Very good article, Joe. I agree, capitalism has not been killed it is just shifting its modes of control for profit maximization. Capitalism has always embraced the latest technologies for control. Yanis accepts the conventinal definition of capitalism which I think has always been a convenient myth, propaganda to hide its primary mechanism of power, credit (debt) created by private institutions used for money. It is the central feature of capitalism which is why schools don't teach people about it. https://howardswitzer.substack.com/p/capitalisms
I agree with much of what the other commenters here point out, but would take my critique even further, as I believe the premises and characterizations in this post are flawed and mostly nonsense.
I believe what is and has been happening is the shift from the industrial age to the information age, and the layering of digital technology in and over the broader political economy, as Joe calls it.
There is nothing more or less "feudalistic" (which I take as roughly equivalent to "exploting the use of base labor upon land or machinery by the owners thereof") about the profit-driven activities of the techno-based capitalists as there was by the industrialists or the aristocrats before them. In fact, because accessibility to the new means of value creation and "digital real estate" and "SaaS" platforms and computers and servers and other modern forms of capital is so much greater and easier to get hold of, I would argue there has never been a more even playing field of opportunity and upward mobility than there is right here and now, and it's also probably closer to the pure capitalist ideal alluded to than ever before in history.
Not only are there myriad of freely or cheaply available new marketplaces and platforms with global distribution capabilities for all to use, but anyone can relatively easily code/create, build, market, refine and distribute their very own newer, better, freeer, faster, or even dumber (hi there Clubhouse and TikTok) platform and marketplace for others to use. Heck, anyone can create and launch their own digital currency or NFT or blockchain project. For a paltry fee (or even for free) anyone can access the new and marvelous AI tools (they're by tapping into massive capital investment) which can even do a lot of the work formerly required to accomplish the forgoing.
Education? Basically everyone in the country now has a free supercomputer, encyclopedia, thesaurus, dictionary, calculator, spell checker, ghost writer, tutor, psychotherapists, doctor, lawyer, accountant, philosopher, political policy expert, etc., residing in their pocket at their disposal for free or very cheap. How "feudalistic" is that?
Owning and controlling certain platforms and technologies as toll roads and charging rent for them? I suppose that never happened in the age where you had to pay somebody to carry your goods by steamship, for next by rail, or next by truck and plane. Control of media and information? Yeah that was never a problem when there was no printing press and then when only the wealthy could buy books and then when the publishers of a few newspapers were at it and then when a few broadcast channels were all we had. Everything was just golden then right? Everyone could put out a book a newspaper a magazine or her and add-on national TV for free right? Don't you see how much things have improved towards what I believe you're ultimately saying is better for society? But no, you want to make a boogeyman of those who profit by creating the new platforms media and means which are infinitely more free, accessible, democratic, and open than ever.
Modern-day "lords" wielding and possibly abusing their newfound wealth and power you say? Perish the thought! As if every warlord, aristocrat, mercantileist, industrialist, and NeoCon crony capitalist before them who came into wealth and power didn't attempt to use it from time to time to shape society in the form of their personal dreams and promote their personal family interest. They've all done it, and they will always all do it. That's why wealth and power go together like peanut butter and jelly. The prospect of gaining wealth and power is part (I'm probably sometimes a great part) of what drives the capitalist entrepreneurs and capital allocators to put in the time, effort, energy, ambition, risk, etc., to provide all these remarkable and marvelous and time saving and convenient services that (mostly) tend to "improve" all of our lives in some way or another, or at least make us feel better off in some way or another by being better able to connect, to laugh, share, be entertained, trade in commerce, write, research, produce, market, etc. How else would they have sold their product/service to millions if not billions in the first place? Because they're providing things that people and organizations and institutions want and need, and they're doing it in the newest, best, most accessible, cheapest competition-beating way, and then they reap the rewards of profits growth wealth and power, and that's capitalism. And anyone else is free to challenge them by providing a better cheaper faster more accessible more robust service. And they do... and it's happening faster and faster than ever before. Just look at the very most recent obvious example of deep-seek challenging chat GPT and the others. Just look at TikTok overtaking Facebook or Instagram. Look at Temu challenging Amazon. And on and on it goes faster and faster because the access to the necessary tools and capital is ever broader and easier to obtain. And if and when the biggest and wealthiest of them abuse their position with non-competitive monopoly behaviors, that's where our government has the power to and should and does use that power to step in and curtail it as happened in the most famous example of the Bell telephone breakup, and as has and continues to happen now with Microsoft and Google etc. (And by the way, yes, I believe corporations are inherently sociopathic non-human entities tending to put the generation of profits above all else, but that doesn't mean the same is true generally of the people operating them, and it doesn't mean we don't have laws and enforcement mechanisms to curtail the negative societal impacts of these tendencies.) [Side note: I also believe the premises of the law established by the Citizens United case is inherently flawed because corporations are not in fact persons In the same sense as human persons and therefore do not have and should not be treated as having the same god-given rights we all do including those described in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, freedom of speech being at issue there.]
