e Reader File Edit View Window Help iFTL , 1 * I 7 Rifkin - Zero Marginal Cost Society Ch 1, 12, 13.pdf / 48 NM 100% H I I 14-4:41 10096 CI. Mon 2:46 PM Q Powerful industry leaders often strive to restrict entry of new en- terprises and innovations. But slowing down or stopping new, more productive technologies to protect prior capital investments creates a positive-feedback loop by preventing capital from investing in profitable new opportunities. If capital can't migrate to new profitable investments, the economy goes into a protracted stall. Lange described the struggle that pits capitalist against capitalist in stark terms. He writes: The stability of the capitalist system is shaken by the alternation of at- tempts to stop economic progress in order to protect old investments and tremendous collapses when those attempts fail.' Tools Sign Comn Attempts to block economic progress invariably fail because new en- trepreneurs are continually roaming the edges of the system in search of innovations that increase productivity and reduce costs, allowing them to win over consumers with cheaper prices than those of their competitors. The race Lange outlines is relentless over the long run, with proiluctiv- ity continually pushing costs and prices down, forcing profit margins to shrink. While most economists today would look at an era of nearly free goods and services with a sense of foreboding, a few earlier economists expressed a guarded enthusiasm over the prospect. Keynes, the venerable twentieth-century economist whose economic theories still hold consider- able weight, penned a small essay in 1930 entitled "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," which appeared as millions of Americans were beginning to sense that the sudden economic downturn of 1929 was in fact the beginning of a long plunge to the bottom. Keynes observed that new technologies were advancing productivity and reducing the cost of goods and services at an unp