Re: <nettime> The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive

[Newmedia@aol.com]

Allan:
 
The TOTALITARIANISM of "capitalism" is simply that *everything* has a  
PRICE.
 
Therefore, many people are "naturally" obsessed with *prices* and, often  
enough, those who tend to spend their lives focused on "justice" also fall 
into  conversation about how Facebook can "justify" its own price (which of 
course it  can't) -- which then becomes the question of whether such an 
obvious  "injustice" will impinge on the "survival of capitalism."
 
As nearly everyone knows -- particularly in the technology and financial  
worlds where I have worked most of my life -- Facebook is NOT "worth" $100B 
and,  accordingly, over time, its share price will decline to reflect this  
"fact."
 
What has also been weaving its way through the discussion is the notion  
that a) capitalism has already stopped :"surviving" and b) what actually 
happens  on Facebook (i.e. the lack of any actual "market economy" despite the 
desperate  drive to generate "likes") -- which is *why* the IPO price is 
ridiculous  (other than in the usual supply/demand for "hot" stock sense) -- 
might  point to *why* capitalism isn't "working" anymore.
 
So, the Facebook IPO situation is being used as an elaborate metaphor for  
all the other subjects that people actually want to talk about.
 
Make sense?
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
 
 
In a message dated 3/10/2012 9:49:43 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
allan@allansiegel.info writes:

hello,

well I've been trying to get at the core of this  discussion which frankly 
I find bloated with excess verbiage and driven by a  subtext that seems to 
fetishize Facebook as if this were one of the most  pressing questions we are 
now facing. Really folks, one has to simply watch  The Social Network and 
extrapolate from the personalities and economic  milieu  (Harvard Univ 
Facebook ground zero) at Facebook's inception into  present social/political 
climate to see how value increases (and why); is the  paradigm that different for 
Youtube, Yahoo, Google  etc...?
 <...>


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org