The Age of Access

Jeremy Rifkin argued in 2000 that capitalism was shifting from the exchange of property to the granting of access, and that this change would transform both commerce and social life. Written at the peak of the first internet boom, the book anticipates several developments accurately and several not at all.

His central claim is that ownership is becoming less important than access to networks, and that markets are giving way to networks as the organising structure of commerce. Firms outsource physical assets and retain relationships; consumers subscribe rather than buy; suppliers become partners in continuous relationships rather than counterparties in discrete transactions. He predicted the growth of leasing and subscription across categories, the importance of the customer relationship over the product, and the shift of value toward intangibles and brands.

The second half concerns culture. Rifkin argues that commercial networks are absorbing the cultural sphere, so that experiences previously produced through community and shared life become purchased services, and that this depletes the social capital on which commerce itself depends. He treats this as the more important development and it is where his argument is weakest, since it depends on assertions about cultural depletion that he does not evidence. The subscription and access predictions were substantially correct and arrived earlier and more completely than most contemporaneous forecasts. Rifkin writes at length and repeats himself.