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I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure what we have now is 100% capitalism. It’s exactly how many people predicted capitalism would look like if given enough time.
Many years ago, a libertarian classmate asked me how I think the world would look like if corporations were unregulated. I told him (again, without being an economist) that corporations would probably become the new countries, that they would own everything like monarchs used to, as a few corporations monopolized everything. (I still find his answer funny: “And wouldn’t that be better?”. I just told him “Of course not!” thinking “WTF?”).
My point is that this idea that the current system is “worse than capitalism” and “capitalism is dead”, stems from some kind of idealization of what capitalism is supposed to be like, and not from the realities that many people have been pointing out throughout the XX and XXI centuries about how capitalism works and what its end-goal is. This is exactly what capitalism looks like. “Technofeudalism” seems like yet another way of not addressing the issue, like when people say “the problem is not capitalism! it’s crony capitalism!”. As if there is some form of capitalism that has ever put people over money.
Also:
It might look like a market, but Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues. He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism.
Again, I’m no economist, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the capitalists (i.e. the owners of the means of production) have never produced capital. The workers do. The capitalist have always taken the profits of their worker’s labour in exchange for using those means of production. You could call that “charging rent”.
There is nothing new about what’s going on right now, except on the superficial level, the specific tech that’s being used to achieve the monopolistic goals of any corporation. Given enough time, the inevitable concentration of power that capitalism leads to, will always look like feudalism.
I still find his answer funny: “And wouldn’t that be better?”
libertarians man, I swear
feels like every other one I meet just repeats what the rest of them say without even thinking about it. Reminds me of the video I saw where a leading libertarian presidential candidate said he supported driver’s licenses and the entire room booed him.
Every libertarian I’ve ever met is convinced that actors will somehow be way more rational and benevolent when laissez-faire economics allows the market to act freely, as though ‘zero regulations’ is not already the goal of every major corporation, in order to more completely fuck over everyone they touch.
Either that, or they’re convinced they’re a good enough prepper to avoid being killed or captured by the inevitable PMC armies that arise from the libertarian apocalypse.
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What’s funny about this opinion of his, however true it is or feels, is that it strikes me, form my naive armchair, as something that’s been obvious or obviously coming for a while.
I remember having “shooting the piss” conversations in the 2000s about how big corps would become the “new nations”, which is dumb and simplistic but still touches what could very well be an essential truth … that when an ecosystem of massive corps, with monopolies, near-monopolies or oligopolies, becomes ingrained, the dynamic they create comes to dominate the so called markets they and we are supposed to operate in. And so you quickly/easily get “grey-letter law” and “too big to fail” institutions.
If there’s anything to this, which I suspect is the case, then it becomes strange that it’s what, one popular/public economist talking about it? Whether you’re left or right, it’s conspicuous and problematic, and surely it’s middle-class centrists, those who are effectively “citizens” of the fiefdoms, or “super-serfs” if you will, who are relatively highly employable and well networked in the major big-corp employment networks and so doing well in the system, that don’t quite notice it or care that it might be a wider problem.
It has been obvious for decades that governments in Western democracies, at least, are thoroughly pushed around by big multinational corporations and will never enact policies that go directly against the interests of these corporations. Governments get to make some policy decisions in their own regions, but the greater power lies with the billionaires behind these corporations. It’s not a new situation but it is having a more obviously harmful effect now we can all see living costs becoming unmanageable while governments pander to the wealthiest and the planet falling apart around us while governments continue to pander to oil companies.
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What could be more delightful than a trip to Greece to meet Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic leftwing firebrand who tried to stick it to the man, AKA the IMF, EU and entire global financial order?
The house is where Varoufakis and his wife, landscape artist Danae Stratou, live, year round since the pandemic, but in August 2023 at the end of a summer of heatwaves and extreme weather conditions across the world, it feels more than a little apocalyptic.
Stratou and Varoufakis are a striking couple, as glamorous as their house, a cool, luminous space featuring poured concrete and big glass windows overlooking a perfect rectangle of blue pool.
“I have no issues with luxury,” he says at one point, which is just as well because the entire scene would give the Daily Mail a conniption, especially since Aegina seems to be Greece’s equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, home to a highly networked artistic and political elite.
I’d messaged a bunch of people to ask them what they would ask Varoufakis, including McNamee, and precised the book to him – that two pivotal events have transformed the global economy: 1) the privatisation of the internet by America and China’s big tech companies; and 2) western governments’ and central banks’ responses to the 2008 great financial crisis, when they unleashed a tidal wave of cash.
This encouraged business models that promised world-changing outcomes, even if they were completely unrealistic and/or hostile to the public interest (eg the gig economy, self-driving cars, crypto, metaverse, AI).
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