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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- Today we talk about the concept of Technofeudalism as described by Yanis Varoufakis. We talk about the comparisons of our world to the feudal system, the origins in the economic policy of 2008, and a few potential paths forward centered around important questions to be revisiting. Hope you enjoy it! :)
Thank you so much for listening! Could never do this without your help.
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I stumbled on yanis a few years ago and have always been interested. Reading Capitalist Realism and Technofuedalism back to back was eye opening
Very interesting. It looks like markets no longer function in digital spaces in the ways they used to with physical goods. It makes me think about how the corporate world benefits from open-source developments, but not the other way around. We're having the a tug-of-war in which corporate power is siphoning off all advantages the markets have. As we fight this corporate power, we find that the earth beneath our feet is now owned by the companies we're trying to defend ourselves against.
Thank you for covering Mr Varoufakis, he raises very interesting points.
Amazing breakdown, I finally understand that late stage capitalism is just early stage technofeudalism
Real fans are always on time
And windy
The internet has to be a public utility.
@@edwardallan197 becouse public services work great and have no setbacks at all. i hope this never comes true
What part, the cables, the routers, the servers? what about other contries internet?
I really wish it was you who read Technofeudalism’s audiobook. I’m struggling with it because it’s a real effort to understand the concepts while trying to make out Yanis’s accent 😞
Mr. West, your work is invaluable and much needed in our world today. Thank you sincerely.
Wow. We really had to wait a while for this episode, you've been missed Mr. West!
8:27 and now with Yanis we can begin to conceptualize this as the collective class action reason for reparations, for timenergy returns. We, the public, the serfs, have built up and fed this empire of data and ought to own the collective progress of that in common.
Stephen West. The OG Podcaster!! Let me get into this...We appreciate your work Sir!
Really good. Yanis is one of my heroes of the modern age. A lot of people feel that something is wrong but it requires new knowledge with a new vocabulary. Yanis makes sense. We're going to need more Yanis' in the world.
My dear Steven, I have listened to every single one of these episodes. Some of them 2, 3, 7 times. Especially the first couple. They blew my friggin mind. Your explanation for everything and your excitement to share it is always a blessing. This has now taken over as my favorite episode, but as always;
Whenever i hear you say "let me know somehow if you think " X thing " would be a cool topic for another episode." I just sit there, excitedly waiting for the next episode.
I shared this with my temple to talk about the implications of online marketplaces and the benefits of brick and mortar stores. As always, you do such amazing work and i dont care how long it takes between episodes, I'm gonna listen to Every. Single. One. Have a wonderful day, you beautiful ray of sunshine in a world that feels slowly decayed and rotting. Thank you for proving there are intelligent people out in the world who see new ways for us to exist, because this system does need change. I know you arent the one to do that, but philosophising and putting every day words to thoughts that were only semi rational in the back of our minds, is an incredibly powerful tallent. Please never stop.
Interesting analysis. How signifigant is the technofeudalism concept? Unsure, yet I think socialism is still the answer.
Yes please! I'd love an episode about ownership.
When we speak to the utilization of government resources to in development of most of the products that we pay for in the Marketplace. That is literally the socialistic capitalism that Martin Luther King talked about.
Because it sounds like techno feudalism that's being expressed here is merely a layer over the existing capitalistic structure. So bad just becomes worse...
Great Episode. Nothing about bitcoin but it was still good. I just finished Resistance Money, a book about Bitcoin written by philosophers. Gives me hope. I could not recommend it more. It would make a perfect follow-up episode.
Excellent. Been wishing for this
King thanks for making this
With intentionally botched education systems, the ease of creating empathy fatigue through social media and the gargantuan machine of modern populism, democracy doesn't really feel too hopeful either to be honest.
How do you know the education is 'intentionally' botched? Couldn't it just be collateral damage of the spread of new technologies? I honestly wonder...
Get out of my head! 💯
Really interesting episode, thanks.
Thank you for all your work Mr West. Will continue to listen, and try to contribute where I can.
So true. Yanis Varoufakis has been saying this for years.
Varoufakis was a great teacher. I am Thankful i had him as one.
Hello! I would like to humbly request a video on "library card-esque" corporate reform. Thanks 😊❤️
Oh man, I am about 12 minutes in and I am loving this one! I want to pick up that book, Another Now?
