The Fallacy of Techno-Feudalism (2024)
petrapalusova.com
petrapalusova.com
https://acoup.blog/2020/08/21/collections-bread-how-did-they...
While most arguments are just technical gotchas, there’s a fundamental topological difference: in a feudal system you have one lord (apparently, you could generally not move without permission). With the new ”cloud serfs” you maintain multiple relations with different lords. Thus, you currently have more freedom of association- and migration compared to actual serfs, to a meaningful extent.
The system is very recent though, and consolidation of power (often through acquisitions) is already massively common and in every lord’s playbook. If they could, the mega-corps would absolutely want to buy other megacorps. Overall the system looks nothing like the idealized version of ”free markets” as taught in schools.
I find it distasteful to use the ideal of free markets to defend large, oligopolistic corporations, their atrocious business practices towards consumers, workers and partners and their irresponsible treatment of the environment.
Those aren't your entrepreneurial ventures that participate in a free market. They are established institutions that can exert extreme power in economic, legal and political terms.
The difference is whether the hierarchy is baked into the legal system and less difficult to vertically navigate.
The attack surface of people who are easy to manipulate or exploit by Big Tech is shockingly large. But it's not just about personal responsibility or social pressures, but in large parts just about a lack of technical competency and internet literacy that the vast majority of people can't afford to get and maintain.
I don't get why instead we shouldn't compare the current times with the early stages of the industrial revolution, when factory owners exploited masses of workers who could only choose between accepting whatever terms the factory offered, or starving. It would also be a more productive metaphor, because while feudalism spontaneously disappeared with the birth of an entirely new social order, the evils of the early industrial revolution were successfully defeated with collective action and progressive legislation. Which is what we probably need now.
It's unclear whether the current system bring "horrible conditions" that need addressing. I don't want 9000 email providers, and the centralization of platforms has probably made life better. The argument that it crushes innovation might be true, but the number of "startups" that seem to gain large amounts of VC funding is quite high (they must be innovating something).
My gut reaction is generally "centralization / monopolies = bad", which is probably the feeling of a lot of people here. But we should actually ask ourselves whether the natural tendency towards centralization actually makes sense economically, especially since many aspects of the internet (communication, email, AI, compute time, etc) are all looking more like "utility" markets (where naturalistic monopoly formation has long been accepted by economists).
Ten (or even five) years ago, I would have wholeheartedly agreed that our current economic system is entirely voluntary compared to feudalism.
But as of late, looking at the debt you have to go into to get into a qualified profession, the fact that that the majority of people will not own land for the majority of their lives (or at least until they pay off their mortgage), the fact that an unexpected health crisis could throw you into bankruptcy or homelessness, and that medical insurance can be tied to employment, that there are no public places you could occupy if you do not have a home, that you cannot participate in society (at least in the US) unless you own a motor vehicle, that you cannot effectively trade unless you are participating in the banking system (credit cards) and that your income stream can be terminated with very little notice or reason (at least in the US), I wonder whether the choice of participation is an illusion. Perhaps not too different if someone from feudal times argued that a person can always choose to go live in the woods.
Wage labor (private tyrannies), consent under coercion (work or starve), availability of exploitative contracts, "free market" supported by corporate welfare, state, intellectual property etc.
You've given examples for all of the points.
Many social democracies almost provide an option where you don't have to participate in capitalism with universal healthcare, government welfare etc.
Like, do we really, truly believe the current world is no different from the feudal past? Is that not hasty reductionism?
The power structure is not really about land or space (be it digital, finite or infinite) it is about people and how difficult it can be for them to move elsewhere.
Techno feudalism is a lot less about datacenters and network bandwidth than it is about captive users and content producers.
And this is why this analogy, although imperfect, is relevant.
[1] https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2024/03/14/how-europe-and-aus...
>The third period is more recent. The era of technofeudalism, as I call it, which took root in the mid-2000s but grew strongly after the GFC in conjunction with the rapid technological change that caused capital to mutate into, what I call, cloud capital – the automated means of behavioural modification living inside our phones, apps, tablets and laptops. Consider the six things this cloud capital (which one encounters in Amazon or Alibaba) does all at once:
It grabs our attention.
It manufactures our desires.
