Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, Palgrave MacMillan, 2014

French version

I ended up getting The Zero Marginal Cost Society, despite the disappointment felt after reading the previous book of Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution.

This book is built on a gross fallacy. Here's where it is expressed:

"Economists have long understood that the most efficient economy is one in which consumers pay only for the marginal cost of the goods they purchase. But if consumers pay only for the marginal cost and those costs continue to race toward zero, businesses would not be able to ensure a return on their investment and sufficient profit. That being the case, market leaders would attempt to gain market dominance to ensure a monopoly hold so they could impose prices higher than the marginal cost, thus preventing the invisible hand from hurrying the market along to the most efficient economy. This is the inherent contradiction that underlies capitalist theory and practice".

Rifkin believes, therefore, that marginal cost pricing is efficient even when this cost is zero!

But this pricing is only efficient if the market obeys the regime of perfect competition, which implies that the marginal cost is not zero (see Eléments de théorie « iconomique »): hence Rifkin's reasoning combines two assumptions that are mutually exclusive.

When the marginal cost is zero, the firm must of course cover the fixed cost of production and thus, contrary to what Rifkin says, offer an average price that is at least equal to the average cost (for example sell at first a new product at a high price, and then gradually lower the price). This is what happens when the market obeys the regime of monopolistic competition, that apparently Rifkin ignores.

The logical fallacy of his reasoning ruin his conclusion at the "end of capitalism". That capitalism disappears would be strange in an economy where the cost of production condenses into a fixed cost that is pure capital.

Rifkin had announced the "end of work" in 1997. In 2011 he located in new energy (wind turbines, solar panels, etc.) the "third industrial revolution". He continues to publish fallacies with this new book and many readers enjoy it greatly.

The media success of Rifkin is a painful sight for those who have, despite everything, some respect for the human nature.

François Jullien, Zhong Yong, Imprimerie Nationale, 1993

French version

François Jullien gives, by publishing this translation, an important contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy and its relationship with our own philosophy.

The goal of Western philosophy is knowledge enriched after Kant by the critic of knowledge [1]. The goal of Chinese philosophy is wisdom, shēng. But the wisdom of the Chinese lies in an articulation of the personality that is strange for us - not because it would not exist by us, but because we do not give him any attention.

Our culture followed two paths to knowledge: at first the truth revealed by Scripture and dogma, and then from the Renaissance Science constructed by combining theory and experimentation. Our intellectual history is marked by the rivalry between these two approaches but the Chinese have followed neither one nor the other.

One of the presentations of their philosophy is the Zhong Yong (pronounce Djong Yong) which, with the Interviews of Confucius, the Mencius and the Great Learning, was used for a thousand years to train Chinese scholars. It is written in the indirect style favored by the Chinese: where we would use definitions and deductions they prefer hint and suggestion. One can hardly understand this text if one does not access to a comment.

WikiLeaks and Informatics

French version

WikiLeaks causes two diametrically opposed reactions: for some it is a criminal enterprise that puts democracy at risk. For others, there is nothing new in the documents that WikiLeaks publishes. But if these opinions are both negative, they clearly contradict each other: how could WikiLeaks put democracy at risk if it publishes nothing new? Those who express both critics are ridiculous.

Sarah Palin thinks Julian Assange is as dangerous as Osama bin Laden. Rush Limbaugh says that “back in the old days when men were men (…) this guy would die of lead poisoning from a bullet in the brain”. Joe Lieberman told reporters of The New York Times, who publish comments on the news published by WikiLeaks, are bad citizens. Newt Gingrich thinks Assange engaged in a military attack against the United States.

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy says that WikiLeaks provides "the highest degree of irresponsibility". The Minister Eric Besson believes that it "endangers the diplomatic relations". The Prime Minister Francois Fillon accuses it of "theft and deal in stolen goods"...

In order to clarify this, I went on http://wikileaks.liberation.fr/cablegate.html and spent a few hours reading the news that the U.S. embassy sent to the State Department.

Wikileaks holds 251,287 cables it publishes steadily since November 28, 2010. On December 20 1,788 cables were published.

*     *

I found that this reading contradicts the two opinions mentioned above: these mails contain things that are both interesting and new, and their publication increases rather than damages the prestige of American diplomacy.

Pierre Mounier-Kuhn, "L'informatique en France", PUPS, 2010

Translated from a French version

This is the first volume of a monumental work that Pierre Mounier-Kuhn dedicates to the history of computing in France. It addresses research and University. A second volume will deal with the behavior of manufacturers, a third with the role of the state.

It will probably be necessary for Mounier-Kuhn to devote a fourth volume to the computerization of institutions, to what happened on the side of usages, their requirements and their relationships with scientists, suppliers and the state.

Like any historical research, this one was constrained by the availability of archives and hence it considers what happened before 1975. But it is at this time that the computerization of institutions and society begun: the notion of information system emerged in the early 70s, when the requirements of the semantics of data passed before those of the calculation which they condition under the principle garbage in, garbage out.

Mounier-Kuhn writes on the computerization of France, but he shows that our country, delayed by the circumstances of the German occupation, has not been a pioneer in this field. Computer technology had its source in the U.S. (and Britain), and the ideas that we French have had on compilers, operating systems, databases, networks etc. were only second hand, notwithstanding some individual exceptions.

Edouard Tétreau, 20 000 milliards de dollars, Grasset, 2010

Translation from a French version.

This essay is a quick and pleasant reading: situations are evoked so vividly that you feel as if you were a participant.

After reading the introduction one expects a text in three parts: 1) everything that goes wrong in the U.S., 2) why they will bounce anyway, 3) how other countries will pay the kickback. But the development does not exactly obey this plan: part 2, "bounce", is reduced to an evocation of the transfusion of vitality and population coming from Mexico - and Tétreau does not answer an obvious question: if the Anglo-Saxon and protestant U.S. came into decay so that their vitality and demography depend on a Latino-Indian and catholic immigration, what will their identity become?

But he says that Americans don't care about identity: "What counts is not what you are, but what you do", repeated those he met and this "what you do" means immediate action: "Don't think, just do it," they told him.

This primacy given to action is a double edged sword. The art of engineering and practical no-nonsense are the strength of the U.S. but thoughtless action may deteriorate in activism and barren agitation - and one wonders if the U.S., becoming obese in every sense of the word, do not have lost the energy that their short history showed.

François Jullien, The silent transformations, Seagull Books, 2011

Version en français

François Jullien presents here, more clearly than in his previous works, the confrontation between Chinese thought and European philosophy. By placing in front of the other, he highlights what each of them has neglected, what it does not want to see.

Is Philosophy an expression of our culture, of the way of thought that the Indo-European languages structure (subject - verb - complement, declensions and conjugations)? Or did she, starting from the Greek source, structure the way we think? It is indeed vain to try to distinguish cause and effect: the two phenomena, inter-weaved, enclose us in a familiar circle.

Our representation of the world proceeds by concepts and definitions with clear contours. It is suitable for mathematics, it encourages the construction of science, but it does not help us to think our aging, the landslides of our emotional life, all these slow changes whose term takes us by surprise.