When clicks become currency, are we becoming digital serfs in a new age of technofeudalism?When we think of feudalism, images of medieval lords ruling over vast estates with serfs working the land might come to mind. But if we replaced those lords with tech giants and those serfs with everyday internet users, we’d see how Yanis Varoufakis illustrates a timely issue – technofeudalism.What is Technofeudalism?
Technofeudalism is the idea that we are not transitioning from capitalism to something better, but slipping into a system where tech companies function like modern feudal lords. Varoufakis argues that since the 2008 financial crisis, our economic system has fundamentally changed. The cloud, big data and digital platforms have become the “land” of this new era, controlled by tech giants like Google, Amazon and Meta.
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105 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Dec
The analogy is importantly lacking since no one is obligated to use a particular platform or even any platform at all.
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136 sats \ 2 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 3 Dec
I haven't really wrapped my head around this concept yet, but it seems like it doesn't have much to do with whether people actually use it or not. I mean, pretty much everyone uses at least one Big Tech service.
It looks like the idea is comparing the power (political, economic, social) of old feudal lords (the ones who owned huge chunks of land) to Big Tech, who kinda inherited that power. It's a dope concept, but I probably need to read up on it more.
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121 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3 Dec
I think the word feudalism needs to be connected specifically to the system of land rights that it enforced, otherwise the word loses most of its meaning.
Because if "feudalism" simply refers to power and loyalty relationships, then it simply describes dynamics that exist under any organized system with humans in it, and thus it can be used to describe anything. "Technofeudalism" "Corpofeudalism" "Medicalfeudalism", etc... it would all apply.
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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Dec
Even just being allowed to switch between platforms is a huge deviation from what "serfdom" implies. Serfs did not have the right to leave the land they were born onto.
To me, any system that has freedom of migration just can't meaningfully be equated to serfdom. It would be like calling something "slavery" that didn't involve forced labor.
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221 sats \ 2 replies \ @Lux 4 Dec
https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/the-top-secret-plan-to-enslave-you?publication_id=725827&post_id=179714570&isFreemail=true
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner OP 4 Dec
Ahahh 🤠
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lux 4 Dec
ask Marxoufakis ;)
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @SHA256man 4 Dec
i encountered a 19yo girl outside a cafe who was playing a stupid smartphone game that pays out in fake points of some sort, and she said that she is trying to figure out money; maybe these points can be traded for an amazon gift card, idk; it was chilly and windy outside, and yet she wanted to finish the game before talking about bitcoin;
the controllers are after the people's attention, and then after their biometrics, and then the neurohormones, and eventually the electrons themselves;
do u know what controlling a man's electrons is like? ... and u know what? - free will still exists even at that level of enslavement, believe it or not;
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