
Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism? - prostoalex
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neofeudalism-the-end-of-capitalism/
======
alexpetralia
The hug of death!

Here is a mirror: [http://archive.is/9j05G](http://archive.is/9j05G)

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
Note: archive.is is blocked in some countries where archive.org is not.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20200517230049/https://lareviewof...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200517230049/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neofeudalism-
the-end-of-capitalism/)

------
JSavageOne
Corporatocracy is probably the more accurate term, but the term neofeudalism
isn't exactly a huge stretch. The only real difference today is that at least
in theory a serf can become a lord, but the same power dynamic remains.

When chattel slavery ended many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers,
bound to the land by eternal debts that could never be repaid. Although they
were no longer legally bound to their "masters", for many their lives were not
really any better.

Although in principle the monopolies and the government are separate
institutions, we all know that the reality is that our politicians are bought
out by the corporations, and the regulators are staffed by ex-employees of the
very companies they are supposed to be regulating. We used to bust monopolies,
but since the 70s or so the regulators have become very lax, and practically
every industry has become more consolidated than it's ever been (finance,
advertising, airlines, utilities, telecom, agriculture, healthcare, etc).

What's interesting to me is that whenever Google/Facebook does something
authoritarian that would seem to violate some principle of liberty we deem
sacred (eg. censorship, violating freedom of speech), many if not most of the
comments seem to rationalize the corporation's decision as exercising their
own free speech. But when you're Reddit with 430M monthly active users, your
userbase is the population equivalent of the world's 3rd largest country, and
so you're effectively the equivalent of a nation-state. When you're Amazon
with 750k employees, then your employees could fill up a city.

Does the principle of democracy only apply to country's governments, or does
it also extend to corporate monopolies?

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
Those "principles of liberty" are aimed at protecting the American citizen
from her government, not from corporations.

If it was the government doing "authoritarian" things, then that is
potentially actionable under US laws. Otherwise, Big Tech is not breaking any
laws or violating anyone's rights. Google/Facebook are just websites doing
what website owners do. They decide what pages to publish.

Unfortunately most HN commenters do not understand that distinction. No doubt
many HN readers do, but most readers are not also commenters.

Perhaps Google/Facebook should be run by the US government. At least then
users would have some rights they could enforce. Government could not get away
with doing what Google/Facebook do.

If the politicians are bought out and regulators are staffed by ex-employees
then there is one other way to modify corporate behaviour. Trial lawyers.
Death by a thousand cuts. All we need is one good law that gives internet
users some rights to sue Google/Facebook for the creepy way they do "business"
and I think we would start to see change. Imagine the things that could be
uncovered in discovery. It would all be laid bare.

Big Tech is doing what a government only wishes it could do. Consitutional law
protects citizens from government, not corporations. In the US, coporations
have nearly as many rights as people if not more. The constutional law
protects them from governement, too.

~~~
JSavageOne
> Big Tech is not breaking any laws or violating anyone's rights.

Perhaps in a legal sense, but most people criticizing Big Tech policies aren't
debating what is or isn't legal under current laws, but rather what should or
should not be legal. Current laws give monopolies and corporations an enormous
amount of freedom and leniency, and perhaps a certain degree of power and
societal importance should entail greater restraints.

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
If what Big Tech does violates no law, personal rights, nor any contractual
agreement with users, it is not rational to believe users can hold Big Tech
accountable. Sure, they can debate and complain. The online forums and
messaging platforms they use to debate and voice their complaints are run by
Big Tech. It achieves nothing really. Maybe it makes users feel better to
vent. Big Tech knows how to deal with the whining. The threat of having to
change their behaviour is negligible.

If there was a possibility they could be sued for this behaviour, then the
threat might become non-negigible. The "legal sense" matters because it is a
threat the company's management would take seriously. The threat of "people
complaining about us on the internet" is not a serious one. It costs very
little, often nothing, to make it go away.

~~~
JSavageOne
I don't know what your point is. Nobody is claiming the complaining on an
internet forum will directly change the law. But it is obviously possible that
this online discourse will lead to a movement ultimately influencing elected
lawmakers to change the law.