So I think painting all of this technological advancement and technocratic success as some dark evil new form of capitalism or feudalist regression is a bunch of bull hockey, and misses the mark both in what should actually be concerning, and also what can be taken advantage of and used positively for society as a whole, and by individuals with the interest and ambition to do so.
I'm reaching the limit of available time and space (and probably the reader's patience) with my post here but I'll just end by saying I think the more concerning things are the financialization and debt leveraging of the broader economy, the insidious, pervasive and often hidden invasions of privacy through data stripping data mining and outright spying, and the potential negative ramifications associated with the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence with few of any guardrails in places of yet. Yes these are all tied in to technological advancements and potentially abuses of power by those who build, control, and use such tools, but it is not the capitalist, monopolist, or rent-seeking behaviors that Joe takes issue with in his post. Those are all old news and far less concerning now than they would have been in prior times.
Thanks, Dobbs! I always welcome a blunt critique! I sense you don't care for the terms that I am using, and that's fine. Your response was playful--I appreciate that!
You offer plenty of fair points. I agree that society in all its forms has had powerful, self-interested actors--whatever the label. My techno-feudal label has much to do with earning rents that don't compete away, hence exploiting the use of free customer data to consolidate power. I take no issue with investing in business for profit under fair play. I also agree with some of your chief concerns on gross financialization and data privacy invasions, but that is not this specific essay. We are also in agreement that Citizens United is a flawed precedent.
You mention the "lords" (my term) selling services (but many aren't sold, they are free) that... "(mostly) tend to "improve" all of our lives in some way or another, or at least make us feel better off in some way or another by being better able to connect, to laugh, share, be entertained...." I challenge that these free services are making humanity better. For some yes, but for many no. Teenage mental health is in the toilet. The weakest seem to get hurt the most. Regulatory measures for community health have lagged significantly. Our culture has walked the path willingly, seductively and many young people are paying a hard physical price. Family formation is slowing. Marriage is losing ground. Human connection is eroding compared to previous generations. Some nations and schools are starting to ban and block the social media technologies.
With all the tech in education, our students are scoring worse. Young people can't read at appropriate grade levels. Digital reading is a poor substitute for ink on paper when the brain (for a number of people) creates memory with spatial recognition--where on the page you found something of illuminating content. Basically, I'm suggesting that there are deeper arguments about how pervasive digital tech is harming society, but also at enormous consolidation of power and profit, and possibly the risk of warping the texture of our democratic institutions.
You suggest the available digital tools serve upward mobility. I don't fully agree. A quick AI grab of the trends in U.S. upward mobility returns: "In the US over the past 20 years, upward mobility has been trending lower or stagnant, with studies suggesting that people today are less likely to earn more than their parents than in previous generations, especially in comparison to other developed countries." Some of this stems from trade and neoliberalism for the blue-collar crowd. I think AI will nail the white-collar crowd with the same problem in the next 10 years.
