Let's tackle Rifkin's chief and most coherent assertion: "Our long attachment to ownership is beginning to weaken." The author has the grace to note that this is not true for the vast majority of the world's population, who have neither property nor access; 65 percent of people living today, he says, have never made a phone call. While the "affluent fifth of the [world] population is leaving property behind in search of cultural experiences and personal transformation, the remaining four-fifths have meager belongings and still wish to be propertied." It's that top fifth, though, the trendsetters, who count, we're reminded repeatedly.

Rifkin is 180 degrees wrong about his target market. Far from leaving property behind, in the United States the top layer owns a larger share of property of all kinds, both consumer and money-making assets, than at any time since the Great Depression. In 1994 the wealthiest 10 percent of families owned 67 percent of all wealth, up from 62 percent in 1989. (The poorest 10 percent had no wealth at all, but their average debt had increased by half.) When it comes to business assets, the wealthiest 1 percent of households own 57 percent, six times the value in the hands of the bottom 90 percent.

The holders of capital know, as Rifkin pretends not to, that it's ownership of all those shares that makes them who they are and gives them what they want in the world. If not, why are they so busy giving each other stock options? Try telling Bill Gates, fighting tooth and nail to hold on to all of Microsoft (one of those playful corporations), that ownership is passé.

In fact, Rifkin's got it topsy-turvy--if ownership is now outmoded, then it's the majority who are way ahead of their time. The vast majority of people have always owned almost nothing: a few consumer goods and, if they're lucky, their house, jointly with the bank. Less than half of US households contain even one person who owns even one share of stock, including pension plans.

If Rifkin had stuck to informing us that franchising is on the rise, that more people are leasing certain consumer items and that businesses now lease a big chunk of their equipment, that would have been interesting. But when he tries to dress these trends up as a grand theory that property is dead, he makes a fool of himself. You would have been better off with "property is theft," Jeremy.

Rifkin makes his apocalyptic pronouncements with a straight face. As if he has learned nothing from the advertisers and experience-mongers he decries, his entire book contains not one bit of humor, not even an acknowledgment that you're reading about "the death of the author" in a non-cyberbook whose author will surely own its royalties. I did laugh out loud, though, at the phrase "the nagging question of who should control the means of production."

One more jab: Rifkin asks, "Who hasn't defended the virtues of property and markets with passionate abandon at one time or another?" Raise your hands.

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