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
The point is that people think the government is going to solve this problem
of Big Tech. "[I]t is possible that the online discourse will lead to a
movement ultimately influenceing elected lawmakers to change the law." Sadly,
there are no "Ralph Naders" in the age of Big Tech. Who is going to lead this
movement to pass these new laws? Is "online discourse" really the level of
pressure needed? Do lawmakers normally read "online discourse"? We know they
follow mainstream media. The discourse I see seems to focus solely on
"government regulation". Regulatory capture, fines and so forth. I am
suggesting that the discourse should also focus on "what rights should every
user have against Big Tech". Not relying on government to police behaviour but
focusing on empowering users to enforce their rights on their own initiative.
Which do you think stimulates change in how websites operate? A law that users
can enforce at any time or the one where we have to wait and hope that
government regulators decide to act? A law that potentially enables an unknown
number of users to keep filing lawsuits or one where Google/Facebook can pay a
fine and move on, without ever admitting any wrongdoing. The discourse is not
contemplating enabling private action. It focuses almost solely on the promise
of future government regulation.

~~~
TeMPOraL
A democratic government is, in principle, (and more often in theory than in
practice) a way for individuals to collectively express their wishes.
Including reining in misbehaving corporations. The reason so much discourse is
contemplating government regulation is because, in democracy, government
regulation _is_ private action of citizens. And arguably, only in this
concentrated form it has a chance to oppose the concentrated interests of
wealthy private individuals at the steers of corporations.

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
What about the "discourse" where commenters submit ideas to the effect of
"This should be illlegal."

Do they realise that, like government regulation, that would leave discretion
over enforcement to a third party, e.g., a prosecutor.

It is possible to have a regulatory framework and a criminal code aimed at Big
Tech that is, in practice, never enforced, rarely enforced, or enforced
arbitrarily.

Giving users a private remedy against tech companies, letting them initiate
actions in response to wrongdoing, does not mean anyone has to forgo
democratic government, government regulation, law enforcement, and so on.

It is just something that as far as I can see is not getting any focus in
popular discussions about the evils of Big Tech. We watch as people bring
factually-supported cases over large scale privacy violations but they always
fail in the courts because there is no law that is truly adequate to bring
them under. The existing law requires actual injury. It reflects a time before
the ubiquity of computer networks, let alone the widespread practice of using
them for dragnet surveillance on the public as a business model.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair. But that would, at least in the US, require a complete overhaul of the
justice system. As it is, the justice belongs to those who can spend more on
lawyers, so few individuals are willing to accept a realistic risk of having
their lives forever ruined on the off chance they'll win against a corporation
that can easily outspend them in court.

~~~
pwdisswordfish2
I think we each have different ideas about what these statutory private
remedies might look like. It is not necessary for the applicant's life to be
ruined by filing claims. Not all litigation is like that. Nor would it be
necessary to overhaul the justice system. There must be examples you have in
mind that have shaped your view of what is or is not possible.

------
Barrin92
There's only one aspect in the entire piece that I think is somewhat accurate,
which is the division of society into hinterlands and centres. That really is
happening, however not only between the property owning class and everyone
else, but with much more nuance in between.

Everything else however is I think pretty far off the mark, comparing this era
to feudalism doesn't make much sense.

The article posits extraction of resources from the poor to the rich,
including globally, and this is just wrong. We've seen a great convergence in
global equity which one can see with their own eyes if they travel to China or
Poland.

Lack of property or wealth also doesn't imply 'serfdom'. In today's age
property isn't really a guarantor of personal autonomy any more, in fact if
anything the opposite is true, the biggest benefits today fall on people who
can move. Owning a house doesn't really do most people any good any more, in
particular not if it's in a place that has its economy turned upside down.

~~~
groby_b
Uh, what? There's no "convergence in global equity[sic]". See
[https://inequality.org/facts/global-
inequality/](https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/)

Inequality is rapidly increasing, and the speed of the spread is accelerating.

And given that housing still accounts for somewhere between 20% and 45%
especially for the lowest income quintile, yes, owning a house makes a huge
difference.[1] [https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-
inc...](https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-income.pdf)

I respect you have a different opinion, but if it's contradicting available
data I'd appreciate a source for that belief.

~~~
nostrademons
No, parent poster is correct. World Gini coefficient has been consistently
dropping since hitting its peak of 0.80 in 1988:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_Gini_index_since_1800s)
(see second chart)

This is also reflected in one of the graphs ("The Global 1% Captured Twice as
Much Growth as the Bottom Half") from your link, with the decline in the top
1% since 2009 and the slow increase in the bottom 50% since 2002.

The graphs you show are largely broken down by country, and reflect an
instance of Simpson's Paradox. [1] _Within_ each individual country, income
inequality is rising. However, _globally_ income inequality is falling,
because an increasing share of global income is moving from rich countries to
poor countries. The super-rich in the U.S. are rapidly outpacing the poor in
the U.S., and the super-rich in the China are rapidly outpacing the poor in
China, but a large fraction of the huge number of poor people in China are
rapidly approaching the middle-class standard of living formerly reserved for
the U.S, much more than the number of people that have fallen out of the U.S.
middle class.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

------
eli_gottlieb
>Did anyone ever figure out what "neofeudalism" means and why it's here now?

I'm gonna write out a notion before I actually read the article and get
disappointed.