In terms of capitalism, we know it drives incentives. Those incentives can spur people to serve useful needs or exploit human nature to enrich one at the expense of another. Both are happening simultaneously. My reference to dark capitalism is a nod to my belief that exploitation is gaining the stronger hand under the current playing conditions. I'm finding increasing references to Dark MAGA, dark enlightenment, and other such concepts. Capitalism (and democracy) rests on cultural morals. If the morals degrade, the system goes dark. That's why I use the term and apply it to our digital context.
Finally, this conversation would be incomplete without a deeper discussion of our antitrust frameworks. You mention it briefly. I think the government has been asleep and complicit in allowing excessive consolidation for Big Tech. I think Meta should have been blocked on certain M&A deals. Google should have been broken up a while ago. I could go on. Essay #4 on AI is already out, but it highlights where I think the risks are heading. Essay #5 will bring it to political system capture. And this essay is non-core to my original thesis of what ails the political system and how it might be fixed.
Seriously, thank you for taking the time to blast a lengthy critique. While we can choose to split our focus on the wonder of the great innovations vs. the side effects and harms, I'm delighted that we can debate my "nonsense" and each engage with the world in our own unique ways. As one of my favorite Walt Whitman poems (O Me! O Life!) concludes: "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
Very interesting discussion. I'm not sure Techno-Feudalism is completely new. For many decades we've had industries and information monopolized by just a few companies. Examples: phone services before cell phones (you didn't have a choice, you had to pay rent to have access to communicate which was more or less essential to life and business); the days of the big three TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC).
Basically any service that requires massive investment to build (think railroads) has led to these "Feudalistic Rulers".
We still have some small local business that is part of life which is still basically capitalism (competition between local auto mechanics, handymen for home repairs and remodeling, local farmers markets).
Serfs did not require income in order to survive. From the perspective of the working class, this is not feudalism.
Very good article, Joe. I agree, capitalism has not been killed it is just shifting its modes of control for profit maximization. Capitalism has always embraced the latest technologies for control. Yanis accepts the conventinal definition of capitalism which I think has always been a convenient myth, propaganda to hide its primary mechanism of power, credit (debt) created by private institutions used for money. It is the central feature of capitalism which is why schools don't teach people about it. https://howardswitzer.substack.com/p/capitalisms
I agree with much of what the other commenters here point out, but would take my critique even further, as I believe the premises and characterizations in this post are flawed and mostly nonsense.
I believe what is and has been happening is the shift from the industrial age to the information age, and the layering of digital technology in and over the broader political economy, as Joe calls it.
There is nothing more or less "feudalistic" (which I take as roughly equivalent to "exploting the use of base labor upon land or machinery by the owners thereof") about the profit-driven activities of the techno-based capitalists as there was by the industrialists or the aristocrats before them. In fact, because accessibility to the new means of value creation and "digital real estate" and "SaaS" platforms and computers and servers and other modern forms of capital is so much greater and easier to get hold of, I would argue there has never been a more even playing field of opportunity and upward mobility than there is right here and now, and it's also probably closer to the pure capitalist ideal alluded to than ever before in history.
Not only are there myriad of freely or cheaply available new marketplaces and platforms with global distribution capabilities for all to use, but anyone can relatively easily code/create, build, market, refine and distribute their very own newer, better, freeer, faster, or even dumber (hi there Clubhouse and TikTok) platform and marketplace for others to use. Heck, anyone can create and launch their own digital currency or NFT or blockchain project. For a paltry fee (or even for free) anyone can access the new and marvelous AI tools (they're by tapping into massive capital investment) which can even do a lot of the work formerly required to accomplish the forgoing.
Education? Basically everyone in the country now has a free supercomputer, encyclopedia, thesaurus, dictionary, calculator, spell checker, ghost writer, tutor, psychotherapists, doctor, lawyer, accountant, philosopher, political policy expert, etc., residing in their pocket at their disposal for free or very cheap. How "feudalistic" is that?
