – seeing the good and the bad.

The murkiness comes from the problem of defining just what a gig is. [reminds me of a favorite lament: many of world’s problems originate in vocabulary]. Looking at estimates of the gig economy, the GAO put it at 30% today, using a broad definition. I recall seeing a survey by Intuit in the spring that put it at 34%. At the conservative end of the spectrum, a synthesis of “high quality” studies put it at 11%. One almost laughable estimate by the BLS put it at 3.8%. Huh? Definitions…right!

My guess is that most studies will tend to be safe and under-estimate, so I’d lean towards 1/3rd of the workforce. It’s a fun argument, but let’s move on. The interesting question is whether it’s a good or bad thing. One academic study came out pretty strong on the bad, “cutting costs and avoiding benefits” as the primary motivation. There were lots of glowing reports, in the sorta techie hipster space. Of course, we can almost always find a study to support our preferred view if we have one, so we must use our analytical and perhaps intuitive skills to interpret the various studies.

Here’s three things I feel pretty confident about:

1. There will be more gigging in the future (regardless of motivation)

2. There is and will continue to be a great deal of cost-cutting and benefit avoidance motivated gigging “quietly” going on (again, the “pro” side is much louder)

3. While some love the freedom of the gig world, my money is on more giggers wishing they had a “real” job.

I think #3 deserves some explanation. A key concept is one’s sense of “existential security,” that is a relative sense that one’s survival is secure enough that it can be taken for granted. This is a key concept suggested Professor Ronald Inglehart of the World Values Survey explaining values shift. Basically, when one feels a high degree of existential security, they are more willing to “risk” a move to new values. When threatened, we go back to the familiar. I think that explains the Gig Dichotomy: those with a high degree of existential security love it; those with less existential security don’t.

This is important to After Capitalism in that the opportunity of the Visions is in providing that existential security. It’s foundational to all of the experimental new stuff. Only a small hardcore will try the truly new without that existential security. And today I suspect existential security is not at a high point!

What do think? Be glad to discuss! – Andy Hines

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Prosperity without Growth

This week we follow up on Degrowth with Prosperity without Growth from Professor Tim Jackson. It’s a different take in that the Degrowth folks are skeptical of sustainable development, suggesting it is an oxymoron that glosses over the resource depletion issue. Prosperity without Growth is less severe in its prescription, suggesting more of a greening of the existing economic order than a replacement of it. This makes sense in that the degrowthers are more politically driven while Jackson’s view is more environmentally driven.

Jackson puts his cards right on the table: “Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth.” And he does his best to smash that myth, pointing out the problems that by now most of us readers are familiar with.  He suggests that moving to a more sustainable approach must and can be done given the dangers of continue to pursue growth at its current pace.

This earlier work by Jackson (2012) (this work is carried on now by the Post Growth Institute) was recognized by the APF for a Most Significant Futures work award. So naturally I turned to it in gathering concepts about sustainability-driven post-capitalism. It raises a question that I’ve wrestled with regarding several of the sustainability-driven concepts: are they chiefly about reforming the existing order – greening capitalism, so to speak – or proposing a new socio-economic regime. I’ve been toying with establishing a group of Horizon Two transition concepts, to join the two existing sets of transition concepts: (1) collaborative sharing platforms and (2) new sources of [economic] value.

Prosperity without Growth would seem a better fit with the transition concepts in that it is primarily about making the existing order more sustainable. It provides a dozen suggests for building a sustainable economy organized into three clusters:

(1) Building a Sustainable Macro-Economy

Debt-driven materialistic consumption is deeply unsatisfactory as the basis for our macro-economy. The time is now ripe to develop a new macro-economics for sustainability that does not rely for its stability on relentless growth and expanding material throughput. Four specific policy areas are identified to achieve this:

  1. Developing macro-economic capability
  2. Investing in public assets and infrastructures
  3. Increasing financial and fiscal prudence
  4. Reforming macro-economic accounting

(2) Protecting Capabilities for Flourishing

The social logic that locks people into materialistic consumerism is extremely powerful, but detrimental ecologically and psychologically. A lasting prosperity can only be achieved by freeing people from this damaging dynamic and providing creative opportunities for people to flourish – within the ecological limits of the planet. Five policy areas address this challenge.

