[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 12:49:14 +0900
It would be extraordinarily interesting, I believe, to hear Robert
and Phil's take on a book I am reading just now, Jeremy Rifkin
(2000), The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where
All of Life is a Paid-for Experience.
I'm finding it fascinating because it elaborates the consequences of
a proposition I first saw articulated in Harland Cleveland (1985),
The Knowledge Executive, i.e., that the property law on which the
modern capitalist economy is built is, in essence, a law of "things,"
where a thing is an entity such that, if I give it to you I no longer
have it. In contrast, Cleveland pointed out, information is an entity
such that if I give it to you, we both have it. Thus, he suggested,
the shift from an economy based on ownership of things to an economy
based on ownership of information would radically change the legal
and economic foundations of the world in which we live.
Rifkin develops the argument that the global economy is, in fact,
shifting from a property-based regime, grounded in the ownership of
material things, to an access-based regime in which we all wind up
renting access to information and experience and owning less and
less. The phenomenon can be seen in companies that outsource
production of material goods, freeing themselves from being
encumbered with physical assets and tied down to geographical
communities from which they may which to extricate themselves. It can
be seen in Club Med vacations and other forms of global tourism and
in the growing preference of highly mobile, wealthy individuals for
renting luxurious digs where they happen to be currently working
instead of owning houses that may be hard to unload at a profit when
you're moving on every couple of years in pursuit of the next big
thing. It can ultimately be seen in what seems to be an insatiable
drive by business to make a business of every aspect of life by
providing for payment services that used to be provided gratis (or
more precisely, the anthropologist butts in, as a matter of
generalized reciprocity) by families and friendships.
One interesting aspect of all this is that virulent anti-tax folks
like our friend Brian wind up looking decidedly old-fashioned. If
you're paying for everything anyway and renting access instead of
owning property, why not make decisions in a quid pro quo manner vis-
a-vis government as well as big business (both being big
organizations and practically speaking much of a muchness when it
comes to inefficiency, paperwork, and other bureaucratic bumpf). You
may then discover that paying half your income as "taxes" to, for
example, the government of Sweden, means living in cleaner, safer,
healthier environment where you're taken care of in case of sickness
or unemployment and the kids get a good education is, in fact, a far
better deal than living in a Hobbesian jungle where the streets are
dirty and unsafe, the HMO controls what health-care you get (and
being profit-driven will provide only the bare minimum), it's tough
titty if your employer closes a factory or office in which you've
invested half or more of your life and, yes, schools suck, not least
because teachers get no respect as well as being underpaid.
Cheers,
John L. McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama, Japan 220-0006
Tel 81-45-314-9324
Email John.McCreery@xxxxxxxxxxxx
"Making Symbols is Our Business"
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