Jeremy Rifkin: News

“For years, governments, corporations, and researchers have argued that the testing of animals to assess the risk of chemicals to human health is essential to ensure the well-being of our own species. But now, new breakthroughs in the field of genomics, bioinformatics, epigenetics, and computational toxicology are providing new research tools for studying the impact of toxic chemicals on human health that are far more accurate in assessing the risk of these chemicals to human beings. Antivivisection societies and animal rights organizations have made this argument for many, many years—only to be scorned by scientific bodies, medical associations, and industry lobbies who accuse them of being “anti-progress” in caring more about animals than people. Now it is the scientific establishment, interestingly enough, that has come to the very same conclusions.”

Jeremy Rifkin

From a video for the Stop Vivisection campaign (10 July 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vep0YbndO14, transcribed in “Jeremy Rifkin: Opinion Piece on Stop Vivisection,” in Equivita.it http://equivita.it/index.php/it/comunicati/2-non-categorizzato/568-jeremy-rifkin-opinion-piece-en

People , Health , Study , Animals

“For starters, the emerging zero marginal cost economy radically changes our notion of the economic process. The old paradigm of owners and workers, and of sellers and consumers, is beginning to break down. Consumers are becoming their own producers, eliminating the distinction. prosumers will increasingly be able to produce, consume, and share their own goods and services with one another on the Collaborative Commons at diminishing marginal costs approaching zero, bringing to the fore new ways of organizing economic life beyond the traditional capitalist market model.”

Jeremy Rifkin

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Life , Way , Change

“On a second front, a powerful new technology platform is developing out of the bowels of the Second Industrial Revolution, speeding the central contradiction of capitalist ideology to the end game mentioned above. The coming together of the Communications Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things (IoT)—is giving rise to a Third Industrial Revolution. The Internet of Things is already boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them practically free. The result is corporate profits are beginning to dry up, property rights are weakening, and an economy based on scarcity is slowly giving way to an economy of abundance.”

Jeremy Rifkin

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Way , Game , Intelligence , Communication

“The societal decision to reduce beef will profoundly affect the economics of human survival in the coming century. In the new world that is coming, millions of human beings will voluntarily choose to eat lower on the food chain so that millions of others may obtain the minimum food calories they need to sustain their lives. This grand redistribution of the earth's bounty, the most far-reaching in history, will unite the human race in a new fraternal bond. A new species awareness will begin where the rich meet the poor on the descending rungs of the world's protein ladder. The decision to eat further down on the planet's food chain will force a wholesale reassessment of the entire grain-fed meat complex ranging from factory farm chickens to hogs. The collapse of the global cattle complex will likely precipitate a chain reaction, resulting in the elimination of other grain-fed meats from the human diet. The dissolution of the commercial cattle complex will spare the rich and might help save the poor. Eliminating grain-fed beef and eating lower on the food chain will dramatically reduce the incidence of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.”

Jeremy Rifkin book Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture

Source: Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (1992), p. 290

World , Disease , Food , History

“The Protestant theologian replaced the church’s feudal cosmology with a worldview centered on the personal relationship of each believer with Christ. The democratization of worship fit well with the new communication/energy matrix that was empowering the new burgher class.”

Jeremy Rifkin

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Communication , Christ , Personality

“It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat. The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents a new form of human evil, whose consequences may be far greater and longer-lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings.”

Jeremy Rifkin book Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture

Source: Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (1992), pp. 159-160

Men , World , Food , Reality

“The capitalist era is passing... not quickly, but inevitably. A new economic paradigm—the Collaborative Commons—is rising in its wake that will transform our way of life. We are already witnessing the emergence of a hybrid economy, part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons. The two economic systems often work in tandem and sometimes compete. They are finding synergies along each other’s perimeters, where they can add value to one another, while benefiting themselves. At other times, they are deeply adversarial, each attempting to absorb or replace the other.”

Jeremy Rifkin

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Life , Way , Time , Parting