It sells to us, directly, outside any actual markets, that which will satiate the desires it made us have.
It drives and monitors waged labour inside the workplaces.
It elicits massive free labour from us, its cloud-serfs.
It provides the potential of blending seamlessly all that with free, digital payments.
Varoufakis uses the word “techno-feudal” because it reflects the fundamental character of where things are headed. Moreover, even the author pointed out why the case is strong for the analogy.
I don’t think it’s fair to expect 100% consistency with “feudalism” to rightfully use the word “techno-feudalism”. But if one is compelled to point out the inconsistencies anyway, the ones the author pointed out are not particularly convincing.
The first three basically boil down to the idea that citizens are free to “opt-out” or find/create alternatives. Are they? I guess in theory, but in reality that’s a far more complicated problem.
Sure, in medieval days, kings could force their will and crush opposition without concern of law, morality, or anything other than who has more power. Today we have surveillance capitalism, and the comprehensive manipulation of truth and attention. Originally this was employed to merely sell toothpaste, but the same tools more lately can and have been used for far more sinister and greedy motivations.
If you don’t agree with that, fine, but but if you must quibble about “inconsistencies” with the usage of the word “techno-feudal”, then at least provide a better alternative word.
Whether you agree with him or not, this should be no surprise from Varoufakis, given his familiarity with Marx, as it has been a central thesis of socialist thought from the beginning that de jure freedoms means nothing without the means to exercise them, and as such, the belief that the freedoms of a capitalist society are freedoms mediated by wealth or limited by lack of it, and by extension the belief that the working classes aren't substantially more free than serfs.
This is just being pedantic over the terminology, as means to discredit Varoufakis' thoughts and arguments.
Putting aside your main argument, I will only comment that this example does not serve it. "Fascist", like "Marxist", are thrown around by the left and the right, respectively, to smear anything they don't like.
So while pedantry can get in the way of understanding, so can sloppy use of terminology.
> When we talk about "democratic government" how close is it to the Athenian democracy?
Like Mussolini's variety of fascism, Athenian democracy isn't really the basis for a definition of democracy. Democracy has a general definition that is not defined by empirical contingencies given that label. That puts the cart before the horse.
About as ignorant as calling Democrats communists.
GP is right that partisan slurs can get in the way of understanding.
Not that I can really blame them, because almost no one is able to really takes criticism from someone they don't trust. But they still should. It's weak, in absolute moral terms.
(and just in case it seems like I'm being super partisan here: I 100% believe the left is almost as guilty of the same thing, of not receiving criticism from others. that is the nature of this ugly thing we're in. No one has any sort of leadership who could even take the action of trusting anyone. I think both sides have been incredibly and pathetically weak in my lifetime. But if we're talking about the word "fascist"... that word is most justifiably pointed at the right. They do the anti-immigration / hating "others" rallies.)
We're already seeing it in the measures the US government is taking towards autistic people, where RFK Jr's characterisations of autism ("will never pay taxes, will never hold a job") were knocking on the door of the motivation for the Nazi Aktion T4 programme (essentially that lack of contribution to the state makes you unworthy of life). All the while simultaneously planning build a big centralised register of autistic people.
We've seen the expansionist rhetoric. We've seen the xenophobia. We've seen the disregard for rule of law and constitutional norms. All of which is being underpinned by a billionaire class who are increasingly seeing human labour as disposable, even if their trust in the future of transformer based AI may be 'optimistic' in this respect, who have aligned themselves with the executive. This represents the fusion of corporate interests with the state, albeit with a more plutocratic twist than the 20th century fascists.
This isn't a soap box, it's purely a matter of semantics. There's much less of the kind of geographic constraints and other trappings of lordship and monarchy so much as people capturing a republic and twisting its apparatus to suit an authoritarian purpose.
Indeed. Rather than each citizen voting on each issue, we have 'representative democracy' where 100,000's (perhaps millions) elect one person to vote and represent them for all those decisions. Arguably modern 'democracy' is far closer to 'slavery' than 'Athenian democracy' in its implementation, especially when you consider the forcible extraction of (~40-50%) of wealth (tax).
If the system is not voluntary, if you are forced to handover some portion of your wealth, what is the percentage which defines freedom or slavery? My position is that if even 1% (I can dream) is forcibly extracted, then I am not free.
