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[Maximum™]

Didn't Stross write a Laundry/New Management story that overlaps with that?

[Loud Whispers]

Didn't Stross write a Laundry/New Management story that overlaps with that?

No idea but I wouldn't be surprised. Lots of people got a sensible chuckle out of seeing the Barclay brothers lose to a bunch of regular farmers who weren't having none

Like the Barclays bring in this carpenter of theirs to be their new local "headman." This guy Delaney, he is a Barclay loyalist, worked on their hotels plenty, and he becomes the editor of a new newspaper telling the locals who is pro-business and a blacklist of who will lead them into economic suicide and they should avoid at all costs. This was very helpful to the locals who voted for all of the candidates on the blacklist

Their fights went on for years and years and years. The coalition gov got involved, the civil service got involved, but today the brothers' fields of vines are barren, their hotels are shuttered and their golf course dreams are broken

[Bumber]

What would you call "the cloud" and efforts to move everything into bullshit options like that except an attempt to set up a point where one can extract rent freely?

Isn't that just a private turnpike? 19th century capitalism.

[Maximum™]

Capitalism usually involves something known as a free market, yes?

Do you know what that market was free of?

Rents.

Do you know why rent free markets mattered when early capitalists were trying to get started?

Feudalism.

Yes, capitalists inevitably end up trying to avoid having to actually compete in a market, that isn't an argument against my point, it is literally my point.

[Lord Shonus]

Capitalism and Feudalism are fundamentally incompatible economic systems.

Feudalism is a system where the entire economic power lies in the direct ownership of land, which is then parceled out as payment. Where the money lies is less important, because money can't buy land and is of very limited use. Capitalism is where the entire power lies on the holders of money, and where actual direct ownership of land and resources holds little importance.

[Maximum™]

Ownership of land and resources is MASSIVELY important in capitalism, theoretically it may be otherwise, but it isn't just holders of money. Capital includes stuff, machinery, tools, and resources like materials and funds.

Also feudal lords didn't usually parcel land out as payment, they parceled it out to get paid by the people working it.

Their whole thing was about collecting rent, we keep some of the language of it around: landlord rightfully has negative connotations.

Capitalism, again, is supposedly about the benefits of a market free of rents but those benefits only go to the first person to call dibs on capital generally.

There is a VAST difference between the way capitalists like people to think about capitalism and the way it actually operates, you all know this right?

Like people get told "anyone can succeed" or "getting to the top is just a matter of hard work" when in fact it is usually about which ass you fell out of when you were born, the best indicator of if you are going to be wealthy and/or make more money than your parents was how wealthy your parents were.

We get told "it's like a county fair and we all get to play" but no, most kids get a single try to win a prize, some get a couple, rich kids get to play until they win, poor kids work at the fair.

In theory feudalism is a situation where if you are born wealthy you stay wealthy and capitalism is supposedly an alternative where you can become wealthy... but in reality the deck was stacked long before we were born and it's just easier to promote the lie that we all have a chance to win the game under a capitalist system than a feudal one.

There was a period where you COULD have lucked out and actually been in the right place at the right time to end up riding a wave into riches because the internet/home computer/smartphone booms opened up new areas which hadn't been claimed yet.

Now? You gonna go compete with Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and have a chance?

Riiiiiiiight, pull the other leg, they have secured their manors, they gladly let everyone use them, and we all end up paying rents for the privilege... how the hell is that NOT technofeudalism or cloudalism?

[Lord Shonus]

Also feudal lords didn't usually parcel land out as payment, they parceled it out to get paid by the people working it.

Their whole thing was about collecting rent, we keep some of the language of it around: landlord rightfully has negative connotations.

No, they generally granted it to lower-ranking people in exchange for service. Between nobles, this was generally military service - you granted a portion of your land as a fief to a lower ranking noble, who in turn swore to have a body of armed men at your call for a certain period of time per year. They then granted portions of their fief either to other lords who swore to fight for them, or to commoners who provided service in labor, farm products, or finished goods. Very very few rents were paid in cash before the Early Modern period when feudalism was being displaced by mercantilism.

[Maximum™]

Now I never said anything about cash, just rent, by providing crops, textiles, meat, and so forth.

Ultimately rent is income you collect for owning stuff other people need to live on or do business on.

Capitalism is supposedly a system where you get money for making things or doing things, not just owning things.

What exactly does Facebook or Google make or do which justify their valuations?

Why does Amazon need to get paid by both sides of every transaction that takes place on their site?

Why does a company that moves into making money by owning things and collecting rent get to keep calling itself capitalist? Because they say so?

Fuck that, they don't deserve rights of self-determination.

[McTraveller]

This is veering off Ameripol, armchair economics is thattaway....

I don't understand the unfounded certainty in many of the statements either... stuff about capitalism being free from rent, for example (there's nothing in capitalism that precludes rent-seeking).