Feudalism was a mode of production in which value was chiefly produced from
arable land via agriculture and mainly extracted in the form of rent or tax by
force, with the ruling class being the most effective military force.
Merchants, traders, artisans, engineers, and bureaucrats weren't really major
players under feudalism, and their _rise_ from tolerated skilled servants to a
class for themselves, the asset-owning class of capitalism, was a major
historical transition.

 _If_ , hypothetically, we were transitioning into a form of "neo-feudalism",
it would be a mode of production in which efficiently producing valuable goods
for market trade is no longer more valuable than the ability to just force
other people to pay you not to plunder them by force. It would indicate that
society's productive potential was either actively degrading, or being held
hostage by a ruling class of rent-seekers on the limiting factors of
production.

For instance, a society run largely by real-estate or oil tycoons who twist
the law to bully their competitors and extract rents/ransoms from anyone
needing land or oil could (again, hypothetically) qualify.

The nasty question in this whole thing would be: what so strangled capitalism
that feudalism was able to make a comeback? The feudal-to-capitalist
transition happened in the first place because the ruling class of capitalism
was able to so steadily erode the economic, social, and even _military_
relevance of the landed nobility that by the time of the French Revolution
they could be executed en masse without anyone else complaining much, and the
nobles of many other countries like England and Germany had to marry into
_industrial_ enterprises to keep their wealth! Are we somehow so de-
industrialized that we're switching back to subsistence agriculture?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Hmm. Then gangs that charge protection money are basically neofeudalist. That
seems both plausible and interesting.

~~~
mr_toad
Early feudal systems were basically just a protection racket.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_by_itineration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_by_itineration)

------
segfaultbuserr
Bruce Schneier partially agrees with it.

* Feudal Security

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.html)

> Perhaps instead of hoping that our Internet-era lords will be sufficiently
> clever and benevolent -- or putting our faith in the Robin Hoods who block
> phone surveillance and circumvent DRM systems -- it's time we step in in our
> role as governments (both national and international) to create the
> regulatory environments that protect us vassals (and the lords as well).
> Otherwise, we really are just serfs.

------
sacks2k
"owners into billionaires on the basis of the cheap labor of their workers,
the free labor of their users, and the tax breaks bestowed on them by cities
desperate to attract jobs. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet
(the parent company name for Google) together are worth more than most every
country in the world (except the United States, China, Germany, and Japan).
The economic scale and impact of these tech super giants, or, overlords, is
greater than that of most so-called sovereign states. Evgeny Morozov describes
their dominance as a “hyper-modern form of feudalism.”"

How are any of these companies making money on the 'cheap' labor of their
workers? Amazon pays all warehouse employees a minimum of $15/hour. This is
well above the minimum wage in most areas of the US and outside the US, is a
very good wage for doing repetitive tasks that don't even require a high
school education.

This article doesn't even touch on the censorship aspects of companies like
Google and Facebook becoming more and more a reality every day. They both
regularly censor opposing view points and are definitely influencing our
elections.

"Digital platforms are the new watermills, their billionaire owners the new
lords, and their thousands of workers and billions of users the new peasants"

Not quite. Anyone can still start a website and sell a product without a
digital overlord. In fact, there are less barriers to entry than there were a
decade ago. Most people choose to give control to companies like Amazon
because it's easier and more convenient.

~~~
pydry
>Not quite. Anyone can still start a website and sell a product without a
digital overlord. In fact, there are less barriers to entry than there were a
decade ago. Most people choose to give control to companies like Amazon
because it's easier and more convenient.

The story of diapers.com cogently illustrates the fate awaiting those who
believe that there are no barriers to competing with amazon:

[https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-
be...](https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went-
thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html)

~~~
sacks2k
"[https://www.vox.com/2017/3/29/15112314/amazon-shutting-
down-...](https://www.vox.com/2017/3/29/15112314/amazon-shutting-down-diapers-
com-quidsi-soap-com")

If a 550 million dollar acquisition is my fate after trying to compete with
Amazon, I would look forward to it.

~~~
Allenaz
"... complex networks produce extremes of inequality, winner-take-all or
winner-take-most distributions.", you would indeed become richer, society, not
quite.

------
lbarrow
>Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (the parent company name for
Google) together are worth more than most every country in the world (except
the United States, China, Germany, and Japan).

