Europe Pub (PieFed)Techno-feudalism: We own nothing and just pay rent to billionaires
asiandadenergy.substack.com/p/ai-isnt-creating-…
Modern oligarchs like Musk, Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg are exactly like medieval lords. The top 1% controls all resources, and it is almost impossible to buy an apartment today. We own nothing and just pay rent or subscribe to their platforms. These billionaires have total power to fire thousands of workers anytime and buy politicians for their own interest. They say they work for humanity, but it is just fake marketing. For example, they are silent on wars in Palestine and Ukraine. Majority of ordinary people and developers are too naive. They believe these lies and fail to see the real system
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Narri N.It’s good that people more broadly, especially in the imperial core, are starting to question the “truths” about the world and its ways they are taught. But I’m annoyed with the general usage of these terms like “techno-feudalism”, when capitalism and especially imperialism would work better, wouldn’t it? Everything must serve the capital, after all, and the internet in general - being probably the most significant invention in human history after using fire or something and having been developed to this point and made available globally in an astoundingly short amount of time - is poised perfectly for everyone to witness its decline under imperialism. So using “techno-feudalism” for this is understandable, but in the end it’s just the most recent and visible symptom of capitalism in general.
I disagree.
The American government created a lot of various incentives to encourage ownership to a greater percentage of citizens compared to other countries at the time, including giving out free land, building infrastructure to develop new land, and creating programs which put people into homes that they owned.
That government support in young adults to establish themselves economically has significantly shrunk over the past generation. We’ve also seen an increasingly divergent economy where the split between haves and have nots have only gotten bigger.
A working class American in 1950 could claim that they were better off economically than the rest of the world and be right. That claim is no longer valid.
The point is that we still live and will live under global capitalism and imperialism even if oligarchs extract bigger rents. The main difference between now and back then is that there’s less communist parties in power so countries can be as neoliberal as they want. Even the stuff you mention was largely inaccessible for black and indigenous people and it only came about through organizing as a temporary concession. This is just capitalism in a more advanced stage.
But it is the advanced stage which is causing the strife.
Also, understanding that the programs that I mentioned weren’t available to all, they were available to enough to judge their past against the present. A white working class member of society whose family had access to programs to buy a house in the suburbs isn’t going to think about racial inequality when judging their current economic position compared to their parents and grandparents. They are going to compare the economics of the two eras and see that the economics of today are a lot harsher than before.
ghost_laptop
gon [he]Thanks for sharing. I liked this video quite a bit.
I do think some sort of feudalism is approaching, but I don’t think it’ll be quite as described (90% serfs and such).
I believe there is simply too much equality, right now, to the point that a lot of what could happen to lead to such a system won’t happen for fear of immense social repercussions.
The Western world is still mostly democracies. People will vote for extremists in extreme situations, and extremists will act in extreme ways, including causing wars and destruction for a lot of people. Stability and normalcy won’t be attained by techno-feudalism. It will be a constant fight. The middle-class is already too large to allow large swaths of itself to be reduced to serfs.
That being said, I don’t necessarily doubt that it will continue to shrink, slowly, and that the lower class will continue to be squeezed for all they’re worth.
Related: what “subscriptions” (recurring payments) do you pay for?
I pay rent (which includes water, internet, and light bills), a public transport pass (not strictly necessary, but it makes it more affordable), university tuition (PhD), and food. My parents actually cover my cheap phone plan (it’s like 5€/month, I think). They also cover half my rent, because they have the money and insisted on it. They’re both public school teachers, by the way, in case reading this you’re thinking that I’m some sort of lordling.
I hope my assumptions are wrong. but I notice that compare to my family,my life quality decreased
Well, I don’t know your life, so I can’t really say… If that is the case, however, that’s truly a shame.
In my case, it’s hard to say. At my age, my parents were living extremely frugally, though, admittedly, so am I. I have some better things lined up, though, working on my education and such… I hope to surpass my parents in terms of life quality, eventually.
Minimalism will save us and decrease dependency.
Hyperconsumerism is a plague.
Happiness isn’t in the next console, or a better computer, or having all the music at your fingertips, al the knowledge you could ever want at the click of a button, food from anywhere at any time, commodities and convenience without a second-thought.
Happiness is being safe and healthy, surrounded by people you love in harmony with each other and the environment. Happiness is having the time and the means to pursue your interests, time to relax and take it slow, time to think.
