At the heart of Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism is the alienation of workers. The social critic Jeremy Rifkin sees alienation all around today’s new economy.
Shoppers used to go to market to buy things, now consumers are marketed experiences, relationships, and access. These days, you don’t buy a car, you lease a driving experience. You don’t have a workout buddy, you pay a personal trainer.
Virtual corporations own nothing and contract out their production. Parents cart their children from school to soccer to violin lessons, instead of letting them play with other kids on the block.
Rifkin says the business of business these days is selling consumers access to their own time and lives, in the form of long term service relationships – relationships that will eclipse the human ones we have today.
Jeremy Rifkin and the Age of Access – in this hour of The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Jeremy Rifkin is a social critic, lecturer, and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC. He is the author of “The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life is a Paid For Experience.”