Did the author just compare market capitalizations with GDP? What? It's hard
to take some of this stuff seriously.

~~~
nickpinkston
I got interested and did a more apples to apples comparison:

REVENUES (2019):

Apple: $260B

Facebook: $70.7B

Microsoft: $126B

Amazon: $233B

Alphabet: $162B

TOTAL: $852B

_____________________________

GDPs in 1000's (copy paste from Wikipedia):

1 United States 21,439,453

— European Union 18,705,132

2 China 14,140,163

3 Japan 5,154,475

4 Germany 3,863,344

5 India 2,935,570

6 United Kingdom 2,743,586

7 France 2,707,074

8 Italy 1,988,636

9 Brazil 1,847,020

10 Canada 1,730,914

11 Russia 1,637,892

12 Korea, South 1,629,532

13 Spain 1,397,870

14 Australia 1,376,255

15 Mexico 1,274,175

16 Indonesia 1,111,713

17 Netherlands 902,355

18 Saudi Arabia 779,289

19 Turkey 743,708

20 Switzerland 715,360

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

~~~
callmekit
The Wikipedia article you linked lists GDP in millions, not in 1000's.

~~~
ImaCake
By my rekoning then, there are 17 countries that have larger GDP than the
combined tech companies.

------
627467
Doesn't feudalism arise out of weak (practically non existent) centralized
power structures? Despite the rethoric of late (particularly in Trump America)
I think most of the world (including the US) is heading towards stronger
Nation States not weaker... And not because the State is claiming that power,
but because society seems in line with it. The speed with which many western
democracies allowed/tolerated extreme measures to be taken during the covid
pandemic in a syncronized manner just shows how people rely on the State when
push comes to shove.

~~~
mindslight
The direct pandemic response was delayed by at least a month, and basically
consisted of telling everyone to stay home and not much else. Now we're
getting bored of it, so it's ending. That doesn't seem so powerful to me.

Meanwhile the financial response of cutting interest rates started two weeks
earlier, which certainly seems like the state trying to appease capital.

~~~
627467
Agreed on the description on how the State wielded the power (not very
effectively I'd argue) yet I'm not claiming that the State knows what to do
with power (specially in such pandemic situation), I'm merely describing that
the people seem to have accepted very quickly and with little resistance
whatever the State decided (late or not)

~~~
MauranKilom
I'm honestly curious what reaction from "the people" you would expect. Even if
I was concerned with the source of the orders, if the measures are perfectly
reasonable and expected then... should I still defy them? Serious question.

~~~
Consultant32452
I've been quite surprised at how quickly people went from calling Trump
"literally Hitler" or at the very least a Russian puppet/Manchurian candidate
to complaining that he didn't come down with a hard enough iron fist and start
doing things like declaring martial law to more strictly enforce lockdowns. I
think there's some very interesting things going on here psychologically with
respect to fear, team sports, and state power.

~~~
licebmi__at__
Maybe because the critic is not really a contradictory critic once you see the
context.

It's like complaining that critics of Stalin can't criticize him for both
making the people poor, and making some people (the party) richer.

Ignoring the context doesn't make you smart.

~~~
Consultant32452
I'm not ignoring the context at all. If I genuinely believed that someone was
evil, I cannot imagine a scenario in which I'd want them to have more control
over me. The fact that so many people feel the opposite of me in this
particular context is really interesting and hard for me to grasp. I want to
be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone is right or wrong. I just find it
fascinating.

------
Thorentis
Emphasis on NEO-feudalism. What this article fails to acknowledge or discuss,
is that feudalism was actually BETTER for workers than the current
arrangement. Workers were entitled to earn a living from the land they lived
on, their lords had obligations to them to provide for their welfare. There
was a hierarchy, but the workers themselves were empowered by the value they
added to their lord's land. Serfs were only serfs of they lacked the skills to
be free men or craftsmen. The craft and trade economy was far more self
regulating and less exploitive.

What we have now is a Servile State, not a feudal one.

~~~
bad_user
In addition to what others are saying, I'll point out that up until the 20th
century most of the people lived in extreme poverty.

We are talking 90% of the population living in extreme poverty and suffering
from malnutrition.

A number that plummeted in the 20th century, especially since 1960, being less
than 10% in 2015.

This was due to technology and the industrial revolution of course, but those
went hand in hand with capitalism.

So from what perspective was it better?

~~~
Thorentis
Like you said, technology and the industrial revolution improved the "extreme
poverty" of the situation. Just because capitalism helped in bring those
things about, doesn't mean that capitalism is itself a better alternative. In
fact, I don't even think that capitalism was a necessary condition for those
things. It just happened that capitalism came along around the same time.
Would the loom have not been invented without capitalism? Or the steam engine?
People were already innovating in the middle ages (the printing press, etc.)
without modern capitalism.

People continue to innovate today without a large profit incentive. Look at
the open source movement, the creative commons movement, the content producers
all over the Internet that accept donations in exchange for sometimes large
amounts of their time. People will innovate because they enjoy innovating. I
don't think we can say that capitalism as we know it was necessary for the
living conditions of the 15th - 19th centuries to improve.

~~~
bad_user
Many technological innovations would have been discovered without capitalism,
but it would've taken longer, arguably. This is clear to anybody that lived,
even for a short time, in Eastern Europe before the fall of USSR. Innovation
requires competition, access to capital and freedom of speech, all of them
enabled by capitalism.