Also ... I'm not sure I understand where the conversation is going? It sounds like venting, not any kind of practical approach to anything...

At the end of the day, in the spirit of the season, I'm thankful that our Tech Overlords have produced enough real wealth (not merely market value) so that we have devices to communicate with people across the planet and I have to spend so little time actually producing the things I use and consume that I have enough free time to contemplate economics and politics on the Internet.

[Rolan7]

Capitalism isn't free from rent, no...  Just, in contrast to feudalism it's about extracting value from capital rather than extracting value from land.

But if we're supposed to accept that tech overlords produce literally anything except for market value, I think I'll abstain from the conversation XD

(They leverage capital to hire people to invent, produce, and market real things.  That's a necessary role under capitalism, not a direct criticism of them...  But they absolutely do not create things.  They facilitate the creation of things, take a massive profit in doing so, and then some people choose to thank them for it )
(Increasingly they avoid any meaningful competition in this profit-taking, by market-cornering and regulatory capture and walled-gardens.  which LOOKS a LOT like feudalism in a colloquial sense, as they extract low-effort "rents" from metaphorical spaces.)

[McTraveller]

(Wait what? Is manufacturing a computer device not producing something?  Or are you highlighting that it's not the tech companies producing it within their walls (sometimes), but the manufacturing house?

That's a little too pedantic for me, and I'm usually quite pedantic... the manufacturing house wouldn't be "making" those things, if not contracted by the tech giants.

Or are you referring to the things like advertising or just "services"?)

[Rolan7]

I assumed by Tech Overlords you meant capitalists, not the companies.  (Isn't it clear I'm talking about people in my response?  Sorry if not)

Yeah Apple produces computer devices, or close enough.  The company does the inventing, production, and marketing.  Specifically employees do all that, and the company pays them a fraction of the value of their work.  It then passes reliable ever-increasing profits to the capitalists who put up the original capital.  Those capitalists and CEOs, who I would call Tech Overlords, did not produce anything (though I again acknowledge their importance under capitalism).

Also ... I'm not sure I understand where the conversation is going? It sounds like venting, not any kind of practical approach to anything...

Whether we call it techno-feudalism or an inevitable result of unrestricted capitalism (IMO it's obviously both), wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated and companies are cementing their control over markets and consumers.  That is, for 99% of people, a bad thing.

Or 100% if anthropomorphic climate change is real, which checks notes oh.  What a shame.

If you want solutions other than "let it happen" or "eat more pig", I think worker-owned cooperatives are a good component of transitioning to a less self-destructive economic system.  They inherently value the concerns of people rather than literally, absolutely, ONLY maximizing profit.

The ONLY thing that stops a corporation from sacrificing human lives for cash is regulation.  That's why regulatory capture is a problem.  Without it, they'll start sacrificing more lives at home rather than overseas.

[Maximum™]

The discussion has been diverging that way, though politics without economics is blind, and economics without politics is just boring fairy tales?

Antitrust is both, as is the labor movement.

[McTraveller]

I'm curious about this assertion that "worker-owned cooperatives...inherently value the concerns of people rather than literally, absolutely, ONLY maximizing profit."  What's to prevent a worker-owned coop from only trying to profit its workers, and not anyone else?

In other words - how is it different from any company today in which workers own stock? What would make that co-op be any more altruistic? Is it just that in the co-op, the workers are guaranteed a large enough share of the stock to have a presence on the board?  I still don't see how that would prevent such a company from focusing first on its employees profit.

I think your other statement is more correct: regulation preventing market capture is the only thing that can even theoretically work, and that's not even guaranteed.  The present administration is at least making a show of it at least (although not very well; they failed to stop Microsoft buying Activision, and I don't think Google was even a monopoly issue; they aren't even doing anything about the regional health conglomerates, and those are monopolies...); I assume a Republican president in 2024 would erase and walk back those efforts though.

[scriver]

I assumed by Tech Overlords you meant capitalists, not the companies.  (Isn't it clear I'm talking about people in my response?  Sorry if not)

Yeah Apple produces computer devices, or close enough.  The company does the inventing, production, and marketing.  Specifically employees do all that, and the company pays them a fraction of the value of their work.  It then passes reliable ever-increasing profits to the capitalists who put up the original capital.  Those capitalists and CEOs, who I would call Tech Overlords, did not produce anything (though I again acknowledge their importance under capitalism).

Also ... I'm not sure I understand where the conversation is going? It sounds like venting, not any kind of practical approach to anything...

Whether we call it techno-feudalism or an inevitable result of unrestricted capitalism (IMO it's obviously both),

When you say "it's obviously both", though, you fail to see that the people who want to call it feudalism is doing that so that their holy capitalism-on-a-hill can remain pure and blame free and so it isn't actually a failure of capitalism but a failure of attaining the Perfect State of Capitalism in which this would never happen. Hence capitalist denialism.