Yann-Moulier Boutang on Externalities and Social Productivity

* Article: - La problématique des externalités et la productivité sociale du travail. par Yann Moulier-Boutang. Seminaire Samizdat, 2005.

URL = http://seminaire.samizdat.net/spip.php?auteur23 pdf

Summary

Reading Notes from Michel Bauwens, 2007:

Externalities: every commercial transaction between A and B will have a positive or negative efect on an outsider to the transaction, i.e. C.

Of particular interest are the non-merchant externalities, i.e. the negative effect of the merchant transaction with the non-merchant sphere.

Externalities can be prior to the transaction, as when a company settles near a well-connected port.

In cognitive capitalism, the system is particularly interested in stimulating cognitive externalities: IT, knowledge, "la production du vivant au moyen du vivant".

YMB distinguishes 4 productive spheres, giving rise to six systems of positive externalities:

   - from public to merchant
   - from domestic to merchant
   - from cooperation to merchant
   - from domestic to public
   - from cooperation to public
   - from cooperation to domestic

By extension, there are also negative externalities in the opposite direction.

In cognitive capitalism, externalities 4 and 5 are drained into the commercial and productive sphere.

In the first globalization (industrial), the spheres B and C were involved, while D remained marginal. In the second, informational globalization, the fourth sphere is essential however.

The first capitalism, the merchant phase, could deplete the domestic sphere, because it had access to slavery. The second capitalism, after a first phase of depletion, had to take measures to insure reproduction (though the welfare system). In the third capitalism, when knowledge is needed, the fourth sphere becomes paramount. The problem is that the old salary-based model is not appropriate to this sphere. For this, only a stronger social wage, not linked to employment, i.e. a universal wage, is appropriate.

How high is the value of knowledge capital ? 500% of the material book value is 'external', in the high tech sector. The difference between the stock market value and the accounting-based book value, is the estimate of the worth of the immaterial assets.

National accounts are also 'materially' undervalued in that they do not count many externalities.

The Gross National Product, should be:

   - 1. the GNP of the merchant sector
   - 2. the Gross product of the non-merchant sector ( = state)
   - 3. "Positive externalities minus Negative externalities

This gives us a new vision about the creation of surplus value.

On the one hand, coming from a temporary monopoly on innovation, which can only disappear. On the other hand, coming from the use of pre-merchant externalities.

Box: The economic spheres of cognitive capitalism

   - Sphere A: merchant sphere
   - Sphere B: non-merchant sphere (public, state)
   - Sphere C: Sphere of reproduction: domestic
   - Sphere D: cooperation and common culture

Abstract

- French-language abstract:

"Une société dans laquelle se manifestent les orientations du capitalisme cognitif tend à accentuer et exercer directement un contrôle sur les lieux ou les acteurs détenant des connaissances. On partira de la définition standard (depuis Marshall, Pigou, Rosenstein Rodan, Mead, Scitovsky, Arrow). On se reportera pour une définition des externalités soit à mon texte La revanche des externalités paru dans Futur Antérieur en 1996 ( sur le site de Multitudes ou dans ma thèse (1998, PUF) ou dans le n°2 de Multitudes. On résumera en disant que toute interaction ou transaction marchande entre deux agents A et B occasionnant une augmentation ou diminution de bien être sur un tiers agent (ou n tiers agents) produit un effet externe positif ou négatif (ou encore une effet externe). Le schéma 1 résume le cas le plus simple." -