  1. Sharing the available work and improving the work-life balance
  2. Tackling systemic inequality
  3. Measuring capabilities and flourishing
  4. Strengthening human and social capital
  5. Reversing the culture of consumerism

(3) Respecting Ecological Limits

The material profligacy of consumer society is depleting natural resources and placing unsustainable burdens on the planet’s ecosystems. There is an urgent need to establish clear resource and environmental limits on economic activity and develop policies to achieve them. Three policy suggestions contribute to that task.

  1. Imposing clearly defined resource/emissions caps
  2. Implementing fiscal reform for sustainability
  3. Promoting technology transfer and international ecosystem protection.

Jackson admits that it’s not clear if these steps will be enough. Is using a broom instead of leaf-blower, for example, really going to make a significant difference? Basically, while acknowledging the work of Herman Daly on the steady-state economy, he wonders if there a workable macro-economics for sustainability. Interestingly, the degrowth folks voiced much the same concern about the lack of agreement on how implement degrowth.

That’s not the problem we’re trying to solve here, at least not yet. We’re looking to identify visions of a post-capitalist world in hopes of catalyzing a positive image of the future to work toward. In simple terms, let’s see where we want to go before we start planning and acting. Sure, we should absolutely do sensible things in the meantime, but the lack of a guiding image is the key concern of the After Capitalism project. – Andy Hines

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Evolutionary Reconstruction as Path to Vision

How do we get to our horizon three visions? Gar Alperovitz suggests that “Reform” concepts suggest changes or improvements to the existing [capitalist] system. Revolutionary concepts are often precipitated by crisis or collapse and usually but not always accompanied by violence. In my view, neither of these paths is appealing. Alperovitz suggests an alternative path: a longer term process that is best described as an evolutionary reconstruction  — that is, systemic institutional transformation of the political economy that unfolds over time. He suggests that evolutionary reconstruction involves step-by-step nonviolent change. But like revolution, evolutionary reconstruction changes the basic institutions of ownership of the economy, so that the broad public, rather than a narrow band of individuals (i.e., the “one percent”), increasingly owns more and more of the nation’s productive assets.

He cites two big drivers — inequality and environmental overload, — that appear in most calls for a new system or vision collapse, as creating momentum for evolutionary reconstruction. He gives many examples or manifestations of it, such as the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC). He is no Pollyanna, acknowledging an alternative possibility of a painful and sustained era of stalemate and decay.

I like the evolutionary reconstruction concept. In Alperovitz’s case, his end point or vision is what he calls a Pluralist Commonwealth, to underscore its plural forms of democratized ownership. It is anchored through wealth-democratizing strategies as a matter of principle. Four critical axioms underlie the concept:

  • democratization of wealth
  • community, both locally and in general, as a guiding theme;
  • decentralization in general;
  • substantial but not complete forms of democratic planning in support of community, and to achieve longer term economic, democracy-building and ecological goals.

I’ve been on a bit of a tech-led abundance kick, so it was nice to shift gears. I originally sorted Pluralist Commonwealth into Non-worker’s Paradise, but it could also fit with Sustainable Commons. Ultimately, if we can come up with an integrated version that has aspects of all three types of visions….well, that could be a quite compelling image, dare we say a Polakian image? – Andy Hines

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A healthy fear of superintelligence

Homo Deus explored the possibility of a new human species emerging. If that wasn’t enough to persuade you that we need to be thinking seriously about the future, then try Nick Bostrom’s SuperIntelligence. [Okay, I recognize that readers of this blog are already converted, so I offer this post as ammunition that you can use in your proselytizing].

