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Is technofeudalism even a thing? Yanis Varoufakis goes on about it (despite being a keen WEF collaborator)... But it seems to me that in mediaeval feudalism that the lords needed the peasants downstream to produce food and military units. In the technocratic system we are heading towards, the lower classes (us) will be needed for labour and military purposes even less, thanks to automation etc. They will have less and less need for our income since they will have automated investments too. The one similarity to feudalism will be an information caste to make sure we tow the line but even that can be automated.

Not an attractive situation but not a very feudal one.

by fragmede16 hours ago|

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Not for military purposes, but if you're an employee of eg Google, life is pretty good. Free food, spacious offices, great health insurance; all sorts of perks. All at the behest of Lord Sundar.

by mystraline12 hours ago|

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Employees of Google etm are basically the landed barony of feudalism. Of course theyre going to have it cushy.

The serfs are the general public who MUST interact with either Google or Apple as regular account users. Each feudal lord has their own laws that they technocratically enforce. And if you break them or otherwise offend their people or systems, you are severed from the feudal system with no grievance.

And with 2 phone dealers and no legal requirement for accounts, this creates a powerful situation both feudal systems can enforce without any other ways out.

Apple has been locked down on their phones, and moving sttongly that way on their non-phones.

Google has announced they are locking down 3rd party app stores and sideloading, because they can.

And we've heard the horror stories of person locked out of google, and that hellscape.

And Microsoft was able to shut down multiple European courts by simply turning off their accounts. Again, lost everything.

This is what I mean by technofedualism - its the recreation of a fedual government enforced not by state violence, but by technology.

by Nasrudith9 hours ago|

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Technofeudalism always has been a complete inanity of a term, really and worthy of eyerolls that shows no understanding of either tech nor feudalism. You might as well call your relationship your grocery store 'inverted feudalism' because you depended upon them as the vector for food.

Generally anybody conflating corporations with feudalism shows a complete lack of understanding of the latter. Nobility and monarchs hated merchants for one and ruled by force of arms. Being rich didn't make you a king, having an army obeying you did which was what made you rich. But that sort of utterly concussed understanding and rhetoric is woefully common.