Mis humildes recomendaciones para estos días de descanso

Estimad@s Clientes y/o amantes de LEAN:

Os deseo que paséis unos días de merecido descanso en compañía de tus seres queridos

Para estas vacaciones, una humilde recomendación, una canción y un libro

-La canción: Bohemian Rhapsody, de Queen, tan llena de matices, tan completa, …para muchos, entre los que me encuentro, la mejor canción de la historia del rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2VPKWwl5Rw

En este enlace encontraréis una versión subtitulada en español

Aconsejo dejar pasar la secuencia de videoclips posteriores: la lista de canciones emblemáticas es espectacular

-El libro: Postcapitalismo, de Paul Mason

Muy importantes reflexiones acerca de lo que nos espera ( según la visión de este prestigioso economista inglés )….sus teorías han causado gran impacto en La City

Una observación: a mí, que no me suelen gustar mucho los libros de economía, me está encantando… !! Te engancha, con un lenguaje muy pedagógico que entiende todo el mundo !!  

Unas pequeñas reseñas:

Página web de Todoliteratura

Paul Mason en su libro, ilustra la muerte del actual sistema económico y presenta una visión original y bien argumentada de las alternativas reales a nuestro alcance.

“Postcapitalismo“ figura en la lista de los más vendidos del Sunday Times y su publicación está prevista en 14 países. Dos millones y medio de personas leyeron la prepublicación en The Guardian, y fue compartida 430.000 veces,

El libro presentado
Durante los dos últimos siglos, el capitalismo ha experimentado variaciones continuas de las que siempre ha salido transformado y fortalecido. Sin embargo, al repasar su turbulenta historia, Paul Mason se plantea si no estaremos ahora en el umbral de un cambio tan grande, tan profundo, que sea el capitalismo en sí el que haya alcanzado sus límites y esté mutando en algo totalmente nuevo.

El elemento central de este cambio es la tecnología de la información, que ha supuesto una revolución tal que posee el potencial de reconfigurar por completo las concepciones del trabajo, la producción y el valor con las que estamos familiarizados y de destruir una economía basada en los mercados y en la propiedad privada; de hecho, él sostiene que ya están sucediendo ambas cosas.

En este innovador libro, Mason nos muestra que tenemos hoy la oportunidad de levantar, de las cenizas de la reciente crisis financiera, una economía global más justa desde el punto de vista social y más sostenible. Trascender el capitalismo ha dejado de ser, tal como él nos enseña aquí, el sueño utópico que antaño se nos antojaba que era. Esta es la primera vez en toda la historia humana en la que, dotados de unos conocimientos que nos permiten comprender lo que está sucediendo a nuestro alrededor, podemos por fin predecir y dar forma a un cambio revolucionario, en vez de limitarnos simplemente a reaccionar a él.

El autor
Paul Mason es el redactor-jefe de economía del noticiario «Channel 4 News». Poseedor de diversos galardones por su trabajo, libros suyos son Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed y Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. Colabora además en publicaciones como The Guardian y New Statesman.

http://www.todoliteratura.es/noticia.asp?ref=9936&cadena=mason&como=2

Espacio de radio: “Coordenadas”, de RTVE

http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/audios/coordenadas/coordenadas-no-fin-postcapitalismo-01-03-16/3506621/

Empieza la entrevista con Paul Mason hacia el minuto 12

Financial Times

His starting point is an assertion that the current technological revolution has at least three big implications for modern economies. First, “information technology has reduced the need for work” — or, more accurately, for all humans to be workers. For automation is now replacing jobs at a startling speed; indeed, a 2013 report by the Oxford Martin school estimated that half the jobs in the US are at high risk of vanishing within a decade or two.

The second key point about the IT revolution, Mason argues, is that “information goods are corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly”. For the key point about cyber-information is that it can be replicated endlessly, for free; there is no constraint on how many times we can copy and paste a Wikipedia page. “Until we had shareable information goods, the basic law of economics was that everything is scarce. Supply and demand assumes scarcity. Now certain goods are not scarce, they are abundant.”

But third, “goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy”. More specifically, people are collaborating in a manner that does not always make sense to traditional economists, who are used to assuming that humans act in self-interest and price things according to supply and demand. “The biggest information product in the world — Wikipedia — is made by 27,000 volunteers, for free,” he observes. “If it were run as a commercial site, Wikipedia’s revenue could be $2.8bn a year. Yet Wikipedia makes no profit. And in doing so it makes it almost impossible for anybody else to make a profit in the same space.”

This has radical consequences for anybody who dislikes the current western capitalist system, Mason says. Hitherto, revolutions have usually occurred when workers have united against elites. But Mason thinks this is outdated. “The old left’s aim was the forced destruction of market mechanisms . . . by the working class [and] the lever would be the state,” he observes. “[But] over the past twenty-five years, it is the left’s project that has collapsed.”

Instead, Mason thinks that it is time to recognise that technology has turned us all into individualists — but connected us by networks in unusually powerful ways. And he wants to use the power of millions of individuals to build a more equal and just world that is no longer dominated by a “neoliberalism [that] is the doctrine of uncontrolled markets”. More specifically, Mason thinks — or hopes — that a postcapitalist world is a place where only part of the population will work for cash, on a quasi-voluntary basis; the rest will be pursuing non-monetary goals. He wants governments to provide a guaranteed income for the entire population and free (or low-cost) basic services and public infrastructure. He also wants companies to automate as many processes as they can (rather than relying on cheap labour) and central bankers to conduct financial repression to reduce national debt.

Mason’s vision for the future, in other words, is a world where the government provides the framework to enable individuals to flourish but state functions are handed over to citizens. It is a place where people are secure — and equal — enough to use the efficiencies unleashed by automation to pursue worthy goals, such as volunteering to write Wikipedia pages.

It sounds utopian. And Mason does not attempt to describe in any detail exactly how western society might achieve this new postcapitalist world. Nor does he address the issue that tends to preoccupy many unions and leftwing groups today, namely the fact that technology is currently turning many workers into the equivalent of insecure digital sharecroppers, rather than collaborative creative spirits. Just look at the current fights around Uber, and the lack of security for workers there.

But while Mason’s ideas might seem crazily idealistic, they are thought-provoking. And it is worth remembering that the concept of Wikipedia would have once seemed crazy, too. So perhaps the key message from the book is this: in a world of rapid technological change, we need to rethink our old assumptions about “left” and “right”; cyberspace is ripping up many ideas about the government and class system. Politicians of all stripes should take note. And so should the people who vote for them.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/adfaf156-39cb-11e5-8613-07d16aad2152.html

Que disfrutéis cada hora y cada día de estos días de merecido descanso

Un cordial saludo

Alvaro Ballesteros