Oh well. So close.
You had a minutes long sidebar to address the real problem and then leave it behind. The fact is that these issues exist because of Quantitative easing and other centrally controlled financial system tools. All the problems in the other recent videos about Neo-liberalism stem from the same source. Striving for infinate GDP growth through consumerism, the rise of ling term financing, credit cards, the dislocation of the stock market from the actual economy, the financial supporting structure of these mega data-rake corporations, it ALL stems from the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government using fiat currency to try to iron out every bump in the road. And in the end, they simply build up the issues and cause all manner of negative third and fourth order consiquences.
Capitalism didnt die fron technology, it died in 1971. And we all know WTF happened in 1971.
What happened, if you could share ?
YESSSS plz on the episode suggestion for discussing labor and new divisions of corporate structures 🙌🙌
It seems that these ideas have been talked about in some crypto circles, and it's part of the tokenomics being applied ... thanks for the great content . As always the best podcast of the week
Could we get an in depth discussion of the concept of Class as it is used here?
Thank You. Seriously Good Stuff. D from Scotland.
Technofeudalism seems wildly inappropriate as a label. That's good old Austrian school criticism of Keynesian monetary policy.
You're hitting hard nails, in a very subtle way !!
Cheers to you !!!! 🥰
Keep going with this post capitalist series and ideas from economists for alternative systems! I have trouble imagining alternatives and I want as much fuel for thought in this direction as possible.
Heck yes! My free education from professor Steve West is so important!
European Central Bank head, Christine Lagarde: "Climate change" requires a complete overhaul of our economic and financial systems-in line with the "green transition"-including the need to "reduce our carbon footprint in everything we do, from banknotes to how we supervise banks".
The monetary oroborous of the fourth turning is the paradoxical antinomian process of techno feudalism: capitalist activity is growing simultaneously within the same process of capital creation that degrades profit and gradually replaces capital markets with an all- pervading digital cloud fiefdom. A two- tiered slave - state with the technocrats serving as the techno- feudal clerisy at the altar of Baal who preside over the digital chattel.
Not trying to be rude, genuinely curious. What was the point of this comment?
@@quinlanlonergan4861 You're not alone, I'm not tracking with this post either.
Obama: "I had to save the banks" sounds like something an "expert advisor" with an "education" in "economic science" would say. Pretty sure those 'Bama advisors found excellent jobs in the financial "industry" after the shitshow of QE.
Revolving door between politics and deep pockets. Obama said clearly during his presidency he was going to sell out the office to get rich and so he did. He's cost the country billions with his corruption and earned generational wealth for his family in return
Good episode.
Small point Steve. The org in Australia that invented WiFi (CSIRO) is pronounced as an initialism, not an acronym - so we actually say each letter C.S.I.R.O. 👍
very interesting, thank you
I don't think we are actually leaving under techno-feudalism, his justification centred around the fact that there is an almost vassal-like relation between the tech companies and the commodity companies is pretty weak, the same could be said of businesses located on places rented by a more powerful capitalist. We also haven't seen any revolutions to overthrow the bourgeoisie and end capitalism like it happened with feudalism (barbarian invasions and the islamic conquests for example), capitalism (French Revolution) or socialism (October Revolution). The "harvest" of digital data is a more interesting argument, but that's not exactly a surplus, since it doesn't come from work force (I don't think I need to explain why scrolling tiktok isn't labour).
Despite all this, Yanis's Technofeudalism is still an interesting concept to understand how the tech-companies and Internet platforms work under a late stage capitalism framework and perhaps an emergence of a new class...
The specific "tech companies" he mentioned were examples. The relationship he referred to was between the owners of behavior modification algorithms(his examples being Amazon, Uber, and Instagram) and commodity capitalists. He doesn't make any claim about ALL tech companies, many of which ARE commodity/service providers. Seems like you didn't really understand the content.
@@scox0005 I never specified it was "all" tech companies, I referred to thdm the same way as in most of the video as "tech-companies". I did understand the point about them owning that whole "behaviour" stuff, but you sure don't think that the algorithm system like those working on CZcams or Amazon is permeating the whole economy like the market logic of capitalism does.
