NOTE: This is the last post for the foundations section from my book World After Capital. In it I propose a catalog of basic human needs. As set out earlier much of today’s confusion around scarcity results from our willful conflagration of needs and wants.NeedsThe definition of scarcity that I just introduced is based on the notion of needs. To argue that there is a shift in scarcity from capital to attention thus requires an agreed upon set of needs to show that we indeed have sufficient ca...

NOTE: I am continuing to publish revised sections from my book World After Capital. Today’s section provides a technological definition of scarcity (instead of an economic one) and provides a brief history of how scarcity has shifted over time from food to land to capital and is now shifting to attention. Scarcity In this book I will be arguing that capital is no longer scarce but that attention now is. Furthermore this constitutes the third major shift in scarcity in the history of humanity....

NOTE: I am continuing to publish revised sections from my book World After Capital. Today’s section contains a central idea of the book, which is that the existence of knowledge provides an objective basis for humanism and establishes critical inquiry as its central value. Humanism What then are the values that I am basing all of this on? Where do those come from? In his book Sapiens, historian Yuval Harari claims that all value systems are simply narratives that are equally valid. He specifi...

NOTE: The following section is the beginning of Part One of my book World After Capital. I have been posting revisions here most Mondays. Part One: Laying a Foundation In an earlier version of this book I attempted to skip any philosophical exposition and jump right into the impact of digital technology. While that may make for more gripping reading, it resulted in the verbal equivalent of building a skyscraper without a foundation: rapid initial progress followed by total collapse. With digi...