Capitalism as we know it has been dying a slow death, according to Yanis Varoufakis (economist and former Minister of Finance of Greece). And instead of moving toward a better system, we’ve fallen into something much worse: technofeudalism.
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Technofeudalism describes a society where feudal lords and serfs re-emerge, but this time within a technologically advanced landscape. A key difference is that technofeudalism isn’t about land but cloud space. And the feudalists in a technofeudal society are, therefore, “cloudalists.”
Varoufakis compares the early Internet to the medieval commons—land no one truly owned where peasants could freely grow food. Over time, landlords fenced off these commons for private use, known as the “enclosures,” leaving peasants dependent on the landlords to access land and make a living.
As the early internet consisted of numerous independent spaces, Big Tech turned it into giant enclosures, owned by powerful platforms, home to millions of technofeudal serfs, sustained by the low-wage workers, Varoufakis calls “cloud proles.”
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This week’s (upcoming) video explores technofeudalism, how it affects our lives, and how we can deal with it.
Stay tuned!