Im starting to ssierra when im the best questions that might actually get us closer to the vision with her splayed us out over 200 years ago. Thank you all so much for coming. The book is available on amazon. Com. I hope youre interested in buying it, but if not, please follow up with me. Thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] up next on booktv, after words with guest host said two, author of the googlization of everything. This become a bestselling author, Jeremy Rifkin in his latest book, the zero Marginal Cost Society. And i commend the European Union pfizer argues capitalism is on its way out in the combined communications, energy and much of styx internet slowly to its demise by increasing production and distribution and effectively eliminating corporate profits. The program is about an hour. Host hello, Jeremy Rifkin is with us today. I am Siva Vaidhyanathan from the university of virginia. We are going to discuss his new book, the zero Marginal Cost Society. It is also his 20th book, which is quite a few in a method cells. This book takes the entire world as a subject that has a tremendous amount of focus on the current state and perhaps immediate future suited the u. S. Economy as well. And so, it ranges across so many topics. Im sure well have a rich set of discussions that will link together quite nicely. I was hoping you could explain the title. Thats a good way to start. The zero Marginal Cost Society. What do you mean by zero marginal cost . Guest i think we are just getting to glimpse the outline of a new Economic System country known to the world stage. This is the first Economic System to reverse and sad anticapitalism and socialism in the early mac team century. It is a remarkable historic event with longterm implications for Office Around the world. This great Economic Transformation ascent pain called zero marginal cost. Let me explain. Theres a paradox deeply embedded in the heart of the capitalist market watch has been responsible for the Great Success of the invisible hand over two centuries ago. The irony is the paradox is that in the ultimate triumph of capitalism, but the triumph will lead to the demise of the primary Economic System in the world. In a capitalist market, sellers are continually probing for new technology is they can increase product dignity, reduce the marginal cost of a put out a cheaper project, wendover market share and bring back their investors. Marginal cost of the cost of producing additional unit of a good or service after the fixed costs are covered. You never anticipated a Technology Revolution whose productivity is so extreme that it can actually reduce the marginal cost of producing and distributing goods and services to near zero, making goods and services essentially or nearly free can no longer subject to market forces. That is what is beginning to happen in nature way across the global economy. You know because of what you teach. We saw a 20 marginal cost phenomenon affect the information over the last 10 years. First we saw napster and the people who find ways to create software to share music files, bypassing the capitalist market in the Recording Industry didnt pay the royalties and it brought the Recording Industry to its knees. That is zero marginal cost phenomenon started to affect the news or magazine of the fishing industry. Millions of consumers became proceeding began to produce and share their knowledge and information in wikipedia, new spot, people shared knees together and of course the publishing people started putting out their ebooks for free. This meant newspapers are not a business. Magazines bellied up into the omission industry has been devastated by free ebooks and most recently and of course you can speak to this from the University Point of view, massive up in all my courses. We now have six, 7 Million Students taking the free online courses that operated to euro marginal cost top by some of the best professors in the world and the receiving credit. This is now forcing universities to rethink the business model. In the last 10 years have not been academic. Peer the zero marginal cost would affect information to, but it would not move over from the Virtual World to the physical world and set the firewall wouldnt be breached. They are now expanding to an internet of things. It will now allow us to produce energy and products after zero marginal cost. Host it sounds in itself paradoxical many people. The internet to her general way of thinking is about the flow of information, the flow of data. A distributed noncontrolled flow of data that seems to touch everybody knew an interesting interesting ways every day. How at the supply two cars, two airplanes, two collections of everyday materials you would buy at walmart. Guest the information internet is just now beginning to converge with the Energy Internet in europe and now in china and also beginning to converge their fledgling automated transport and logistics. The information Internet Company energy in her neck, the automated transport and logistics internet creating the internet of things and they are placing Centers Across the Economic System to monitor the flow of data. We have sensors now connecting resource flows. We have sensors feeding data from production line, warehouses, distribution centers. We have sensors on martin, sensors connect to the electricity grid so we know what the appliances are doing them in a moment. Sensors connecting vehicles and offices and stores it that big data coming in across the economy to these