I’m not sure we need saving, frankly. While there is much wrong, I think much of it is of our own making, and we could all pursue happiness instead, and I think there are ways to achieve it.
Minimalism… That’s a bit of a nebulous term. I think it’s easy to see the err of this culture obsessed with having it all and swing the whole other way, rejecting anything that can’t be thoroughly justified. There could be a balance. I’m not sure it’s minimalism that can save us, though yes, it does decrease dependency on much of the system. If you reject the system, as you probably should, then I suppose there’s some merit to that. I’m not sure. Just my thoughts.
The US is fixing their elections as we speak, and supporting far right groups to take the west one by one, and will help them fix elections, also with russia’s help. Tech gives them new tools to control the populations. Our democracies are already terminally ill.
It’s a lot worse than you seem to think.
The US is fixing their elections? I feel I would’ve heard of this…
Tech gives them new tools to control the populations.
Well, this is certainly a concern, at least.
You aren’t aware the Republicans are trying to fix elections? Jesus Christ.
I’m not American, and frankly American politics aren’t exactly what I’m most worried about or interested in at any given time… Sorry for my ignorance.
All I’ve heard about is that there was some gerrymandering thing going on with trying to make new red districts, namely in Texas, while the Democrats retaliated by trying to make some new blue districts, namely in California. Surely that’s not what you mean? Seems to be that they’re trying to stack the horrendous system Americans have in their favour, but I wouldn’t call that rigging elections. Do you maybe mean the thing with voter registration and needing an ID to vote?
If there is some rigging going on, I would actually be interested to know LOL I remember hearing about the voting machines being rigged, but I thought that was a Republican conspiracy.
It’s a long story. Republicans stole the 2000 election. Democrats let them fillibuster the recount and scotus let Republicans have it. After that they started vote fraud campaigns with the intention of fixing elections. Mostly voter suppression, removing voters from rolls, ways to remove them from certain districts that are blue, etc.
The president seized control of the party in 2016, made it very explicit in 2020, trying to steal it in every way, something the party had been on for 20 years but he rushed it forward with less subtlety. 7 ways from sunday. Voter suppression, trying to throw out votes, signature matching, trying to stop the counts when they are ahead. Encouraging their partisans to send death threats to voting officials and trying to bully them into not doing their jobs honestly.
Too much to list, but then of course just tried to take the election anyway on fraud allegations, even as they were the ones cheating, as always accusing their victims of being the aggressor. So they tried the alternate slates of electors to get congress to vote in the loser anyway. Then when that didn’t work attempted to take Congress hostage with an angry mob while engineering security services to stand down, and the president and his secret service detail to show up and make congress sign over the republic at the head of an angry mob.
In the 3 month coup attempt to overturn the election, and afterwards, they got the hard drives and inner workings of all the voting systems, via mike lindell’s website and organization. They got the software and hard drives and inner workings of all the voting machines, all the battleground states at least, MI, GA, AZ, PA, WI to name a few.
Bannon spearheaded a precinct level takeover of partizans in on the steal, they got precinct level guys in every county, and the party otherwise purged everyone in the party, and without it they could, that opposed stealing the election. And the aformentioned death threats, hundreds and hundreds that biden did nothing about, literally a handful of light prosecutions when hundreds looked at just by reuters investigations crossed the legal line.
Now they control the feds, most of the states, they’ve their hacks in a majority of counties, and have large democratic counties beset by hostile state governments in red states. Many such red states passed laws in 2021 further restricting voting, but also allowing state legislatures, that are gerrymandered to hell where they control them, of voting electors for the candidate that lost the popular vote. The popular vote was designated around the turn of the 20th century or thereabouts to determine electors it used to be awarded by state lawmakers. Many took that back, including GA, AZ, I think WI, Texas tried and failed to include that part in their voter suppression bill, but many other states followed suit.
We could go on, but it’s already incredibly fucked, and will become moreso, and the democrats are as weak and unpopular as ever, unwilling to mount the type of popular reform, and build and run a political machine, that could take it from them, even as their succession fight might be the last chance before the fix is in too tight.
Thanks for the reply.
That sounds… Not great, let’s say!