Superintelligence fits with our “Tech-Led Abundance” family of visions of After Capitalism. Like each member of that family, it has an evil doppleganger that shows up in Collapse. In Superintelligence, Bostrom acknowledges the awesomely good potential for superintelligence, but focuses on the potential for it going bad, since, well, it poses an existential risk for humanity. Thus my suggestion of “healthy fear.”

Let’s review his basic AI framework, which is suggested as a developmental pathway:

  • 1st, task intelligence, in which AI outperforms people in a single task. We are currently here.
  • 2nd, general intelligence, in which AI is as intelligent as people in a wide range of tasks. This may be decades away….or closer.
  • 3rd, superintelligence, in which AI is orders of magnitude more intelligent than people across-the-board

Now, he carefully notes that the AI/machine-learning approach to super-intelligence is not the only way to superintelligence. He suggests another that he calls whole-brain emulation (we basically simulate and transcend the brain structure). Another possibility is a vastly more rapid biotech route, using stem cells and embryos. My take, however, is that the AI machine learning has the inside track.

Decades away, right? Probably, but he posits the interesting scenario that the takeoff from general to superintelligence could happen very fast, on the order of days or weeks. That would mean essentially no time to prepare a world in which humans are no longer the smartest species on the planet.

He lays out some cases in which this superintelligence could pose an existential risk to humanity. Not necessarily out of some malevolence per se, but in fulfillment of its purpose, humans could be more or less swept aside. He talks about how a first mover superintelligence could essential initiate what he calls a singleton ( a world order in which at the global level there is a single decision-making agency). He mentions a treacherous turn in which AI realizes at some  points that humans are trying to limit it, and begins to conceal its behavior. And he talks about “perverse instantiation,” which basically includes the Strawberry Fields scenario that Musk has popularized.

All that said, Bostrom is quite careful to add in the appropriate caveats, alternatives, and hedges. It could turn out wonderfully good! It could take a really long time. It may never happen. He simply suggests it is plausible, therefore worthy of serious strategic attention. And now! He discusses approaches to managing it, such as capability control and motivation selection — actually goes into them in some depth.

In sum, we can’t afford to wait until it’s already here, and if the fast takeoff scenario is possible, we can’t even wait for AI to achieve human-level intelligence. I was already in his camp, and after reading the book, I am even moreso. It is worth your time to read the book and see where you net out. Our existence could hang in the balance! – Andy Hines

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The Purpose of Purpose?

Surely, purpose would fit with our set of Horizon 3 Visions, right? In fact we originally referred to the “Sustainable Commons” visions as “Sustainability and Moral Purpose.” So I was surprised to find after digging into The Purpose Economy book, that it squarely fit as in H2 Transitions as a “New Source of Value” branch.

The simple distinction: H3 Visions propose a new economic system to follow capitalism, while H2 Transitions are still within the capitalist framework. There is a sub-category within these transitions: “source of new value” that in effect work within capitalism but suggest there will be a shift in emphasis on what brings value within that system. Indeed, the author of the Purpose Economy does our work for us here: “we are in the early days of the emergence of a Purpose Economy—the fourth American economy in our history….it is likely that in fewer than 20 years, the pursuit of purpose will eclipse the third American economy—the Information Economy.” So, the source of value has shifted from agriculture to manufacturing to information and now to purpose. To put this in context, thirteen other “new sources of value” concepts have been identified:

Algorithm/Data Experience Metaspace
Artisan Intangible Network
Attention Knowledge Philanthrocapitalism
Creative Molecular Leisure Relationship
    Zero Marginal Cost

To put it unfavorably, purpose becomes a new focal point for making money. We sell purpose instead of information. We co-opt the noble pursuit of making a difference and find out how to make money from it. However, that is not the intention of the author. I believe it is a quite genuine and useful attempt to improve the capitalist approach – to make the current system work better. I believe the author is committed to purpose in a noble sense, and proposing to work within the existing framework to make it happen. Some might find commercializing purpose to be a bit paradoxical, but the book is full of examples of how  this is already happening.  — Andy Hines

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