three internet, communication, energy, internet which is its internet is providing a wealth of data about what goes on any given moment across the economy. We now have 14 billion sensors out there now in ibm says in 202,050,000,000,000 sensors connecting everything with everyone. Its exhilarating and challenges. Whats interesting from the opportunity, millions of perceivers can now do with physical things that they did with information. They can know an expanded of things in the years that had been a combined debate data coming through on their own vocals with their own apps and with that come into the system, they can use analytics and create their own algorithms like google and facebook today and dramatically increase their own productivity, reduce marginal cost and just like they now reduce the marginal cost of information goods of the traditional internet. Its only the first few years, but its a tremendous shift in the economy. Host used the word or sooner. Can you explain what that is . Guest its been used 25, 30 years ago. That is consumers. Consumers become prosumer. They consume or share their own prison services. Let me give you two examples of how this affects the physical world and turn solidness. Renewable energy, 3d printed products. We now have millions and millions of early adopters in your actually producing their own Green Electricity with solar panels on the roof or Wind Turbines on their property and their producing added near zero marginal cost. The technology for harvesting solar and wind is still a little pricey, but its on an exponential curve. Just like we saw with computer chips in the computer industry, with a 20 or exponential curve with solar and wind. A solar watt cost 60 to produce in 1970. It continues to go down. Even before the six costs are paid back for harvesting technologies, the marginal cost of producing a unit of sun, solar to see when his near zero. You just have to capture. The window side of the building is free. You just have to capture it. Millions of people are now reducing their own electricity, sharing it with each other on the emerging Energy Internet in europe and to show you how fast it is moving, china has taken a the plan as outlined and now we are working on the new book. I visited the chinese leadership last year. After my visit ans 80 billion for your commitment. To begin today at the Energy Internet at this internet of things to millions of Chinese People produce thereof solar and wind electricity and distributed across china. By contrast, chinas putting up 3. 5 billion, which is centralized, not distributed over a 20 year period. Europe and china are quite far ahead. Host people making their own stuff, durum expressions in their own energy apparently. How are they able to find markets . How are they able to find consumers for their products . And how are they able to Work Together collaboratively to forge new works. Wikipedia comes to mind for instance. A good example is in terms of the collaboration. This hazardous as a storm in the last two years prepared hundreds of thousands of pockets of dozens of small and Mediumsized Enterprises printing out the physical products, just the use printers for software and information goods. If you are a small 3d printer, you can go unexpanded internet can Download Free software and print out your product or then you can use cheap recycled material as your feeds. Tuesdays recycled plastic around the neighborhood, recycled paper, even sand and gravel is melted down for feedstock. And then you can power your 3d printer materials Renewable Energy from the emerging internet in your and then you can take your product and transported in the future on the logistics internet with electric and fuel cell vehicles that operated near zero marginal cost to vehicles that operated with low marginal costs. This is an example where everyone can become a prosumer and sheer surfaces with each other over an emerging collaborative comment. Whats happened here is we are starting to see a debate unfold and that is it is obvious that the zero marginal cost effect is pretty significant. The question is what kind of Economic System and what would we need to envision for millions and hundreds of millions can produce not only derive information good, Different Energy is your marginal cost, during Manufacturing Products that allow them to bypass the market because you would be beyond profits. So what can a in which he made . The economists are somewhat befuddled because they believe theres two ways to organize the economy. Private enterprise or the government or some combination between pure capitalism, socialism or in your social market economy. What economists forget is there is a third to two should we rely on all of this command millions of people around the world every day to provide an entire array of goods and services that are provided by the market cannot provided by the government and are beyond profits noticed. Am i this a social comment, the Civil Society, the notforprofit sectors. Lance of organizations involved in education, health care services, assisted living for the elderly, takes care center, spores could our battle groups in the economists dont pay much attention, but it is a huge sector in terms of revenue. It accounts for 2. 