‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech::In his new book, the maverick Greek economist says we are witnessing an epochal shift. At his island home, he argues it’s now the ‘fiefdoms’ of tech firms that shape us
While it is far more advanced and ubiquitous, I don’t see how paying to social media companies is fundamentally distinct from having to pay for ads in newspapers and TV that they did in “good old capitalism”. Maybe I should look up how he puts it, but it still sounds like capitalism.
I think it’s a matter of degree.
And his prime example, no pun intended, is Amazon not social media. In his view, Bezos has more in common with a feudal lord than a capitalist. And the power difference between Jeff and the capitalist is as large as the difference between the capitalist and the worker.
So, essentially, we’re watching feudalism come back into power. Which itself still had commerce, markets on the King’s land for example. Which, to me, does sound a lot like Amazon.
The article itself uses examples of Facebook and Twitter/X so that’s where I compared it to older forms of media.
When it comes to Amazon I kinda see where that argument comes from, but I’m not entirely convinced. It’s not like renting spaces and hiring services was not part of Capitalism anyway, stores had to rent space in malls. Franchising also comes to mind, where a smaller businessman has to pay to operate under a certain brand. Amazon seems a larger scale of that and I can see how that is concerning, but calling it “technofeudalism” seems like trying to gloss over the issues in regular Capitalism.
One could very well host their own services, their own internet communities and online stores. I understand that it’s much harder to make them thrive compared to just being on Amazon and Facebook, but this is a way in which it’s not like Feudalism. You aren’t commanded by the King and the laws of the land to pay the tax, you are just competitively disadvantaged in the market if you don’t. Like Capitalism.
If anything this shows the importance of trust busting, which has been pretty much abandoned in recent decades. It might even warrant the existence of public internet services much in the same way we have public radio and TV.
I hear your analysis and I think he’s jumping the gun a bit. I think what he’s pointing at is a potential for things like Amazon to become more and more feudal.
But I think you raise a lot of good points.
We do still have governments and governments are still capable of reeling in companies like Amazon. I think corporate feudalism or technofuedalism is a potential and I think he’s right that it may be closer than we realize.
But he believes we’ve already crossed that bridge. Some examples he uses to support his position is stock prices going up when the financial sector is expecting a bail out. I.e., the governments really belonging to corporate interests rather than for the people by the people.
I think his analysis is correct in a lot of ways but the term he’s using is for something we could potentially be seeing happen soon rather than a line we already crossed.