Only voluntary systems can be free. But the governance system we have is a 100% monopoly. Opting out is not possible.
You need to resolve what you mean by 'free'. If you have no option but to pay tax, ie your wealth is forcibly extracted, you are not free. You can't both be free and have wealth forcibly extracted.
If you wish to say that you agree with this system, perhaps you can do this thought exercise. Left to your own devices, how much money would you be prepared to gift the present system for the services they provide?
It only works if everyone pays into the system. Something something tragedy of the commons/social contract. The needle of what should/shouldn't be covered moves around.
Related thought experiment, how much would you bid (as in an auction) before birth, if you had a choice of which country you'd be born into, and which countries would be at the top of your list? What do they look like politically?
In many places you're free to opt out of the economy and thus skip all this "forcible extraction of wealth". This of course comes with the downside of not having much ownership that the system forcibly enforces.
Property rights aren't some laws of nature. They are part of the "social contract" just like taxation.
I'm glad you put 'social contract' in quotes, because it is not social or a contact. If you do not agree or sign a contract, this does not make you anti-social or something. In reverse, being forced to agree to some terms (without a choice to do otherwise), is coercion. This is immoral.
This is the situation we have - immoral use of force by an exclusive monopolist (ie the existing governance system) - but it's immoral nature cannot be made right however many people argue for it. It can never be right to exhort or force others.
There is right to roam in many countries, meaning you can just live in a forest, although you'd have to rely on foraging. Farming and hunting and building is typically banned or highly limited. Without right to roam this is often done by coercion via private property establishing an exclusive monopoly over a land area. Somebody will exhort or force you out of the hunting or farming or building or even just being in the area by exhorting or forcing.
You keep saying immoral. That's just an opinion.
If I force you to hand over some percentage of your money - I think you would agree that was immoral.
If I and 100 friends force you to hand over some percentage of your money - I think you would agree that was still immoral - the number of people agreeing to do an immoral act, cannot make that action 'good'.
If I and my friends call myself 'the government', talk about a 'social contract', establish 'the rule of law' and call that 'justice', use your money to train you and your children to believe all that at face value (education, entertainment) and force you to hand over some percentage of your money - this is still immoral. Unless I explicitely agree to the 'social contract' it is force and without consent - aka immoral.
I hadn't see the attempt to discredit Varoufakis' thoughts or arguments. What I did see is a critique of an analogy. If you like, I can agree that this is a pedantic take, but it is important sometimes, and I believe that this case is of that kind.
What the point of analogies? I know two of them:
1. an appeal to emotions: you can show some similarities between a regime and a fascism and you kinda won. Everyone knows that fascism is bad, don't they? But it is a political thing, and if you don't want to be a mindless zombie in hands of a politicians, you must know what exactly fascism is, and to break the analogy apart to see where it matches and where it breaks.
2. explanation. If you can to draw analogies between an unknown thing and a known thing, it can be easier to understand the unknown one. It can help really, but again you need to stop at some point and to figure out where the analogy breaks, where its limits of applicability are. If you try to push analogy beyond its limits you'll form wrong opinions about the unknown thing you are trying to learn.
(1) uses failure mode of (2) (overextending an analogy) to fool people. So pedantic approach to analogies is something you should have around you ready at all times.
Also e.g. Finland had a manoral tenant system until the 1920's where the tenants were free to leave.
The whole argument hinges on falsehoods. They argue that participation is optional in the current web ecosystem and that's just simply not true, not only for the web as a whole, but individual fiefdoms too.
Try getting a job without LinkedIn. Try buying a phone that doesn't run android or iOS. Try selling an app without sharecropping an app store. Try running a browser that's not based on chrome or Firefox.
And there's others with slightly more choice, but not a lot, email, social media, link aggregation, music platforms. All with just a small few main choices.
And the other argument is that feudalism stiffled innovation with its rigid hierarchies, that that's exactly what we have today with a few platforms having all the network effect, and killing off innovation. Small Web is dead. Small forums are mostly gone. Used market place is hidden behind a Facebook login wall.
Technofeudalism is here, you have no choice.
Where I live almost nobody uses LinkedIn. Many of our clients that do use it, have either been phasing it out or are simply not engaged with it in any way.