Owning and controlling certain platforms and technologies as toll roads and charging rent for them? I suppose that never happened in the age where you had to pay somebody to carry your goods by steamship, for next by rail, or next by truck and plane. Control of media and information? Yeah that was never a problem when there was no printing press and then when only the wealthy could buy books and then when the publishers of a few newspapers were at it and then when a few broadcast channels were all we had. Everything was just golden then right? Everyone could put out a book a newspaper a magazine or her and add-on national TV for free right? Don't you see how much things have improved towards what I believe you're ultimately saying is better for society? But no, you want to make a boogeyman of those who profit by creating the new platforms media and means which are infinitely more free, accessible, democratic, and open than ever.
Modern-day "lords" wielding and possibly abusing their newfound wealth and power you say? Perish the thought! As if every warlord, aristocrat, mercantileist, industrialist, and NeoCon crony capitalist before them who came into wealth and power didn't attempt to use it from time to time to shape society in the form of their personal dreams and promote their personal family interest. They've all done it, and they will always all do it. That's why wealth and power go together like peanut butter and jelly. The prospect of gaining wealth and power is part (I'm probably sometimes a great part) of what drives the capitalist entrepreneurs and capital allocators to put in the time, effort, energy, ambition, risk, etc., to provide all these remarkable and marvelous and time saving and convenient services that (mostly) tend to "improve" all of our lives in some way or another, or at least make us feel better off in some way or another by being better able to connect, to laugh, share, be entertained, trade in commerce, write, research, produce, market, etc. How else would they have sold their product/service to millions if not billions in the first place? Because they're providing things that people and organizations and institutions want and need, and they're doing it in the newest, best, most accessible, cheapest competition-beating way, and then they reap the rewards of profits growth wealth and power, and that's capitalism. And anyone else is free to challenge them by providing a better cheaper faster more accessible more robust service. And they do... and it's happening faster and faster than ever before. Just look at the very most recent obvious example of deep-seek challenging chat GPT and the others. Just look at TikTok overtaking Facebook or Instagram. Look at Temu challenging Amazon. And on and on it goes faster and faster because the access to the necessary tools and capital is ever broader and easier to obtain. And if and when the biggest and wealthiest of them abuse their position with non-competitive monopoly behaviors, that's where our government has the power to and should and does use that power to step in and curtail it as happened in the most famous example of the Bell telephone breakup, and as has and continues to happen now with Microsoft and Google etc. (And by the way, yes, I believe corporations are inherently sociopathic non-human entities tending to put the generation of profits above all else, but that doesn't mean the same is true generally of the people operating them, and it doesn't mean we don't have laws and enforcement mechanisms to curtail the negative societal impacts of these tendencies.) [Side note: I also believe the premises of the law established by the Citizens United case is inherently flawed because corporations are not in fact persons In the same sense as human persons and therefore do not have and should not be treated as having the same god-given rights we all do including those described in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, freedom of speech being at issue there.]
So I think painting all of this technological advancement and technocratic success as some dark evil new form of capitalism or feudalist regression is a bunch of bull hockey, and misses the mark both in what should actually be concerning, and also what can be taken advantage of and used positively for society as a whole, and by individuals with the interest and ambition to do so.
I'm reaching the limit of available time and space (and probably the reader's patience) with my post here but I'll just end by saying I think the more concerning things are the financialization and debt leveraging of the broader economy, the insidious, pervasive and often hidden invasions of privacy through data stripping data mining and outright spying, and the potential negative ramifications associated with the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence with few of any guardrails in places of yet. Yes these are all tied in to technological advancements and potentially abuses of power by those who build, control, and use such tools, but it is not the capitalist, monopolist, or rent-seeking behaviors that Joe takes issue with in his post. Those are all old news and far less concerning now than they would have been in prior times.
