Posted on 12/20/2023 1:47:28 PM PST by nickcarraway
It’s the most wonderful time of the year for retailers. With Christmas around the corner, shopping soars: groceries and drinks for dinners, toys, electronics for gifts, and clothes for events. It seems wild not to believe that capitalism is in perfect health...
However, former Greek Minister of Economics Yanis Varoufakis not only thinks it's in decline but claims it's already dead. Who killed it? Well, according to him, Amazon and Alibaba, among others...
My Wildest Prediction is a brand new podcast series from Euronews Business where we dare to imagine the future with business and tech visionaries. In this third episode, Tom Goodwin discusses with Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist, academic, and politician, to explore what he believes has brought about the demise of capitalism and to envision what the future holds.
So, if capitalism is over...what comes next?
"My estimation, and this is a controversial hypothesis, is that capitalism has already ended," claims Varoufakis.
According to Varoufakis, we are back in feudalism. Not the kind of feudalism left behind with the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class, but a new form: "technofeudalism."
Feudalism is a system characterised by the hierarchical structure of landownership and obligations, where lords granted land to vassals in exchange for military service and other duties.
Well, now the lords are the owners of big tech, and the users are the vassals. The vassals surrender their data in exchange for their service.
This is the death of capitalism that Varoufakis describes in his new book, "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism."
Varoufakis points to the online retail giant Amazon as an example of a lord: he says it may appear as a market, but it functions more like "a cloud fiefdom belonging to one man whose accumulation of wealth is based, non-profit, but on a form of rent."
He adds, "Every time you buy something on Amazon, 30-40% of the price goes to Mr. (Jeff) Bezos, not to the market."
My Wildest Prediction: The podcast that dares to imagine the future with business visionaries Varoufakis writes about technofeudalism, explaining this concept in a letter format to his father, Giorgios (who died aged 96 in 2021), a steel factory worker.
Varoufakis says he envies the way his father lived.
“However hard one had to work, you could at least fence off a portion of your life, however small, and within that fence remain autonomous, self-determining, free.”
According to him, "technofeudalism" demolished that fence.
"We are all happy little slaves who love our slavery," he claims.
But can technology save us?
The former Minister of Economy of Greece is not optimistic about 'technofeudalism.' He believes it is not going to end well.
"The exponential concentration of incomes in the hands of people who produce nothing except for the right and the opportunity to extract incomes from others while the world is heading towards catastrophe."
Can technology, when properly used, save us?
"Our technologies are a force for both good and evil. And if evil prevails, it is our fault," says Varoufakis, who asserts that technology is only a tool.
He sees two solutions - and they are not technological but sociopolitical.
One is to end free services to break the tyranny of big tech.
"So if you are an app, you get paid directly by the person using the app, not indirectly through advertising, because that way, you do not have this complete takeover of households."
The second is changing corporate law to make companies more democratic.
He envisions a scenario where every employee in a company, especially in large ones, would have one share that cannot be traded, similar to a library card given to a university student. This share wouldn't represent equality in terms of money but would give each employee a vote in company decisions. The idea is that those who contribute significantly to the company's success could receive more financial rewards.
This change, according to Varoufakis, would revolutionise both share markets and labour markets, leading to market-based cooperatives owning algorithms in a non-exploitative way, with micropayments going to those who use these algorithms.
"Hope is my duty, and I cling on to it," he concludes. "Against all empirical evidence."
Ping.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings
And I rather suspect they will be returning more sooner than later. I think that’s the whole point of Cloward-Piven.
Corporate monopoly capitalism is not capitalism.
We haven’t had free-market capitalism for generations.
We haven’t ever really been a pure Capitalist society... since our Founding.
But the last few decades have utterly destroyed even the pieces of Capitalism we had that were working to keep our economy going...
When we reach the end of our decline, just a few more years, it ought to be spectacular when the whole house of cards comes down...
The age of neo-feudalism is upon us, but the tech oligarchs are not alone. We are all but serfs to the ruling class.
I recognize Christ’s mass
I do not participate in the Mercantile aspect.
we are moving towards fascism
citizens do become serfs in a fascist society
the state is primary
and the people are tools for the state
Amazon's gross sales are about $500 billion. Net profit around $20 billion. Bezos owns a little under 10%. That means Bezos gets about 0.4% of every purchase. So Varoufakis is off by about 99%.
I thought from the headline this was going to be kook stuff, but he makes a good point.
And since Amazon doesn’t pay dividends, Bezos actually gets none of that as it is retained by Amazon.
You cannot have Capitalism without failure. .Gov saves the Big Guys every time.
Once I argued I would not be a very good slave. I was thentold I would make a good example.
You make your own money as you see fit
You spend it on the items you choose
You provide capital to the economy thru effort and savings
The Invisible Hand is tough to beat. Even communist countries had black markets.
This is just top-down Blabber from snobby elitists who probably think they’re on top. A hail-Mary throw at getting invited to exclusive (Capitalist) Christmas parties.
Disease, misery and death.
He’s right, but his solution is idiotic.
The simple solution is for our government to get off its ass and do its job regards anti-trust / Sherman Act. We did before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
You today have a few people and big corporations that essentially have the market cornered.
Why do you really think Zuckerberg was so involved in the last elections? https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/943242106/how-private-money-from-facebooks-ceo-saved-the-2020-election
But these same folks and corporations also exercise enormous influence on government and there is no real effort to break them up. These same folks also essentially own the channels of communications in media, news, social media, personal communications... Google is a monopoly. Meta is a oligopoly...
I think it’s true.
It might be serfdom. It might be slavery. Although we tell ourselves that we are free, almost everyone lives in fear and on the verge of economic peril. We are controlled. And you can see pretty clearly that society could be run better, that there could be less manipulation and more self-control for individuals. But the Powers That Be don’t want that. We just can’t bear to think of ourselves as slaves. But I think we are.
And also note that throughout history almost all societies have been built on slavery and then serfdom. Persia, Greece, Rome, Islam, the Medieval period. It is only in the last few centuries that market economies, freedom, and the middle class came into existence. We like to think that that trend continues on today. But I think we lost it. I think we slipped back into the world of 700 years ago.
“I do not participate in the Mercantile aspect.”
I think that’s a bit overblown.
As I explain it to my family, Jesus is God’s gift to mankind. To absolve us of our sins and provide spiritual redemption for our eternal salvation. The gift giving (which was present at His birth) is to symbolize/acknowledge God’s ultimate gift to mankind. We commemorate The Gift thru fellowship and gift giving
When the communists take over, and the shortages begin, capitalism will happen in the black market.
Up to this point, the economies of the world have grown due to demographics. The more children, the more adults, the more consumerism. We live in a consumer society. The average grocery store has forty-thousand items in stock. They come from all over the world. This is because of cheap, safe, reliable transportation, mostly on the oceans. Each, say, food item has a supply chain, fertilizer, farms, packing, shipping, delivery, sale, consumption, trash, landfill...and all of those things are supplied by capitalists. He may have a point in places like Greece where the population is in decline. Where there are too few young people to consume, the system may break down. But it’s still working here just fine.
The alternative is the command economy. In Soviet Russia they had list and if it wasn’t on the list, it didn’t get made. One year they left matches off the list and for a few kopeks someone with a brazier full of coals on the street corner would light your cigarette. Each producer made his quota, which meant there was never enough of anything, because the demand side of the equation was ignored. Yeah, I’d stick with capitalism. I like my Chilean fruit and Mexican lettuce.
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