\---

> " _People continue to innovate today without a large profit incentive. Look
> at the open source movement_ "

I'm a part of the Open Source "movement", I've contributed significantly to a
couple of high profile open source libraries.

Everything is driven by profit, either directly or indirectly. OSS
contributions are apprenticeships for beginners and a great addition to any
resume. Improving one's reputation by OSS is no small thing. Granted some OSS
developers are exploited, but that's because they haven't learned to say no
yet, or to ask for money. But that's just temporary, a part of the growing up
process.

Companies contributing to OSS? That's just complementary to their cash cows.
There's no company on this earth contributing to OSS without a profit motive.

Also, even in capitalism we need access to "the commons". In order to continue
to innovate, the price of foundations needs to drop and in capitalism this is
a natural phenomenon. Everybody needs roads and at some point roads become
subsidized.

\---

> " _People will innovate because they enjoy innovating._ "

You have a romantic view of the world. My view is that everything is about sex
and power.

~~~
Thorentis
I think I overstated my "no profit incentive".

I think people need ownership and the potential for profit in order to
innovate. I am no advocating for communism or the removal of private property.
I think private property is necessary for all sorts of other human rights.

But private property and a profit incentive existed in the middle ages. There
were guilds, and trademen, and yeomen, and all sorts of people making a profit
and trading in capital. My issue with the industrial revolution is that
_exploitative_ capitalism replaced most other forms of exploitation. Yes, you
could argue that serfs were exploited. But there were obligations that came
with being a landowner and a lord. The industrial revolution paved the way for
exploitation _without_ obligations. Can't do the work anymore? Well, say
goodbye to a house since you can't pay rent, food because you don't have
money, etc. At least there was a level of security afforded by community
living and living off the land. The total output of a household or town was
enough to pay satisfy the year's quota, none of this week to week rent
seeking.

I don't think comparing the USSR to the middle ages is accurate then in this
sense. And I think that had the industrial revolution not happened, we could
very well have seen a similar increase in technological development. But I
suppose it's one of those things we'll only ever be able to speculate about.
One thing is for sure: the exploitative capitalism that we have today in many
countries needs to change. And I believe there are better solutions than
communism. Distributism for instance, with elements of Georgism (also posted
about on the front page of HN today funnily enough) would be a good place to
start.

~~~
bad_user
> " _The industrial revolution paved the way for exploitation without
> obligations. Can 't do the work anymore? Well, say goodbye to a house since
> you can't pay rent, food because you don't have money, etc._"

This was Marx's worry and reason for its theory of value.

It's not true. Capitalism goes hand in hand with the constant evolution of
technology and the competition pressure that companies have, which leads to
prices dropping all the time. Food prices have been dropping and I'm pretty
sure agriculture will get so efficient that the price of basic food items will
be free.

The only worrying thing nowadays, the only phenomenon that can disrupt this
trend, are the IP laws (copyright, patents, trademark) that are essentially
government-granted monopolies, allowing software companies to keep competition
at bay and their prices high. But due to the evolution of technology, even
software companies need to evolve and to drop the prices on their services, or
they die. Maybe in the future this will stop being true, maybe there is a
ceiling to what technology can do. But for now Marx's dystopian future isn't
here yet.

Again, let us look at the results. In 2015 less than 10% of the world's
population lived in extreme poverty, compared with over 90% in the 19th
century.

~~~
Thorentis
I agree that IP law needs an overhaul and I am not a fan of granting IP
monopolies.

I think the rapid change in poverty levels may actually be due to globalism
and off shoring. If the most basic of jobs are now done by overseas workers or
immigrants, suddenly the quality of life in countries that are beneficiaries
of that work increases. Imported food, mass production of goods on a grand
scale. Cheap Walmart products made in China that even people on the poverty
line can afford. This would not be possible without globalism. You could argue
that capitalism and globalism go hand in hand, but again, I don't think
capitalism necessarily leads to globalism.

------
tayistay
It's as if the author hasn't ever really encountered scientific precision.

Take this for example:

"Most of us constitute a property-less underclass only able to survive by
servicing the needs of high earners."

Who is "us"? In the USA, over 60% of housing units are owner-occupied. Hardly
property-less. Hyperbole much?

But then to presumably provide support for this, the author goes and cherry-
picks something:

"A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that over the next 10 years
the occupation that will add the most jobs is personal care aides, not health
workers but aides who bathe and clean people. The dependence of the ruling
class on the vast sector of servants..."

Could this BLS statistic be because the boomers, a large cohort, are getting
old? The author makes the caregivers seem like servants to the "ruling class",
not people taking care of the elderly who really do need the help.

Another example:

"Universal Basic Income is an untenable survivalist approach. It promises just
enough to keep those in the hinterlands going and barely enough for urban
renters to handover to their landlords."

Let's just dismiss UBI, a complex topic, with two sentences! Why prove
anything when you can simply assert plausible-sounding things?

And then you have stuff like:

"Such groupings reproduce their lives in common, yet the commons they
reproduce is necessarily small, local, and in some sense exclusive and elite,
exclusive insofar as their numbers are necessarily limited, elite because the
aspirations are culturally specific rather than widespread."

Huh? Am I just too dumb to understand?

I could probably find more examples.

There might be some interesting ideas in the article, but it's just obscured
by all the BS.

