this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
1246 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
67422 readers
3326 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Like Sam Altman who invests in Prospera, a private "Start-up City" in Honduras where the board of directors pick and choose which laws apply to them!
The switch to Techno-Feudalism is progressing far too much for my liking.
I'll say it, yet again. It's just feudalism. "Techno-Feudalism" has nothing different enough to it to differentiate it as even a sub-type of feudalism. It's just the same thing all over again, using technological advances to improve the ability to monitor and impose control over the populace. Historical feudalists also leveraged technology to cement their rule (plate armor, cavalry, crossbows, cannon, mills, control of literacy, etc).
Techno-Feudalism is a specific idea from Yanis Varifakous, about places like Amazon, Ebay, AliExpress, Steam, Facebook, even YouTube to some extent. It has to do with the Market Place controlling which prices are promoted to buyers and sellers, and is about price fixing and capturing industries that the bulk of the population require to do commerce.
This is a very important concept to note and understand because it relates to the end of two party Capitalism (where buyers and sellers negotiate prices with each other directly).
So no, the use of fuedalism isn't to indicate something about old school mechanisms of war, weaponry, brutality, or repression. It's a reference to the role of economic serfdom and the economic aspects of fuedalism. Comparing those particular aspects to the modern roles of content creators, drop shippers, and consumers. All of whom are forced through the economic lens of markets which are owned or controlled by billionaires who have captured/own these required marketplaces.
I've read Varifakous and don't find his claim that it's anything new beyond the technologies used to be at all compelling.
Teotihuacan was the center on an empire but it had no military.
What I'm saying is that they even go with divine mandate at this point. Just because their not jousting and are using abstractions that are enabled by modern technology instead of castles doesn't make it fundamentally a different, new thing. Commerce and who could engage in it was heavily regulated by feudal lords and organizations that they ran or allowed to run.
It's literally just the same shit with better technology. The far-right isn't that creative.
Oh it's the same shit as feudalism, but with technology... Thanks for letting me know that's what Techno-Feudalism means. So glad we had this enlightening conversation to figure out those two words. I guess we could add "global" to the front of it so you know it's not just happening in a castle in 14th century Europe, but all across the planet.
Like, how many castles were in Europe? Okay, compare that to how many Amazon's there are? It's not the same thing at all
Sorry, I don't have time for this mind dulling discussion.
Yah. Bye!
Understanding the meaning and context of terms is very important.
I find "neo-feudalism" more appropriate. The previous incarnation already spanned the known world at the time.
That's really a comparison that makes me think that, perhaps, learning more about feudal history would do us all good. A more apt comparison would be "how many Vaticans were there?" (depending on the time period, two).
Rome was the seat of power through much of feudalism in the Common Era in Europe. Castles were extensions of the theocratic empire centered there, providing physical and visual/psychological enforcement of that power. Despite all of the war and megalomaniacal bickering, the feudal lords and kings all had the same boss.
There's less difference than you apparently think.
I'm sorry that you don't know enough about history to understand how nearly identical the two are and didn't mean to cause distress, not knowing how attached to the term you were.
G'luck.