It's also very naive to think that these companies will continue to innovate. Once monopoly is achieved rent seeking becomes more profitable than innovating.
"Try getting a job without LinkedIn. Try buying a phone that doesn't run android or iOS." Your argument here would apply to everything then, why restrict it to "techno"? Try driving a car without buying gas from a small number of oil companies. Try using electricity without going through utility monopolies. Try using a credit card without going through... yada yada.
Does that mean we currently live in oil-gas-electro-feudalism? If you really think that, then your fundamental argument is: 'the social order is the same as it's always been', which just seems unnecessarily reductionist.
The term techno-feudalism is clearly politically loaded rather than empirically descriptive, and I think your response makes that pretty clear.
I'm curious why people don't just extend this to everything then? In order to survive in the modern world (whether it's a capitalist or socialist economy): I'm required to work, I'm required to follow the law, I'm required to adopt social customs of my peers, I'm required into a certain language, I'm required to use utilities. So why the focus on "techno-feudalism", if all of you would describe _any_ system of requirements as feudal?
Feudalism isn't just defined by "lock in", it also describes the social structure of individuals, and how contracts were made.
It seems that the real reason for calling the current system "feudal" is because it comes politically loaded with "bad / coercion", not because it actually fits the description. It's the same as when people call capitalism "wage slavery". Rhetorically convenient, but intellectually lazy.
I think because there is a difference between being required to participate in systems controlled by a democratically elected government (or society in general in the case of cultural systems like language) that are at least purportedly put in place for your benefit compared with being required to participate in privately controlled systems that fundamentally prioritise extracting something from you.
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii133/articles/evgeny-moroz...
The core argument he makes is that the modes of exploitation are still capitalist at its core and what we have right now is just another form of it. The techno-feudal framing can be used to draw certain analogies between the past and the present, but that would risk both simplifying and masking the root causes of these processes.
> Voluntary participation
That's only true for large groups of people. It's false for individuals. Try "voluntarily opting out" of whatever instant messaging platform is dominant where you live. You will be ostracized. Network effects make switching difficult.
> Digital serfdom and monetization of data
Benefits are irrelevant. Surveillance capitalism is sinister and exploitative despite the benefits it offers. Once data has been collected and transmitted, it's out there and it will never be fully deleted. There's no telling what it will be used for.
The increasing regulation is evidence that people are resisting technofeudalism, not that it doesn't exist.
> Innovation and competition
The technological world is filled with literal monopolists leveraging intellectual property to destroy competition and lower market efficiency. Technology companies may have displayed a pattern of innovation and disruption once but they have kicked the ladders out from under them a long time ago. They have absolutely no intention of allowing upstarts to disrupt them like they did to their predecessors.
Thus we get absolute nonsense like "anti-circumvention" laws which lead to "felony contempt of business model". They put artificial limitations into products so that people will pay to lift them. Then they make it illegal for others to lift the limitations.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
> Access to resources
The world wide web is now centralized in the hands of relatively few big tech companies and it's only getting worse over time. Nobody buys domains and starts their own site these days, they create social media accounts. Can't access much of anything without an Instagram or X account these days. Try joining a community without Discord.
> Global connectivity vs. local feudal systems
You can control the people of the entire world with computers. Their socialization, their education, their culture, their employment, the very flow of money, all of it is controlled by computers. It's easier than ever and you don't even need to commit violence. The lash is no longer literal but economic.
> Regulation and governance
Yeah, people are seeing the effects and they are resisting. This is evidence that there is something worth resisting.
This feels like it rests on a belief that "nudging" and subliminal messaging are actually effective. The evidence on that stuff is pretty weak, and the evidence we do find has small effect sizes.
The reality is more likely that the "online world" is insanely complex and hard to control. Even with a tech oligopoly, the number of players and interests groups in massive. If companies had the power to completely control the entire world and every aspect of life, they would have (assuming they had the incentive, which I'm sure you believe they do).
In the case of controlling election outcomes, how is the current situation different from the pre-internet era of tv/radio advertising? Aren't political agents always trying to "control" elections? The core argument I'm making here is: doing so is very difficult
So many people I know are using AI to generate every written word in their working and personal lives - these people are more than capable of writing well themselves if they needed to. I think the horse had bolted already.