~~~
mamon
>> In the USA, over 60% of housing units are owner-occupied

Does that include houses with mortgages? Because in my opinion if you're not
really the owner until you've paid off your mortgage fully.

~~~
tayistay
I'm sure it does. Your ownership is in proportion to equity. It's not as if
your life situation suddenly changes when you make that last mortgage payment.

Your point makes me wonder if mortgages just had the effect of transferring
rents from landlords over to banks.

~~~
mamon
In some sense yes, you're paying rent to your bank. But the difference is:
with a landlord you would pay that rent indefinetely, with mortgage you pay it
for 20-30 years and then the house becomes yours.

------
Havoc
I find the lack of consensus about anything in the comment here quite
interesting too. Clearly nobody is on the same page let alone the right page
whatever that may be.

------
dustingetz
> Power law distributions are not inevitable. They can be stopped. But that
> takes political will and the institutional power to implement it.

This sentence is busted for me. Power laws are inevitable and acknowledging
this is the starting point to finding a solution. You can't fix it from
within.

~~~
buzzkillington
It wasn't too long ago that there was a power law in owning people. Somehow
that inevitability is no longer with us.

It's almost like once we broke the political will of the slave owning class we
removed the need for slaves too.

~~~
Supermancho
I'm not sure what "power law" you are referring to, although I suspect it's
something like "the power of law". That's not the power law being referenced.
Re: pareto principle. The idea that the Pareto principle can be up-ended or
flattened is fantasy. All you can do is change the logarithmic scale or how
you measure.

~~~
buzzkillington
Yes, if you look up ownership statistics for slaves they indeed followed a
power law, to the point where the majority of southern whites did not own a
slave but felt having the option of owning one was worth starting a civil war
over.

It also used to apply for numbers of wives before Christianity killed that
particular power law.

Applying descriptive social statistics as prescriptive policy is idiocy.

~~~
Supermancho
I'm having trouble following.

>>> Power laws are inevitable and acknowledging this is the starting point to
finding a solution.

>> It wasn't too long ago that there was a power law in owning people.

> if you look up ownership statistics for slaves they indeed followed a power
> law,

Your first statement is incomplete, at best. Thank you for explaining. As it
stands, not sure how that explanation applies to the assertion.

> Applying descriptive social statistics as prescriptive policy is idiocy.

Not sure what that has to do with the topic either. The issue is with the
articles' assertion that you can avoid the power law via political will, akin
to "equality in outcome" or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2081_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2081_\(film\))

Social statistics have to be taken into consideration, or solutions are broken
conceptually.

------
ashtonkem
I’ve begun to suspect that we’re not in a capitalist society for a while. In
Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber argues that a surprisingly large percentage
(~34%) of workers don’t believe their job even helps the company turn a
profit. In a capitalist society this is something that shouldn’t happen at
scale; market efficiencies should theoretically eliminate all jobs that don’t
help companies turn a profit.

I’ve had a suspicion that we’re trending towards a feudal structure, with
managers as minor lords, companies as countries, and CEO as a modern king.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but it does explain why our culture doesn’t seem
to be doing things that a capitalist society should do.

~~~
TFYS
Oh we're in a capitalist society alright. This is exactly where capitalism
leads to, and it has been foreseen a long time ago by forgotten and hated
economists. This is just an attempt to clear capitalism's name by calling the
negative effects of capitalism something else than capitalism.

------
082349872349872
"The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", by a bloke named
Goldstein, may have something to say about "neofeudalism", but I haven't been
able to find more a few fragmented chapters...

------
sand_castles
Neofeudalism is only possible in an agrarian society, or if your income is
digging stuff out of the ground.

Industrialized societies quickly tear themselves apart when you need an
educated workforce, and intelligent consumers.

A society of serfs will only consume the bare minimum, stagnating
technological progress, ask the chinese about gunpowder and naval force
projection.

Unlikely for the US to enter Neofeudalism when we are entering an age of great
power competition.

You only get to keep your power if you "bribe" your workers enough to help
you.

~~~
ianleeclark
> You only get to keep your power if you "bribe" your workers enough to help
> you.