2 million in revenue and is growing faster than the private marketplace. Its probably not a very fast clip and in the u. S. , canada and u. K. , it is growing while the traditional private Enterprise Market is shriveling. Its quite interest him. So what i think we see is the emergence of a collaborative, in the social economy. The trigger for that is zero marginal cost infrastructure because it is like this only for people who want to share things in a community because the internet is designed to be distributed, collaborative come up your and lottery scale so encourages lots of people to bypass big Global Companies, come together to radically and produce and share with each other and you eliminate all the middlemen of these big huge Global Companies who market the profit margin. You mentioned sharing. We see millions of people now must read up on this. They are not sharing information goods in Renewable Energy and 3d printed products. They are sharing cars. They share homes, clothes. In past weeks we have been hearing about your pmb and couch surfing. We now have millions of people sharing their apartments and homes on this collaborative comments. For air bnp is zero marginal cost. Theyve really done to the hotel industry. Once you have your fixed costs in place and you set up your website, the marginal cost of putting it all in there who wants to set the property is zero. If you have a home or an apartment and you have to lease it out, youve heard it covered your fixed costs and not is your mortgage is being paid come your property taxes are paid. The marginal cost of renting out your apartment or home to travelers is near zero. So in new york about my, air bnp was responsible for eliminating 1 Million Hotel nights in hotels because millions of travelers rented out spaces put up a small apartment owners and homeowners. We now have 800,000 people in the United States sharing cars rather than buying cars. Whether they have access to the car, not ownership. What is happening now for every car you share common that takes 15 cars off the road. Imagine the longterm impact to the Auto Industry when the millennial generation comes of age in their sharing cars. That means reducing 14 out of 15 cars on the road. That has impacts on the Auto Industry. Host are you sure it is zerosum . Are you sure theres a car subtracted or attracted for every car share to make sure thats a Million Hotel rooms that did get objective side were taken off the grid rather than an expansion of the supply . Guest thats an interesting point. Theres a small supply, but with the gdp growing slowly, we see a shrink and the growth of gdp. In fact, what its doing is taking the Traditional Exchange economy and moving to the shareable economy so that means less business. Interesting enough, it was the whole way we measure economic or asperity. We measured gdp as the amount of output of goods and services that doesnt differentiate between negative and positive, building prisons are involved in aircraft for the military for cleaning up toxic waste. Here, when people move to the collaborative comments, their economic wellbeing is increasing, but it doesnt count in the gdp. If youre a pro summer producing and consuming your own products or if you share your car or home in a zero marginal cost, thats a reduction in gdp. Its a completely different measure of economic wells. Part of the reason gdp is going down as this collaborative comments is coming up in people are moving beyond the market economy. Its not measured in gdp. Host you bring us all these big ideas. Zero marginal cost, the collaborative commons and a general sense of the findings of an economy driven by opponents rather than one charging for scarcity. Is your book, the zero Marginal Cost Society, a prediction or an exercise in advocacy . Guest i think it is looking at the trend lines. We did a very thoughtful review and they said the difference between deus is what i do as i take a look at the existing trendlines of what is happening now in its trajectory breaths and coinage of the future and coming back. So i think received a transplant is very clear. We see what happened to information goods. With experience in the last 10 years of devastation of newspapers from the magazine, Book Publishing from near zero marginal cost. We are now seeing it clearly in Renewable Energy in places like germany rose 25 great electricity. Most of the players are consumers and Small Businesses producing the new great electricity at near zero marginal cost. We just beginning to see it in 3d printed products. But they say the wildcard here is food and water. That price is not going down. Even affordable to reduce the marginal costs zero and have a potential sustainable by name, Climate Change is the elephant in the room because with Climate Changes change is dramatically affecting the wider circle the planet, we get more winter snows, more prolonged and dramatic dress in the summer and now the price of Climate Change we see a drop in the decline of food production. So if they cant tackle Climate Change and the price of food and water becomes prohibitive, this shift to a near zero marginal cost would be rather irrelevant. The good news is the internet of things creates a revolution in the last is to use less resources more efficiently move to Renewable Energies and greatly mitigate Climate Change if we get there quick enough. I just dont know if we we will get there quick enough. Host this reminds me of three previous predictive moments. He mentioned in the book a couple times john entertains and his prediction he made in the 1920s automation and technological advances would of course create fictional job loss and perhaps suffering, but over the longterm we would be so liberated from the treasury of labor that would have her creative p