Technology

This is always the goal of capitalism, no need to give it some alternative name on order to white wash the brand.

The answer is Democratic socialism. It's our stuff they're stealing, we can take it back.

Silicon Serfdom?

No that's still capitalism. Capitalism is still the problem. To call it anything else is apologetics, the core issue is that the private ownership of the means of production leads to a concentration of power in the hands of precisely the wrong kind of people after selecting for and reinforcing the most selfish behaviors in them. It then allows them to essentially usurp whatever form of government exists.

Wait. Capitalism isn’t silicon serfdom?

lol Yanis is def making the rounds cuz of his new book. He also talked about this on Adam Conover's podcast, Factually a few weeks ago.

iirc he's saying that we're at the point where some of the richest people have moved from owning the means to actually produce things to providing platforms for exchanging goods for money to happen on, while basically charging rent. He compares it to feudalism in that a company like Amazon or Apple with its app store are feudal lords who come in and collect money off of each transaction made by the "serfs" (people who sell and buy things on these markets), basically in exchange for being allowed to list. And increasingly, its getting harder and harder to do business without dealing with one of these tech giants. I think he mentioned how WeChat is another good example of this in China, where they're involved in like everything

It's really scary how much money Uber/Uber Eats/Amazon etc sucked out of local economies.

We don't serfdom well. Rich techbros can expect feces in their food and spittle in their drink, and eventially a guillotine party. Maybe armies of patrol drones will slow it down but the opportunities for mischief will be exciting.

FDR's New Deal was to prevent a communist revolution. And here we are, again.

Now serfdom would work if they recognized people need bare minimums that keep them warm, fed and comfortable. But aristocrats always take thr serfs for granted.

One of the things not addressed in this interview is how the ideology of libertarianism is central to the transition from markets to fiefdoms. All the big tech bros are huge libertarians and that's not an accident.

And I do think this is a new phenomena unlike classic capitalism. Marx thought that a post-scarcity society would mean more leisure, he didn't anticipate that that leisure was just another source of value to exploit. Think of reddit selling it's "content" to an AI company. That content wasn't produced by coerced labor paid unfairly, it was produced by voluntary labor paid nothing.

To refer to this as feudalism gives an impression that capitalism functions effectively and we are transitioning away from it; however, in reality, we are merely progressing into the advanced stages of the same system. Let us simply acknowledge that it is indeed capitalism.

You're saying that capitalism isn't serfdom?

I've been seeing Yanis pop up a bit more recently, seems like he's selling a book. Not complaining, could be good. I will give it a read and see if this really is a "new thing" or a new label stuck on an old thing.

Clearly, y'all need to play more Shadowrun. 🤘🏽🤷🏼‍♂️

What a load of hogwash.

I understand the railing against rent seeking. It’s my land too, so why am I paying for it, and all. I mean, I disagree with the notion, but I understand it.

This is entirely different. Cloud services haven’t been built for nothing - they are massive investment projects and like anything else we build that many use, capital allows us to distribute the cost. Yes there’s a profit motive and one could argue against it or not, but these services didn’t exist as natural resources that the cloud-lords dominated by force and then rented back to us. They built new lands and asked if anybody want to come live there.

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines