Is Capitalism Dead? Yanis Varoufakis Argues Capitalists are Now Vassals to 'Techno-Feudalists' (theconversation.com) 148
Greek economist/politician Yanis Varoufakis "was briefly Greek finance minister in 2015," remembers the Conversation. Now his new book asks the question, "What killed capitalism," with the title's first word providing an answer.
"Techno-feudalism." Varoufakis argues that we no longer live in a capitalist society... "Today, capitalist relations remain intact, but techno-feudalist relations have begun to overtake them," writes Varoufakis. Traditional capitalists, he proposes, have become "vassal capitalists". They are subordinate and dependent on a new breed of "lords" — the Big Tech companies — who generate enormous wealth via new digital platforms. A new form of algorithmic capital has evolved — what Varoufakis calls "cloud capital" — and it has displaced "capitalism's two pillars: markets and profits".
Markets have been "replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets". The moment you enter amazon.com "you exit capitalism" and enter something that resembles a "feudal fief": a digital world belonging to one man and his algorithm, which determines what products you will see and what products you won't see. If you are a seller, the platform will determine how you can sell and which customers you can approach. The terms in which you interact, share information and trade are dictated by an "algo" that "works for [Jeff Bezos'] bottom line"...
Access to the "digital fief" comes at the cost of exorbitant rents. Varoufakis notes that many third-party developers on the Apple store, for example, pay 30% "on all their revenues", while Amazon charges its sellers "35% of revenues". This, he argues, is like a medieval feudal lord sending round the sheriff to collect a large chunk of his serfs' produce because he owns the estate and everything within it.
There is "no disinterested invisible hand of the market" here. The Big Tech platforms are exempted from free-market competition.
And in the meantime, users are unknowingly training their algorithms for them — so "In this interaction, we are all high-tech 'cloud serfs'... [T]he 'cloud capital' we are generating for them all the time increases their capacity to generate yet more wealth, and thus increases their power — something we have only begun to realise." Approximately 80% of the income of traditional capitalist conglomerates go to salaries and wages, according to Varoufakis, while Big Tech's workers, in contrast, collect "less than 1% of their firms' revenues"... For Varoufakis, we are not just living through a tech revolution, but a tech-driven economic revolution. He challenges us to come to terms with just what has happened to our economies — and our societies — in the era of Big Tech and Big Finance.
Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.
"Techno-feudalism." Varoufakis argues that we no longer live in a capitalist society... "Today, capitalist relations remain intact, but techno-feudalist relations have begun to overtake them," writes Varoufakis. Traditional capitalists, he proposes, have become "vassal capitalists". They are subordinate and dependent on a new breed of "lords" — the Big Tech companies — who generate enormous wealth via new digital platforms. A new form of algorithmic capital has evolved — what Varoufakis calls "cloud capital" — and it has displaced "capitalism's two pillars: markets and profits".
Markets have been "replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets". The moment you enter amazon.com "you exit capitalism" and enter something that resembles a "feudal fief": a digital world belonging to one man and his algorithm, which determines what products you will see and what products you won't see. If you are a seller, the platform will determine how you can sell and which customers you can approach. The terms in which you interact, share information and trade are dictated by an "algo" that "works for [Jeff Bezos'] bottom line"...
Access to the "digital fief" comes at the cost of exorbitant rents. Varoufakis notes that many third-party developers on the Apple store, for example, pay 30% "on all their revenues", while Amazon charges its sellers "35% of revenues". This, he argues, is like a medieval feudal lord sending round the sheriff to collect a large chunk of his serfs' produce because he owns the estate and everything within it.
There is "no disinterested invisible hand of the market" here. The Big Tech platforms are exempted from free-market competition.
And in the meantime, users are unknowingly training their algorithms for them — so "In this interaction, we are all high-tech 'cloud serfs'... [T]he 'cloud capital' we are generating for them all the time increases their capacity to generate yet more wealth, and thus increases their power — something we have only begun to realise." Approximately 80% of the income of traditional capitalist conglomerates go to salaries and wages, according to Varoufakis, while Big Tech's workers, in contrast, collect "less than 1% of their firms' revenues"... For Varoufakis, we are not just living through a tech revolution, but a tech-driven economic revolution. He challenges us to come to terms with just what has happened to our economies — and our societies — in the era of Big Tech and Big Finance.
Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.
They said the same thing about Walmart (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: They said the same thing about Walmart (Score:2)
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In what way is he obviously correct about markets? Housing here in the US -- and from what I've seen in Europe, Australia and New Zealand -- is very much a market for both rentals and purchase. Food, clothing and vehicles even moreso. Healthcare not so much, although people like Varoufakis seem to think that's how it should be. Public transport also not very market-like, although taxis and shuttle buses are more market-oriented. Compulsory education is almost never a market, but discretionary education
Re: They said the same thing about Walmart (Score:2)
Re: They said the same thing about Walmart (Score:4, Informative)
What inflection point did he claim to identify? What inflection point do you allege has occurred?
As for real estate, REITs are an old phenomenon. What do you think is new? From what I can tell, nothing is new. The problem is that governments continue to overly restrict the construction of new housing, so supply stagnates while demand increases due to increased population. At any rate, the (alleged) "power to engage in price manipulation" is a power to cause a market failure -- not the replacement of markets with feudalism.
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He is insightful, identifying cloud services and globally operating tech to be in larger extent irrelevant to the taxation on territories. However, real issue is in the concentration of surplus money and wealth, rather than tech. Markets stop operating by excluding choice and inciting dependency. Markets now serve capitalists, rather than the end-consumer: insane amounts of surplus money are paid for companies, and further corner processes to serve needs of power-wealth holders more, than the needs of produ
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"It's hard to tax the Internet" is not insightful, and in the US, wealth inequality is at a 30-year low: https://data.worldbank.org/ind... [worldbank.org]
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Well, I think expressing it in terms of "feudalism" invites overworking the analogy and arguments motivated by how you feel about people like Jeff Bezos, which are legitimate arguments to have, but not necessarily fundamental to his thesis.
I'd put it this way: entities which mediate between producers and consumers have gained unprecedented scale and with it power of prices consumers pay and producers receive that complicates the economic models of how a "free market" operates.
Re:They said the same thing about Walmart (Score:5, Interesting)
Walmart is still a bigger retailer than Amazon.
Amazon has about 40% of online sales but only about 6% of total retail sales.
I shop at both, depending on price (Walmart wins), availability (Amazon wins), and how soon I need it.
I have no loyalty and am happy to switch if a decent competitor emerges.
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Walmart in urban areas often has 2 hr delivery. So Amazon is not winning based on availability.
By "availability", I meant that I can find what I want.
Amazon has way more products than Walmart, especially tech books, hacking hardware, and robot components.
Amazon serves the long tail [wikipedia.org].
Speed of delivery is a separate criterion.
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Walmart is also frequently cheaper than Amazon. Half of Amazon's inventory are sellers buying retail items and marking them up a few bucks. If I want fake knockoff shit I'll order direct from AliExpress and skip the middle man.
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Well, if I wanted to get pedantic, I'd say that even amazon is buying retail items and selling them... I think you meant buying AT retail, marking them up, and selling them.
If a company is buying job lots from AliExpress at the discount, handling the importation, and such, then they're buying retail(intended for individual personal use) items at wholesale prices, then selling them at retail prices with their markup.
But I have seen indications of buying retail items and selling them on Amazon. For example,
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Amazon had one reason that they prevailed over Wal-Mart: No need for brick and mortar shops. No matter how good WM's logistics are, they can't compete with a place that has no retail presence.
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And they said the same thing about Macy's, and before that Zayre, coming to town and overwhelming the local WT Grant and Woolworth's, running roughshod over your local, longstanding, mom & pop stores. Even the LaVerdiere's, replacing your local apothecary, to be beaten by CVS etc.
And most of you never heard these names, they were regional, and swept away some time ago.
Change, the constant.
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Definitely there is minimal free market at work (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about his techno-feudalist hypothesis that sounds like sensationalism, but I agree we have not had capitalism for a while. Our markets are generally controlled by a small number of parties who, although not (usually) outright colluding, certainly are in a position to collude with competitors to establish price points. All involved are owned to a large extent by the same parties, so they're able to make outrageous profits on a minimal, low risk investment.
Of course the solution is to significantly weaken property ownership laws, including imaginary property, as well as actual, physical property such that it's much easier for new entrants to gain market share and create true compeition. We also need to prohibit mergers and acquistions unless there is an overwhelmingly powerful need to allow it. These would also stop the massive flow of money from the poor to the rich and reduce wealth disparity. So of course, we won't do it and will call it communist or something.
