Immaterial Value & Scarcity in Digital Capitalism(Agntology -study of culturally​-induced igno...

[stockholmer]

Immaterial Value & Scarcity in Digital Capitalism(Agntology -study of culturally​-induced igno...

and doubt).

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=652

Introduction

The collapse of the United States' "Housing Bubble" in 2008 is the logical and inevitable result of the illusion of production without consumption; however, in spite of the financial collapse, and the bailouts of insolvent financial institutions and the on-going disinflation, credit and value collapse, the institutions receiving bailouts became stronger as a result of the bailout <1> indicating a fundamental change to the relationship between the physical commodity-form and immaterial values identified with currency and financialization. Financial "bubbles" are an inevitable result of a systemic shift focused on the generation of value through the semiotic exchange and transfer of immaterial assets. In the case of the "Housing Bubble," assets being traded were based on mortgages -- debts generated without regard for the reality of underlying, physical assets and the labor needed to meet those debts. The failure to address the immanent source of the problem precipitating the crisis -- the default on underlying mortgages -- and instead focusing on the financial institutions (whether it is through "bailouts," regulation, or investigation of "fraud") is a demonstration of the shift that has occurred from a physically productive economy to one based on semiotic manipulation; this situation has not been addressed by conventional media or analysis, and requires a consideration of how other, systemic factors of immaterialization are determining the kinds of choices available to engage these crises when they arrive.

How the collapse of the "Housing Bubble" has been addressed internationally reveals and validates the transformation from productive labor to semiotic manipulation, and consequently, in the various government "bailouts" focusing on reifying the immateriality of markets against physical limits by suspending mark-to-market valuations of assets, <2> an action thus enabling the generation/maintenance of the immaterial values created in the asset bubble. The continuing disjunction between physical assets and their role as immaterial tokens within a system of exchange are suggestive of larger, more systemic crises to come: the underlying problematic of debt generated as a side-effect of immaterial production (the transaction costs posed by the semiosis, subsequently doubled by bailouts that serve to regenerate or "reinflate" the initial asset bubbles through additional sequences of sale and resale sponsored by government agencies for the protection of the markets and those who profit from them) hypertrophies the underlying pathology by creating additional debts and, paradoxically, by increasing the value of assets whose uncertain values are the cause of the initial panic, evident in the collapse of the asset bubble itself.

Debit-versus-production was a systemic dynamic in the early twenty-first century "Housing Bubble," revealing a semiotic process, (a procedure of sampling/remixing), and the denial of the importance of the actual, physical commodity form: property owners' ability to pay a debt whose fragmentation, combination, and reduplication resulted in the (digital) investment security. It was both the exchange of these derivative securities and the extension of credit to almost anyone who would request it (in the form of "0% down," "Alt-A," or interest-only mortgages) that generated the immaterial securities sold in the capital markets, producing an expanding network of assets and the steadily escalating values necessary for wealth extraction. At the same time, the significance of the physical asset was denied in a literal demonstration of the aura of the digital's break with physicality, where new values were primarily created by the repackaging/semiotic manipulation of securities generated from mortgages (CDOs and other mortgage-backed securities), and secondarily from the accompanying sales of actual real estate. The physical commodities (houses) were only significant to the extent that they could provide debts; the transfer of these debts (mortgages) into securities (Collateralized Debt Obligations) for semiotic manipulation and resale in derivative markets, (accompanied by "insurance" in the form of Credit Default Swaps). Once translated into a virtualized form, their physical basis and link to productive labor was denied. The collapse of the "Housing Bubble" in 2008 precipitated by increases in the payments mortgage holders needed to provide each month on their housing debt due to their adjustable rate mortgages increasing their monthly payments above a value they were able to pay. <3> This denial of the physical basis of the crisis is apparent in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)'s focus on the virtual, semiotically-manipulated investment securities derived from mortgages,<4> rather than on preventing further defaults on the underlying mortgages themselves; it is the default of the mortgage holders due to the scarcity of capital to meet their mortgage obligations that created the collapse of the "Housing Bubble" itself, and caused the "Credit Crisis" in 2009.

Ruptures between physical asset and virtual commodity become apparent in TARP's acquisitions of the devalued mortgage-backed securities: the value of securities whose redeemability had fallen into question was conserved by removing them from circulation at full value (hence it was a bailout). The underlying physical limit imposed by the scarcity of capital created the "freeze" of credit in 2009. Scarcity of capital appears via the problematic function of fiat currency, a lacuna formed in the dynamic of immaterial values expanding up to the limit of the physical ability to meet those demands. Agents within this system have their roles predetermined by the nature of the system itself; it is not a matter of an elitist conspiracy that digital capitalism acts as it does, so much as it is the requirements of systemic equilibrium that force specific actions.

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Artificial Scarcity in a World of Overproduction: An Escape that Isn't

http://www.metamute.org/en/content/artificial_scarcity_in_a_world_of_overproduction_an_escape_that_isn_t


Immaterial Value and Scarcity in Digital Capitalism: how semiotic transactions develop values independently of physical assets


http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/immaterial-value-and-scarcity-in-digital-capitalism-how-semiotic-transactions-develop-values-independently-of-physical-assets/2010/06/17