Thanks, Dobbs! I always welcome a blunt critique! I sense you don't care for the terms that I am using, and that's fine. Your response was playful--I appreciate that!
You offer plenty of fair points. I agree that society in all its forms has had powerful, self-interested actors--whatever the label. My techno-feudal label has much to do with earning rents that don't compete away, hence exploiting the use of free customer data to consolidate power. I take no issue with investing in business for profit under fair play. I also agree with some of your chief concerns on gross financialization and data privacy invasions, but that is not this specific essay. We are also in agreement that Citizens United is a flawed precedent.
You mention the "lords" (my term) selling services (but many aren't sold, they are free) that... "(mostly) tend to "improve" all of our lives in some way or another, or at least make us feel better off in some way or another by being better able to connect, to laugh, share, be entertained...." I challenge that these free services are making humanity better. For some yes, but for many no. Teenage mental health is in the toilet. The weakest seem to get hurt the most. Regulatory measures for community health have lagged significantly. Our culture has walked the path willingly, seductively and many young people are paying a hard physical price. Family formation is slowing. Marriage is losing ground. Human connection is eroding compared to previous generations. Some nations and schools are starting to ban and block the social media technologies.
With all the tech in education, our students are scoring worse. Young people can't read at appropriate grade levels. Digital reading is a poor substitute for ink on paper when the brain (for a number of people) creates memory with spatial recognition--where on the page you found something of illuminating content. Basically, I'm suggesting that there are deeper arguments about how pervasive digital tech is harming society, but also at enormous consolidation of power and profit, and possibly the risk of warping the texture of our democratic institutions.
You suggest the available digital tools serve upward mobility. I don't fully agree. A quick AI grab of the trends in U.S. upward mobility returns: "In the US over the past 20 years, upward mobility has been trending lower or stagnant, with studies suggesting that people today are less likely to earn more than their parents than in previous generations, especially in comparison to other developed countries." Some of this stems from trade and neoliberalism for the blue-collar crowd. I think AI will nail the white-collar crowd with the same problem in the next 10 years.
In terms of capitalism, we know it drives incentives. Those incentives can spur people to serve useful needs or exploit human nature to enrich one at the expense of another. Both are happening simultaneously. My reference to dark capitalism is a nod to my belief that exploitation is gaining the stronger hand under the current playing conditions. I'm finding increasing references to Dark MAGA, dark enlightenment, and other such concepts. Capitalism (and democracy) rests on cultural morals. If the morals degrade, the system goes dark. That's why I use the term and apply it to our digital context.
Finally, this conversation would be incomplete without a deeper discussion of our antitrust frameworks. You mention it briefly. I think the government has been asleep and complicit in allowing excessive consolidation for Big Tech. I think Meta should have been blocked on certain M&A deals. Google should have been broken up a while ago. I could go on. Essay #4 on AI is already out, but it highlights where I think the risks are heading. Essay #5 will bring it to political system capture. And this essay is non-core to my original thesis of what ails the political system and how it might be fixed.
Seriously, thank you for taking the time to blast a lengthy critique. While we can choose to split our focus on the wonder of the great innovations vs. the side effects and harms, I'm delighted that we can debate my "nonsense" and each engage with the world in our own unique ways. As one of my favorite Walt Whitman poems (O Me! O Life!) concludes: "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
Thanks Joe, I appreciate your thoughtful counterpoints to my critique. This has given me more food for thought on these subjects... Cheers!
Very interesting discussion. I'm not sure Techno-Feudalism is completely new. For many decades we've had industries and information monopolized by just a few companies. Examples: phone services before cell phones (you didn't have a choice, you had to pay rent to have access to communicate which was more or less essential to life and business); the days of the big three TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC).
Basically any service that requires massive investment to build (think railroads) has led to these "Feudalistic Rulers".
We still have some small local business that is part of life which is still basically capitalism (competition between local auto mechanics, handymen for home repairs and remodeling, local farmers markets).