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Re: Definitely there is minimal free market at wor (Score:2)
FDR. He almost single-handedly created the middle class and that was the most important innovation the US has ever had. It was the basis for the fundamental American dream
FDR had nothing to do with that. It was purely because Europe and Asia destroyed themselves while America was left unscathed. We had basically all of the world's remaining industrial capacity after they just finished wrecking theirs. That meant that they only place where you could manufacture anything even remotely sophisticated at any meaningful scale was here. Canada experienced the same and for the same reason.
The rest of the world rebuilt over the next 30 years and trade basically returned to what it on
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Re: Definitely there is minimal free market at wo (Score:2)
The governments instituted capital controls and ceilings on interest rates and debts. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system has been a disaster with government debt levels becoming unsustainable. US Debt alone is now $1 Trillion/year in interest payments. It won't be too much longer before hyperinflation will kick in as the only buyer of US debt will be the Fed.
I don't think you realize this but you're talking about two different interest rates as if they're the same thing. The Fed controls the government bond rate. Putting caps on that is fine, but putting caps on interest rates by private lenders is a very bad idea in general for all sorts of reasons. Among other things, it leads to loan sharking, where there's no such thing as bankruptcy, it removes an avenue of solvency for otherwise good but temporarily struggling businesses, and it leads to exactly the kind
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Debt is a non issue when it is issued in your own currency. You can simply inflate your way out of it.
It's much less of an issue yes. But the required inflation is unlikely to be "simple".
The working class lives paycheck to paycheck so inflation doesnt make a difference to them
It certainly makes a difference to them if they were planning on saving up for anything. A house for example. You're making it hard to escape that paycheck to paycheck situation. And forcing more and more and more people into it.
their costs and wages both rise with inflation.
Here you are glossing over the fact that those things don't rise at the same rate or time. Even if we pretend they rise the same amount.
Its only the rentier class who have lent money to the govt that worry about inflation and the debt.
All kinds of investors internal and external will have to dec
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I don't understand this wacky claim. This is only true when that debt is relatively small, once it represents a large part of everyone's retirement investments and primary investment vehicles of all your major banks, no you can't just inflate your way out of it without dire consequences!
If you make everyone's savings worthless and crank the coupon rates on new instruments well beyond the bulk of the existing paper you get problems. Just ask Silicon Valley Bank. Blah blah the government should take care o
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They are not rich though. They are the pensioner that is wants their full pension not whatever the federal bailout corporation happens to afford them. They are every working stiff that has a tax-exempt bond fund in their 401k which is probably a large portion of the public over a certain age because what do you think those target date funds are composed of increasingly as you near retirement.
People have this exactly backwards, is the domestic debt we can't even consider defaulting on, well unless you supp
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He almost single-handedly created the middle class and that was the most important innovation the US has ever had.
He was a tyrant and an idiot who damn near destroyed the little that was working in the 1930's. You're either smoking crack or working for a university.
Re:Definitely there is minimal free market at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, capitalism is not stable by itself. You need to have working anti-trust, incentives to compete, disadvantages for large players and probably personal penalties (i.e. time behind bars) for trying to sabotage competition and thereby the market. Without that, some players get larger and larger and eventually take over and it is not capitalism anymore.
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and it is not capitalism anymore.
It's still capitalism. It's not an efficient market. Private interests can still own the means of production if the market is not free or efficient, in fact they prefer it on the whole.
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Nope, it is not capitalism anymore when the market has stopped working. Incidentally, the market does not need to be "free" for capitalism. What it needs to be is _competitive_. If the market is not competitive, the central mechanism of capitalism ceases to work.
You may want to read up on things before you disgrace yourself further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Hm let's read the link you posted. Opening line says:
which is exactly what I said.
Nope, it is not capitalism anymore when the market has stopped working.
You're making shit up there bucko.
Incidentally, the market does not need to be "free" for capitalism. What it needs to be is _competitive_.
Known as "efficient" which is what I already said. And neither is necessary for capitalism. They'
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A good example of that is grocery prices in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/busine... [www.cbc.ca]
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If you live in the right part of Vancouver. I'm out in the valley and there are no sidewalk markets, just 3 grocery stores that seem to have the same high prices and one with even higher prices. Then there's the cost of housing.