So just one point you made that's contrary to the argument from the episode. You say:
Scrolling tik Tok isn't labor
In the episode part of the argument is that it wasn't always labor, but in our modern era it's becomeeee labor. That's what makes our time (as theorized in the episode) 'late stage' capitalism, but becoming 'techno-feudalist.' Which in a nutshell just means feudalist lol. Any thoughts on how you agree or disagree?
@@quinlanlonergan4861 I honestly just can't conceptualize scrolling through social media as something that might become labour. Anyways, the end point of the "data harvest" and the algorithms is to sell more products, which to me still sounds very capitalistic. They use the data to know what you would most likely buy, they use the algorithm to make you more and more engaged in the social media, so that you come across more ads. It's an advanced way for capitalism to sell more stuff and make more profit and expand more capital.
Maybe techno-feudalism might actually start to emerge with the automation of all manual work and UBI, because the only way you can make an economy centred around "data harvesting" and internet algorithms is if people don't need to work on factories or on agriculture. If robots do those kinds of work, then you can have people that stay all day looking at a screen, having their data sold out to the companies that own the working robots in order to sell their products. However we are far from that I think, if Varoufakis is right, I believe this is an emergence as earlier and primitive as the birth of European merchant class in the 12th and 13th centuries, not early stage capitalism yet, just the birth of its future ruling class
I've been saying capitalism has evolved into a sort of neo-feudalism since before I considered myself to be a Leftist (circa '16)
Love your work.
Hey, just listende to the Episode and wanted to give a quick heads up: the Stimulus in 2008 was not for inducing credit into the economy. Although that was a welcome sich effect it was to re-institute the Trust between Banks to lend among themselves again. The inter-banking market which, because everyone was Exposed in the Sub-prime crisis collapsed didnt allow for the Day-to-day operations between banks. That is the reason why Cash was injected. The Stimulus was a little bit to spur consumption yes, but not what the Author Claims. Therefore it not being invested in Capital goods (economist terms) is - as you Pointed out - completely reasonable. What one can critizise is that it has Taken until this year (and beyond that) to Implement and develop crisis prevention regulation which is now being implemented (BASEL 3). But again, I can't stress that enough, what he is saying about the economic fundamental is just plain wrong in the 2008 Context.
Please do an episode on the cultural and existential neurosis instilled by the neolib system, thx!!
hes done episodes on Byung Chul Han and Mark Fisher
Slight misrepresentation- the data mining was sold as as personalization of services with tailored ads, etc. A free and open web.
What we got was techo-corporatocracy, where the Pinkertons just have a new tool in their arsenal.
Another interesting and informative episode 👍 thank you 🙏 for your hard work.
Can you look into topics such as Digital anxiety, technostress, and digital distraction.
I'm sitting by my fire listening. ❤
Better superficial fluff conversations
Really enjoyed
Thanks mr
I love Yanis Varoufakis, thank you for covering this!!
I agree with most of what is said, but I have doubts about one point. YV says platforms Amazon take money out of the economy through rental fees they skim of every transaction. But on the other hand, the connections of buyers and sellers they provide multiply by a lot the number of transactions and thus economic activity. Plus they reinvest their rental money into infrastructure thus creating jobs. Correct me if I'm wrong...
Loving it
Thankyou so much
25:29 Really microtransactions is the solution? Does anyone know of any business/product/app/etc. where adding microtransactions improved the situation? (Genuine question btw)
Solid episode! You’re hitting depths I think few people understand.
Great job!
There is a lot of truthiness in this point
Would love to see your take on another now.
Favorite episode so far!
Makes a lot of sense.
Send this to Yannis. This explanation of his work is excellent. He could use points from this episode to share his ideas in a more impactful way. 👏👏👏
thank you
Can't wait for a guy whit a big mustache say "Capitalism is dead and we killed him"
This is great!!!
Absolutely ... fascinating ... observation about the Amazon model! This episode made me really think about our economy. First rate in every way. Terrific! (Thanks for this one, friend.)
We've never lived in a truly capitalist system.
The night I discovered your channel. Oh Happy Day!
Interesting, I never consider Yanis to be philosopher
❤ excellent thank you
Asking the right questions...
Was the Marix movie foreshadowing a conflict between people and machines over electricity ?
