Zero Marginal Cost Society

Zero marginal cost society is a term from Jeremy Rifkin's 2014 book of that name, describing a possible future in which digital technology, automation, and renewable energy push the cost of producing an additional unit of goods and services close to zero, weakening capitalist markets and fostering a collaborative commons. Economists use marginal cost to describe the expense of producing one more unit, and information goods such as software already show very low marginal costs. Yochai Benkler's work on commons-based peer production, including open source software and Wikipedia, offers supporting evidence of non-market production. Paul Mason's Postcapitalism makes a related argument about information goods undermining market pricing, and Karl Marx's remarks on machinery and the general intellect are often cited as precursors. Nick Srnicek's analysis of platform capitalism and Shoshana Zuboff's work on surveillance capitalism counter this optimism by showing how firms capture value through data, monopoly, and network effects. Critics argue that physical goods, infrastructure, and energy storage still carry real costs, that platforms concentrate power, and that Rifkin underestimates inequality and labor precarity. Today the concept informs debates about the sharing economy, open knowledge, automation, and the future of work and capitalism.