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I do 90% of my Canadian shopping from sidewalk markets here in Vancouver. Family owned, prices are at least 30% cheaper than major chains. I will go to the no-frills for paper towels though. It looks like a free market to me.
This interwebs pipes argument is brought to you by Brawndo, the thirst mutilator*, & Carl's Junior. Fuck you, I'm eating.
*It's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
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This will continue to be a thing until we find feasible ways to make work & commerce more democratic & equitable. Voting's extremely limited if it doesn't cover the activiti
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private property is the cornerstone of capitalism. Without it you won't have anything. The issue is 'what' is property.
Increasingly I think property should be defined only as tangible things. You should NOT be able to own and idea, for any longer than you can maintain it as a trade secret; patents need to be dispensed with entirely. Copyright should probably still exist but it should mainly be applicable only to works of fiction and artistic productions, music, visual arts, etc. Anything we would charac
Re: Definitely there is minimal free market at wor (Score:2)
Your hypothesis is so far removed from reality, did you ever run a business? I find it hard to take people like you seriously, especially commenting on the fantasies of the finance minister of Greece, the country that went so far into corporate and individual socialism it nearly collapsed the entire EU banking system.
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Workers collect less than 1% of revenue? Um no. (Score:5, Interesting)
Big Tech's workers, in contrast, collect "less than 1% of their firms' revenues"...
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Netflix is on top with $2.47M revenue per employee. For workers to get less than 1%, that would mean the average employee makes less than $24,700/year.
Amazon is $333K revenue per employee. I know their warehouse workers don't make software engineer salaries, but I doubt they're making less than $3330/year.
Re:Workers collect less than 1% of revenue? Um no. (Score:5, Informative)
And Google's revenue per employee is $2,020,329 in 2022 (says Zippia), while the average salary at Google is $123,944 (says PayScale.com) which is about 6% (and for software engineers "The median compensation package totals $275K", says levels.fyi).
So... is Varoufakis lying?
But Google also has to pay for data centers, electricity, office buildings, taxes and so on. And we could say the same for other tech companies. So a more reasonable thing to measure would be the profit per employee, which is said to be $158,000 for Alphabet (Google) as of 2019 and higher or lower for others. [dice.com]
And this "techno-feudalism" concept seems to uniquely describe Amazon and perhaps a few other "walled-garden" cash cows like Apple's app store. Google or Microsoft just seem like normal capitalist entities to me. Too powerful, perhaps, but not "feudalist".
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Keep in mind that he is probably not just looking at US stats, but globally.
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So... is Varoufakis lying?
He really should show his working. My only suspicion is, without understanding how all this works, that maybe the offshore tax minimisation schemes may be included in Varoufakis' figure, while official earnings don't, but again, that's just speculation on my part.
Re: Workers collect less than 1% of revenue? Um no (Score:2)
I donâ(TM)t think people realize the massive expense in these tech companies. First of all revenue is not profit, youâ(TM)d think that a finance minister would understand that concept; no wonder the Greek banking system failed.
As an example, me and my team of 3 support close to 10M/year in compute investments (a significant chunk of a data center) for a non-profit. We combined âcostâ about $1M/year between salaries, benefits and office equipment. And we arenâ(TM)t doing anything fan
You're forgetting about contractors (Score:2)
Even with contractors, it's way, way over 1% (Score:2)
This is a few years old (before the layoffs). 121k temps and contractors vs 102k full-time employees.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]
Google revenue in 2019 was $161B. That works out to $720k per employee, temp, and contractor. "Less than 1%" of that is $7200/year.
Your claim of 2% would still only be $14k/year. And no, Google's not paying that little. Not when the In&Out Burger just across the freeway from the Googleplex is paying over $20/hour.
So, no. The math doesn't support the claim, unless you
I mean, that's one, very narrow, definition (Score:4, Informative)
This is a bit of an exaggeration. Just as it's an exaggeration to call him an economist/politician. It's more accurate to call him a politician, who used to work in economics. He has his own political party and an agenda; he's not exactly unbiased here.
Re:I mean, that's one, very narrow, definition (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I mean, that's one, very narrow, definition (Score:5, Interesting)
It may peak off, but it's not usually a good sign when you see inventory turnover go from 2 months to 3 months while also dropping prices. That means capital recovery of inventory is not going great. It could be they just overproduced and it'll work itself out, or it could be a rougher transition to a broader market that may not be going great and will require some bigger moves to work.