Do the new big tech inventions need enormous electricity supply?
Are the claims by Big Tech about safer new nuke power plants, harvesting electricity from nuke waste, and eventually bringing down the electrical demand of AI, crypto mining, etc. Credible?
Will taxpayers bear the risk of new nuke power plants because no private liability insurance?
If the manufacturing byproduct of nuke power needs to be safely stored for 30,000 years, is such a contract legally unenforceable?😂
Forget people over profits, may we have to demand people over machines in the new digital opticon?
You should do an episode on Georgism
We're dealing with lust for power + greed for wealth. Same as always. 👉 We need a duality of jurisdictions: free agrarian + statutory industrial. They can't coexist in a homogenous jurusdiction. Agrarians control industry by only working extra for industrial products they deem worthy of value.
Every problem you've described with techno feudalism is acerbated by AI. Efficiency, control, and profits are increased, with all the benefits going into the same few hands.
'People' might well exercise free will by way of much greater discriminate buying. The battle against want.
Fantastic analysis.
I am a set of a’ priori modes, not a body of limbs and organs. We need to move beyond the notion of “We”. Human is a loose notion at best. In essence, the body conduit has no fixed predicate in the abstract lens so the premise is incorrect. What is it of us, that knows this?
Until we know more, we are a set of a’ priori modes trying to stabilise our line in an ocean of dissipating variables. We should define ourselves in this manner. We are a set of modes that allow for systematic alignment. A set synthesised with realities structures and stresses. Understanding this is the next step. Everything else is tied up in a field of inverted axioms and that path is a dead end.
It keeps going round in circles. The intellectual hamster wheel. One has to look through the phenomenological lens in the correct manner if they want beyond this primitive, half developed monkey head paradigm but who’s really ready for that path.
If you want to understand the modes - CZcams - new paradigm fish by Yap. Stripping it right back.
A lot of folks have a hard time Understanding that a Service is not "nothing"!
Sent me down a rabbithole
Feudalism reminds me of Germinal.
Such a great book. Eye opener.
Bunk. Internet shopping even with Amazon is just virtual main street. Feudalism allowed for seizure and transfer of the property at the will of the lord. That’s the main difference
You just had to slip in blame to liberal democratic policy when it's compromising with neoliberalism, i.e., both parties to blame. Yanis makes that clear when he writes and speaks.
We already built the solution to this - Nostr
Thats one of the cards in CIv6 I think haha, but yeah
Welcome to The Machine.
its basicaly modern mercantilism , corporatism ore crony capilism. the unholy marriage of goverment and big bussines
Bingo. The Citizens United Decision.
@@Rustea314 paymentd and bribes will always exist, at least this way we can see who paid who and how much, ore am i wrong about that? the marriage of goverment and corporations comes from.goverment regulating the market. it gives big corpoeations thw oportunity of buiying themselves in instead of having to compete. they can benefit from regulations small bussniesds cant posibly aford while big corporation dont care becouse they live of stocks and subjective evaluations.
@@Derek_H_360 I don't understand the logic. Because corruption has always existed, therefore, government should embrace and legitimatize corruption like in the Citizen United decision? Corruption one of the reasons a government of the people exists.
@@Rustea314 i actualy agree that the citizens united ruling is bad, there should be transparency in political donations by corporations , unions etc.... i just think the problem originates elsewhere. when its the polititians that hold the keys to the market and not the public ore consumers your just puting a price ore entry fee for billionares to buy marketspace and that is what has happened.mercantilism and coroporatism happens when goverment intervenes tha market. goverments role is to enforce law and order and protect rights suchs as life, liberty and property , anything else is a overstep and will surrly violate al three ore one of these basic rights that preceed the state. and also in chile, where i live they limited hpw much could be spent on politics and instesd give a copule of dollars for every vote to political parties, ans its chaos and scam bussnies, it did not reduce corruption ore cororate influence. quite the contrary. the more the goverment interveenes the msrket the more the market interveenes the goverment.