This is largely a misunderstanding of historical systems of discipline. When
the enclosures started to happen, serfs were booted from their land, and were
coerced into working for early capitalists at threat of subjective violence
(branding, beating, &c., if caught begging) or objective violence
(starvation).

It's understood that the states armed bodies of men, under feudalism and
neofeudalism, don't care about you. So what is to stop a reversion to the
level of subjugation seen by English serfs many centuries ago? You're free to
go look up cops wearing, "I CAN breathe," t-shirts and take from that what you
will.

These bribes you mention, although an accurate retelling of American history
through westward expansion and imperial expansion, are directly threatened by
the faltering american hegemony.

~~~
zozbot234
These systems of discipline were indeed quite real, but they were strongly
associated with the mercantile system which was pre industrial revolution.
ISTM that parent comment is still correct wrt. industrial and even more so
wrt. post-industrial (service-based, contemporary) economies.

~~~
ianleeclark
> These systems of discipline were indeed quite real, but they were strongly
> associated with the mercantile system which was pre industrial revolution.

Okay, so post industrial revolution domination is what you want: Blair
Mountain. Even more relevant? Literally today as America shovels an underpaid
mass of it's citizens into the jaws of a pandemic so that a labor aristocracy
can resume their bloomin' onions, onto the beach, and back into movie
theatres.

------
fzeroracer
This seems like a really good companion article to the other top story on HN
right now talking about Doordash [1].

Specifically, we're living in an era where companies are so flush with capital
that the intent isn't even to make money. It's to corner a market so that they
can have monopolistic behavior over it. In a capitalistic economy companies
like Doordash, Grubhub or Ubereats simply _should not exist_ because the way
they operate is contrary to how capitalism is supposed to perform.

So if companies like that can thrive, the only answer is that capitalism is
broken.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852)

~~~
dsego
On the contrary, it's a classic capitalist move, from Rockefeller to Bill
Gates. The so called tollbooth strategy. Create a choke point and extract
revenue.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-billionaire-
strat...](https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-billionaire-strategy-
tollbooth-rockefeller-warren-buffet-2019-11)

------
trynumber9
It sounds like box-standard capitalism to me. Maybe it'll be neo-feudalism
when they force the peons to use their lord's platforms, like China with the
Great Firewall. But that could also simply be described as state capitalism
and protectionism.

~~~
HeavenBanned
Interestingly enough, Chomsky asserts that what we have now is State-Sponsored
Capitalism in the US. I think that's more accurate than neo-feudalism,
personally.

------
roody15
We are entering the world of shadowrun. Not good.

------
lihaciudaniel
As long as generational money exists capitalism never ends.

------
js8
I don't think we can call the current system something different until the
ideology of the middle class changes. (I think in society, the power of upper
class over middle class is maintained by ideology, while power over lower
class is maintained by force).

There is still by and large belief in meritocracy and American dream. Contrast
that with feudalism, people in the middle class had the ideology of the
divine, unchanged order.

So I think the future is still open because it will crucially depend on what
ideology will be taken by middle classes. They might as well adopt a social
democratic ideology again, as the did in the reaction to late 19th century
capitalism in the Europe and U.S.

------
snidane
This of the converse - Capitalism: the the weird case in the history of
Feudalism.

Feudalism seems to be a natural order. Look at corporations - they are all
feudal hierarchies internally.

So what is capitalism among the natural order of feudalism?

Technology of industrial revolution allowed new generation of aristocracy
(refer to as capitalists) to replace old generation of aristocracy (landed
gentry).

It's more likely that we have regressed back to natural feudal order than that
we are experiencing some funky next stage of capitalism, since there were no
major wars or societal conflicts recently.

------
nickik
Books like this combine bad history with analysis what is happening now. This
amounts to a badly researched opinion piece at most.

> Communism was supposed to come after capitalism and it’s not here, so
> doesn’t that mean we are still in capitalism?

Ah, no sorry. That is not correct. That Communism was supposed to come after
Capitalism was a believe held by guess who, COMMUNISTS. And that believe was
based on a bunch books by a German philosopher who neither had the correct
view of history, and then he drew even wronger conclusions from it. Basically
making up Communism as a Utopian so he had a reason to criticism Capitalism,
as Capitalism was clearly better then anything else to have an alternative he
had to invent a utopia. That worked out great for everybody.

> If we’ve rejected strict historical determinism

How about were reject historical determinism itself?

> The economic scale and impact of these tech super giants, or, overlords, is
> greater than that of most so-called sovereign states. Evgeny Morozov
> describes their dominance as a “hyper-modern form of feudalism.”

Except that tech giants and other big companies don't have global armies that
enact genocide on other nations. Or care what you do with your life, what
religion you are and so on. Or force you in any way to use their service of
the alternative produce from another service, or the open source version. Or
are in any way even close to as powerful as a nation state. So except for all
the things that really matter, its the same.