Either way, this is a distraction from the main point: Big Tech only has it's hands in media and consumer marketing, but it's still a far cry from "techno-feudalism".
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but EV sales are dropping and are still less than 1% of car sales overall
Don't know why you are downplaying EVs. The growth of sales of all-electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the world market during the first half of 2023 was 40%. BEV sales during Q2 2023 grew by 50% and was 10% of the world's vehicle market. And the current market share of xEV is about 18%. Tesla remains the largest seller of BEVs, but it's dominant position is declining.
That said the decline of capitalism is nonsense. Most of the economies are mixed economies that combine a free market with state
Possibly an easy reason why (Score:2)
Don't know why you are downplaying EVs.
An easy explanation why might be that that is what news feeds are shoving down our throats right now. I open up google/microsoft news feeds, it's like 50% "EVs suck/aren't selling/what I hate about my EV/why I wouldn't buy an EV/dealers hate EVs/etc..."
If you actually read the articles, you generally find that EVs don't actually suck, but there's some differences you should be aware of, that EVs are still selling pretty fast but the ones that are selling slower were targeted at the wrong audience while bei
Re: Possibly an easy reason why (Score:2)
We were promised about 10 years ago by a certain guy rhyming with Shelon Blusk that 10 years from the launch of his company weâ(TM)d all be driving around in $15-35k family sized EV and the infrastructure would be there to provide free charging for all. Similar promises from Ford a few years ago and Honda and Toyota if only they could scale their operations. A ton of tax payer money was pumped and continues in those companies, with Tesla receiving billions in tax and carbon credits.
Where is my flying c
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Well, for one, multiply any Musk timelines by at least 2. But the Tesla Model 3 at $44k is getting pretty close, especially if you include avoided maintenance.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22... [cnn.com]
Closest statement I could find quickly promised $25k in "about 3 years" back in 2020, which is a heck of a lot more ambitious, I think, than $15-35k(let's just say $35k) in 10.
And apparently they did make the Model 3 available at $35k for a short period. Then inflation came in and ruined stuff, you could say.
Personal
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Nevertheless, my original point was that there are many majo
Who is Yanis Varoufakis (Score:3)
And why should I care what he has to say?
(ELI5, please)
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Champagne socialist more like.
Re:Who is Yanis Varoufakis (Score:4, Informative)
Hi from Australia. He is one of ours by dual nationality.
He was an academic whom Greece's populist anti-austerity party parachuted into financial to 'fix' their economy following the GFC. His ideas were too radical for their creditors and the EU, so he quit the role of Finance Minister a few months later in disgust.
But yeah, he's an erstwhile politician and economics lecturer who has published a number of books on economic theory.
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The basic premise of his economic policies is that the ordinary citizens should not suffer by having to pay for the mistakes and misbehaviour of big corporations like banks. More like what Iceland did, with banks being forced to cover their costs and the bankers responsible seeing jail time.
Re:Who is Yanis Varoufakis (Score:5, Interesting)
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He had a brief moment of fame during Greece's financial crisis. But over the years it has become clear he's a communist with a pro-Russia agenda. So you don't.
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He's an anarchist. From the left, but still.
And a Game Theory whizz.
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He's an idiot. Like most idiots, his intentions are good but he suffers a lot from unintended consequences.
In 2012 (or therabouts) he was the Greek minister of Finance and had to work with the European Central Bank and the European commission to get money for the crippled Greek economy. The ECB and EC wanted reforms in return, but Varoufakis didn't want to hear about it. Most economists declared him a madman, although Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz largely agreed with him (but Stiglitz is on the extreme
Re: Who is Yanis Varoufakis (Score:2)
The only reason the markets have any confidence is because the EU forced German, Dutch, French and Belgian banks to take on the massive debts from clowns like this that wanted to do nothing but government spend their way out of the debt crisis.
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The only reason the markets have any confidence is because the EU forced German, Dutch, French and Belgian banks to take on the massive debts from clowns like this that wanted to do nothing but government spend their way out of the debt crisis.
Except having "German, Dutch, French, and Belgian banks take on the massive debts" IS having the "government spend their way out of the debt crisis".