@@Derek_H_360 Role of government is to assure a free market and regulate industries and not collaborate with donors and reduce competition. Moreover, governments are instituted amongst Men and not corporations. The government is not the problem, privatizations is the problem and our sociopathic corporate citizens who's purpose is profit at has the rights to spend unlimited amounts of money, on judges, on elections and on politicians. I know the founding fathers wanted The Far East Indian Trading Company full citizenship and corrupt the political process.
ive kinda started losing interest in this show over the oast 30episodes or so, not sure what that says about who, but was wondering if other people feel the same
This is great
Maybe i should listen again, but how can it be a form of feudalism if we are not being ruled by the people who own the companies? Is he just upset because Greece went bankrupt?
Did you not hear him say that governments have turned into employees of these tech companies? Essentially, Yanis is predicting that tech companies will turn into feudal lords, effectively becoming the government. They would be similar to the chartered companies from the days of colonialism. For example, the East India Company was the de facto government of India for a period. It was only later that their rule over Indian territory was transferred to the British crown. For a good hundred years, the East India Company was sovereign over its territories in the East. I think Yanis is predicting the return of such companies, but this time as sovereign entities over all parts of the world.
@@stevesmith4901 do you think that is true that governments today are employees of the tech companies? What is the evidence of this?
@@stevesmith4901 let me say it this way. I do not find the argument that countries benefiting from the GDP generated by the services sector tech companies is the same as the feudal lords of the past. This would be a radical way to characterize global trade. We would have been Oil-feudalists, and Medical-feudalists by the same definition. GDP growth is not comparable to direct collection of profits as happened in feudalism. Further, the government does not own the means of the transaction. Amazon owns the internet, not our government, just like the East India Company owned the ships and the ports. We pay those companies, not the government, to allow the trade to happen.
Finally, if our government and technology companies are interacting, it appears more like a techno-fascist society than anything else. Tech companies who exist for marketing purposes are being coopted by governments to spy on their citizens and push state approved propaganda on behalf of the government. Our SCOTUS just decided that our President can pressure social media companies into censorship. It appears we are entering into fascism, more than feudalism. The threat is not that Tech Companies will take over the government, but that the government will take over the tech companies. The motive would be the difference.
Moreover, there are open source privacy focused apps Graphene OS, LibreWolf etc. Normies just dont use it.
So no need for communism
Pretty good Obama impression, bud.
QE is just na asset swap. You swap interest bearing dollars ( bonds) for non interest bearing dollars ( normal dollars)
Are you saying there is a dollar in the economy that came into existence without any interest bearing liabilities? Are you sure such a dollar exists? If so, kindly explain to me how a non-interest bearing dollar comes into existence. I'd be interested to know.
@@stevesmith4901 The Fed keystrokes it into a ledger. That’s it
@@slawomirgadek Ture that is how dollars come into existence. But the point I was trying to make was, all money is debt. Dollars are keystroked into the ledger when they are loaned out to institutions by the Fed. Maybe that is what you meant to say when you said, QE is just asset swap, and I suppose I didn't understand what you meant to say.
@@stevesmith4901 i meant to say IT that QE doesn't do anything radical. Government debt has already been issued. QE helps to push interest rates down but whole system does not have to be so complicated. Bonds and QE are just additional steps. The simplest form would be overt money financing
No, the main solution to this issue is simply don't use big tech. Develop the necessary protocols and decentralized global networks that provide better, more efficient service free of ads and algorithmic exploitation by the likes of Google, Meta, et al. It's coming...
❤
One more suspicious market theozy
Like 👍🏽
Their is naver anything pure in economic structure. Structure emarge as we try to focous on outcomes. Try to absolutise economics makes it stupid as it's an essential human force driving almost everyone to make perfect model is to district peoples driving forces of life.
It was ever thus
We
Capitalism is not just another word for commerce lol.
Yanis needs to learn about crypto 😒
while i see the system as potentiality a good one but its currently PARASITIC (imo) with too much in the hands of the tiny few at the expense of the many , most of which the masses sense theres some lopsidedness when they shop or buy food currently but are unconscious as to its details of WHY in the bigger picture
ofc you can say 'capitalism is dead' 'capitalism' it is an abstraction that does not mean anything.
looool the guy just want that most money comes from the governament to make those companies behave. looool. what a colossal faliure.
Algorithms also differs with information. I love my algorithms.
Your comment reminded me of Stanley Kubrick's movie titled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
@@stevesmith4901 hehe
Your tone is too npr/unfazed.