I wasn’t aware of all that o.o I was aware of January 6th, which was very absurd, actually. I had almost completely forgotten about it, though.
the democrats are as weak and unpopular as ever, unwilling to mount the type of popular reform, and build and run a political machine, that could take it from them, even as their succession fight might be the last chance before the fix is in too tight.
There’s this thing people say, you know: “the other party” is evil, “my party” is stupid. Not saying you’re a Democrat, necessarily, though I suppose you may not really have a choice in the matter, considering you seem to want to avoid the Republican takeover. Reasonably.
I mean, what can I say?! Support the policies you believe in and support the candidates that espouse them; Firmly reject and argue against the policies that will harm the country. Is there anything else?
Am I the only one around here that notices the irony and inconsistency of publishing this kind of stuff on Substack?
Acceptable and unproblematic levels of irony such that it’s not really ironic at all without some major oversimplifications and assumptions. Like when workers go on strike, “oh how ironic that they’re working for them in the first place!”
philanthropicoctopusWe need to popularize the account diversification approach. So people don’t have to leave the popular platforms but allow smaller ones to grow. There are renowned figures that go on and about this „feudalism“ giving long talks, writing books about it and seem not capable of spending 2 minutes opening a new account on Mastodon, Peertube etc. and posting their contents there too. It’s weird and stupid.
We need to popularize the account diversification approach. So people don’t have to leave the popular platforms but allow smaller ones to grow. There are renowned figures that go on and about this „feudalism“ giving long talks, writing books about it and seem not capable of spending 2 minutes opening a new account on Mastodon, Peertube etc. and posting their contents there too. It’s weird and stupid.
I do, but they resist to not use instagram,facebook,wp,etc. https://lemmy.world/post/43439904/22281078
It’s ok to use them. That’s the strategy. A good way to organize on consumption side is to start with the low-traffic platforms, consume the little content that’s available (there’s something genuinely satisfactory about being able to scroll through all the „new posts“, something that you usually can’t do on the established sites), when done move to higher traffic. And when posting just mechanically post on multiple. It’s just switching apps/tabs, which is almost as easy as navigating within a given site.
Network effects and laziness are seriously heavy inertias.
This is clear case of capitalism at its most advanced stage: monopoly capitalism. The competitive system that produces winners and losers will inevitably progress towards the concentration of capital in the hands of the few. There is no point in creating inaccurate terminology such as “techno-feudalism” when Marx and his intellectual successors had already studied this phenomenon in depth.
It’s not Feudalism, under Feudalism people had more property. Also common land existed. Something that disappeared completely under Capitalism.
Depends on the feudalism, in some cases everything was considered property of the monarch (including stuff you made yourself) and they were just graciously allowing you to borrow it until you died.
The idea of property was not the same as it is under capitalism or nationalism now. The feudal lords (doesn’t have to be a king - in the case of the holy roman empire for example.) have the title to the land, but it can be owned, sold or inherited down the lines by the people who hold it.
Dude i can’t believe the Amish were right this whole time.
they got their own inbreeding problems though
Yeah, but they’re outbreeding the rest of us. Grew up around Amish. The closest family had 17 kids.
I‘ve never liked the analogy to feudalism, because it leaves out the elephant in the room that people can open accounts on alternative platforms very easily and comfortably in about 2 minutes. It seems more productive to discuss why they don’t do it. Acting like the possibility doesn’t even exist is a part of the problem and reinforces it.
Why people dont do it ? why people dont use opensource and decentralize alternatives? I think people are weak , and money can easily money people. We are too weak to resist against oligarchs. you and me may be strong but majority are not. People cant resist not use instagram,whatshapp
People don’t use free & open source alternatives because their advertising is shit, and most people have never heard of the alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify.
That is true,
What kind of weakness prevents you from clicking through a register flow in 2 minutes and swiping between apps? The problem is apathy. Which is fixable, but articles like these that act like people are just stuck there and there’s nothing that can be possibly done, effectively prevent anything in that direction from happening.
You are right, thank you for enlighten me. I also noticed that article owner is also a capidalist!
I wouldn’t say weak, but lazy. People are literally willing to give power o oligarchs in exchange of a minor convenience. Also, most people don’t even think about such things and just go with the flow. They use what “everyone else is using”.
that is true
The oligarchy allows social media, regardless which one, because it provides an empty outlet which releases pressure
Don’t worry, we won’t be paying rent anymore once there’s no jobs!