Unless the EU suddenly found a giant pot of gold previously outside their economy, the only thing they changed was which government (and therefore which taxpaying workers) did the spending.
Definition: (Score:3)
FEUDALISM (feudal): The stage of society that preceded capitalism, during which a small elite (the aristocracy) demanded recompense from a peasantry in exchange for military protection. As Marx and Engels explain, "Like tribal and communal ownership, it is based again on a community; but the directly producing class standing over against it is not, as in the case of the ancient community, the slaves, but the enserfed small peasantry". In the city, the feudal structure manifested itself in trade guilds. The organization of both the country and the city "was determined by the restricted conditions of production—the small-scale and primitive cultivation of the land, and the craft type of industry", which meant that there "was little division of labor in the heyday of feudalism". Exploitation functioned differently during stage than during the height of capitalism because each feudal peasant knew exactly what proportion of his labor had to be handed over to the aristocracy and the church; the rest was his or hers to use.
I guess that analogy could work, with the walled gardens serving the same role as the trade guilds. That's a pretty limited context though, walled gardens do not encompass our entire economy. Though I guess they're trying to spread into physical products with k-cups and such.
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I guess that analogy could work, with the walled gardens serving the same role as the trade guilds. That's a pretty limited context though, walled gardens do not encompass our entire economy. Though I guess they're trying to spread into physical products with k-cups and such.
That particular analogy doesn't work all that well. Even Keurig offers their own refillable K-cup pods, so people who want to use their own coffee grounds in a Keurig machine can do so (digression - at that point why not just buy a regular coffee pot? Plus you'll get better-tasting coffee). And there are plenty of "side loading" options available, meaning third-party K-cup makers abound.
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I agree. This seems like a big exaggeration since Tech, while useful and quite powerful, is still limited in what they are involved in. They are trying to expand into other markets but as of now, they aren't nearly as huge as this guy makes them out to be.
It's nice to be able to make a single cup of coffee with your own grounds and not need to make a whole pot.
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It's nice to be able to make a single cup of coffee with your own grounds and not need to make a whole pot.
You're looking at the problem backwards. It's not that the coffee pot is too big... it's obvious that your cup is too small.
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HAHA! You make a very good point!
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Pretty much the whole point of a K-cup machine is that it produces a passible cup of coffee with minimal effort. Once you have to deal with loading and washing a reusable K-cup, the whole convenience factor is out the window.
Of course, if I had the money to blow, what I'd really prefer is a fully automatic espresso machine like what they have at Starbucks.
I don't know what any of this has to do with capitalism, but who doesn't mind a good cup of joe while debating *isms?
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I could make a similar case of death for The Wealth of Nations. I could call Human Action a fascist guidebook.
I wouldn't because these are just books on economics and that's stupid.
Both men were dead in the ground before the Bolsheviks were even a thing.
The word is "manorialism." (Score:2)
I'm not even sold on that being spiritually more dangerous, given that the industrial working class tended to throw away their money on vices that destroyed them psychologically in much cruder ways.
Other than healthcare, there aren't a lot of meaningful distinctions. Would you r
Ownership? (Score:3)
Re: Ownership? (Score:2)
There are plenty of really good alternatives to both BMW and Adobe, in case of the former both paid and free that can import their proprietary formats. That is what capitalism is all about after all.
It's not dead (Score:3)
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Not quite correct (Score:2)
There's always been someone telling us the rules to protect his property and authority: Kings and lords, bishops and pope, revolutionaries and dictators, yellow journalism. The difference now is, the lord is a faceless, immortal corporation and the lord can dictate policy to hundreds of millions of people, no longer restricted by religion, language, oceans, or socioeconomic status: That's a lot of people toiling to make a few corporations, richer.
We never stopped being serfs but traditional capitalism
Random question for anyone from Greece (Score:3)
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In short, privately held debt got transferred over to European taxpayers, as initially the relevant European institutions weren't allowed to buy or issue debt, but then the appropriate measures were implemented so that national debt could be moved from privately held banks, to public the relevant public institutions.
All the private banks got bailed out from their "bad debt", and for all intents and purposes, Greece is on paper worse off than how it was when the crisis began, but when dealing with funny mone
Oh for fucks sake (Score:2)
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Capitalist "relations"??? (Score:2)
What's he talking about? What are "capitalist relations"?
Capitalism: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit" https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
This certainly describes Western economies, even in the tech world.