> he result, then, of free choice, growth, and preferential attachment is
> hierarchy, power law distributions where those at the top have vastly more
> than those at the bottom.

And those on Top then get replaced by something else when a new fade happens
comes by. IBM will dominate everything. Microsoft will dominate everything.
Netflix will dominate everything. MySpace will dominate everything.

Basic Market Process Theory.

These structures are only there as long as people want them and they are
continually reshaped. And they are continuously and dynamically reshaped
because people have free choice and the providers have no real powerful way to
enforce them. The only power they have is to say 'use this service completely
or not at all'. Will governments had the power to say, use this service or we
kill your children.

> Power law distributions are not inevitable. They can be stopped. But that
> takes political will and the institutional power to implement it.

So we need government centralization against the peoples will to create rules
to stop people from voluntary centralization around what they want.

> Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of
> Neoliberalism documents the neoliberal strategy of undermining the authority
> of the nation-state over its economy in the interest of advancing global
> trade.

How horrible, they power is taken away from dictators and government
burocrates who have done such a brilliant job organizing their economics.

We should make it as easy as possible for dictators to systematically exploit
their people and natural resources and put all power in the government. That
is much preferable to people being 'controlled' by the evils of global trade.

> maintaining the competitiveness of national economies has become “a top
> policy concern.”

What, being efficient has become a 'top policy concern' for governments, how
horrifying. We need to stop this and restore systematic inefficiency.

> Competitiveness has replaced competition and growth as a state goal ... the
> dismantling of monopolies but “to aid specific economic actors — those who
> are best positioned to perform well in the global competition for profit.”

This is just a false. States sometimes push some industries, but mostly
because of geo-strategy, not for profits. In actuality those industries most
heavily pushed are often not those that produce those profits.

Its the opposite, those that produce profits, finance those that geo-strategy
things your country should have.

And honestly, if your great fear is 'the state bureaucracy' will perfectly
figure out what companies can be the most profitable and smartly invest in
those, you are ignorant of all history.

> “public authority handpicks the companies on which to bestow this
> privilege.”

This is the same old fear that people had in the 70s about Japan. Find a new
slant, this one is old and clearly wrong.

Ignoring that pretty much all of these problems have existed for a long time
and the solutions actually do exist already and have been discussed since the
1800s. Those states that do a good job implementing those solutions are still
doing well, and others don't.

> Digital platforms are the new watermills, their billionaire owners the new
> lords, and their thousands of workers and billions of users the new
> peasants.

I really do feel like peasant who was not allowed to leave his village under
threat of death because Google provides free Gmail. This is so incredibly
stupid and ignorant it actually blows my mind.

------
Proven
Both companies and individuals are being subsidized or bailed out by central
banks and governments. Governments spend 35-45 percent of GDP. That is
fascism.

Coven is a statist. While he calls himself a libertarian, his recommendations
usually don't involve les# government - very unlibertarian.

------
mempko
Capitalism IS neofeudalism. Even the word 'Capitalism' was a joke making fun
of the fact that it was a new form of feudalism.

There is a long long history of this criticism going back all the way to the
French Revolution.

------
lihaciudaniel
I don't agree with the main idea of the article, communism never worked, we
always have had capitalism and always will be. Unless some socialism happens
or something in the near future nothing will change. Also people think
technology is good, I don't think that. But imho I can't survive in the woods
alone

------
darawk
> A property-less underclass will survive by servicing the needs of high
> earners as personal assistants, trainers, child-minders, cooks, cleaners, et
> cetera.

People have been predicting this since Marx, and they've been wrong every
single time. It's a better time to be a peasant today than at any time
history, and it keeps getting better. The chattering class sure does love to
chatter about this though.

~~~
enraged_camel
>> It's a better time to be a peasant today than at any time history, and it
keeps getting better.

This is quite literally the “99% of ‘poor’ people have refrigerators” argument
popularized by Fox News.

You should find better sources of information.

~~~
darawk
> This is quite literally the “99% of ‘poor’ people have refrigerators”
> argument popularized by Fox News.

> You should find better sources of information.

The factual claim I made is true. My sources of information are just fine, so
you must be objecting to something else.

------
ngcc_hk
There is no capitalism. First it is an old idea before pubic goods like
knowledge and IT comes dominant. Second it is agenda setting as even then and
now we have mix economy - market, gov, community (people actually know each
other), social (people mostly don’t) and cyber (the link is partial both
community and social. That is a reason why you have sometimes very similar act
by total different regime. Third each life has both most important strategy at
that time at that place for that person. All politics are local and you alone
(even though it is about you and the world or your group with the world).

There is no ...

