‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech::In his new book, the maverick Greek economist says we are witnessing an epochal shift. At his island home, he argues it’s now the ‘fiefdoms’ of tech firms that shape us
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The article itself uses examples of Facebook and Twitter/X so that’s where I compared it to older forms of media.
When it comes to Amazon I kinda see where that argument comes from, but I’m not entirely convinced. It’s not like renting spaces and hiring services was not part of Capitalism anyway, stores had to rent space in malls. Franchising also comes to mind, where a smaller businessman has to pay to operate under a certain brand. Amazon seems a larger scale of that and I can see how that is concerning, but calling it “technofeudalism” seems like trying to gloss over the issues in regular Capitalism.
One could very well host their own services, their own internet communities and online stores. I understand that it’s much harder to make them thrive compared to just being on Amazon and Facebook, but this is a way in which it’s not like Feudalism. You aren’t commanded by the King and the laws of the land to pay the tax, you are just competitively disadvantaged in the market if you don’t. Like Capitalism.
If anything this shows the importance of trust busting, which has been pretty much abandoned in recent decades. It might even warrant the existence of public internet services much in the same way we have public radio and TV.
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