Does Big Tech have a lot of power? Yes. But all through the history of capitalism, there have been very powerful companies, this is not new.
I think this guy is using some new phrases to make himself sound more authoritative
Greek Finance Minister (Score:3)
But after time served and good behavior following that, he might get that fact expunged from his record.
We Can Only Hope (Score:2)
In the 20th century economics were thought of as a science, with rules that exist outside of the people living in it. In the 21st century, we realize that anyone who knows the "rules" can game the system. Do game the system. Monopolies are the norm. Politicians are owned lock stock and barrel. The judiciary is destroying any semblance of fair competition. So, yeah. The INSANE wealth hoarders run the show, and nothing short of violent revolution is going to stop them.
Everyone needs to read their Trot
Don't be fucking stupid (Score:2)
Capitalism means one and only one thing, capital controls the means of production.
There are any number of types of capitalism. We are now using corporatism, where corporations have more rights than humans, and they control the government. They write bills, pass them to the congresscreeps they've bought, and then do more lobbying to get them passed.
The idea that capitalism is over because it has enabled corporations to grab our nuts and squeeze is... see topic
Capitalism is still alive and kicking (Score:2)
Techno-feudalists still go to an underwriter and institutional investors when it is time go beyond what money the venture capitalists have raised. At the end of the day it's still bankers and Wall street running the economy.
Neo-Feudalism seems like the new "it" ism (Score:2)
The top-level descriptions sounds very much just like Joel Kotkin's book from earlier this year... https://books.google.com/books... [google.com]
Amazon is a store (Score:2)
The moment you enter amazon.com "you exit capitalism" and enter something that resembles a "feudal fief": a digital world belonging to one man and his algorithm, which determines what products you will see and what products you won't see.
You're not "exit[ing] capitalism", you're entering a store. Just like any other store, they decide which products to put on their shelves or to be advertised to you in the checkout lane.
self actualization (Score:2)
Capitalism/Socialism will succeed when they lead everybody to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] #Maslow
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a matter of too many people and too little resources, we have plenty of resources and for the most part can produce them more cheaply than ever before, the problem is too many resources misallocated to too few people. We live in a world of plenty that enforces artificial scarcity so that a few can benefit from massive inequality.
Re: (Score:2)
There's also incredible waste. Listening to someone studying the fast fashion market, clothes are one thing that has become much cheaper and crappier, people buy clothes, wear them a couple of times and chuck it. Some don't even bother doing laundry. Meanwhile also heard the local sheep farmers bitching, there's no longer much of a market for their wool. I love wool, especially in the damp climate I live in, but it is the shits for making cheap clothing from. Plastic is king, it's hard to find cotton socks
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So, he is right about dependency becoming dominant over the market choices. Mergers and acquisitions as a form of development second that.
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Explain Marxism without googling it.
It's bad [bing.com]
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Capitalism is a mode of production, a social relation, in which a capitalist owns capital and purchases labour from workers to do the work, taking the products which are produced for their sale value. And a capitalist economy is an economy driven by returns for capital. That's why it's called "capitalism" and not "voluntary transaction-ism".
In fact, capitalism utterly relies on involuntary transactions. Capitalists profit by paying workers less than the value of their labour. Nobody voluntarily trades their
Re: (Score:2)
Involuntary transactions?
So you're saying that Capitalism is someone with a product holding a gun to your head and going "BUY IT NOW FUCKER!"?
No.
You always have the opportunity to either participate in a transaction or not.
You're likely thinking the "Well I *NEED* this. Therefore..."
No. Sorry.
YOU deciding your level of requirement" has nothing to do with capitalism.
That's MARKETING.
And as to workers and low wages.
Sorry, if you opt to settle for a low wage, that's STILL A VOLUNTARY TRANSACTION.
You can ALWAYS OPT OUT.
Not getting what you're worth? GO OUT AND GET WHAT YOU"RE WORTH!
Quit your bitching.
It is not voluntary. The minimum "level of requirement" has been decided for you.
There's no such thing as land, only jurisdictions. You cannot go sleep in the park and trap rabbits/squirrels for clothes and protein. You cannot buy a piece of land in any city and then use your own labor and the lumber on that land to erect a minimal lean-to which is all a primate physically NEEDS for shelter, and make that your primary residence, and raise chickens and rabbits. Once Civilization has annexed all resources and