A new form of capital is ascending: cloud capital—networked algorithmic machines that grant their owners remarkable powers to modify our behaviour. And just as financiers needed neoliberalism, today’s tech lords need a new ideology to legitimise their rule. I call it techlordism.
The problem is wider than the tech companies, so personally I’d prefer a wider definition that includes the non tech bad actors. Something like “Return of the Robber Barons”.
Robber Barons = By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. Those practices included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors, and to create monopolies and/or trusts that control the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
That description seems like a perfect match for the present day USA economy.
> new yanis varoufakis analysis just dropped
> look inside
> rebrand of left analysis that has existed for a century but with misunderstandings and some crank shit sprinkled in
Seriously though this is fascism, a modern tech flavor but fascism nonetheless. Just as his “technofeudalism” claims were just describing imperialism and neoliberal monopoly capitalism but with his own branding. I’d rather people listen to him than somebody more right wing but this guy is kinda off the mark a lot
A potentially odd thought, but the power and reach of US tech oligarchs is based on US softpower – the same stuff this guy is basically saying is useless. One reason US stocks/companies get lots of investment/support is the belief that US companies have more default in-roads to all western nations – invest in a US tech co, you get access to all western markets. It’s one reason they have the market power they flex. Even Iran had reports of their cisco devices failing during recent US aggression – so even the USA’s enemies had figured US tech was ‘country neutral’, stupidly, and their obvious mistake cost them dearly. Other nation’s will see that as a learning moment.
Western nations have started pulling away from US tech / hegemony. Places like France are eye’ing Linux, the Netherlands central bank declared it reasonable to expect US tech excised from their banking ecosystem in 4 years or so, Canada’s openly declaring US ties a weakness. So investing in a company like Microsoft, may no longer translate into investing in a company with a global reach within the western world – their stock ‘should’ eventually price this in. It’s one reason the tech overlords have directed the US government to challenge any/all pushes for data sovereignty.
And as for the end of nuke dominance and rise of AI drone warfare and all that… he’s an AI hammer salesman, declaring all problems are AI nails… hes clearly biased. We’re seeing drones as a viable option currently, because people are so scared shitless of nuclear conflicts. Just because people are too scared to use the massively destructive weapons, doesn’t mean that the deterrent factor of those weapons is meaningless. It’s why few countries have directly helped ukraine in their conflict with Russia. Hell, the states and Israel are busy justifying a war to try and prevent a country from getting nukes – and they’re beating up a country that only had drone power. While their campaign isn’t going as well as they may claim publicly, I know Iranians who’ve confirmed things like “All the airports are destroyed, and most of our projects/work is closed, so we’re just sitting at home kind of waiting at this point”. Those drones didn’t really help deter anything / protect the people all that much – having nukes likely would’ve, as we see in cases like North Korea and Russia. Even in cases like the USA, where their veering into a fascist dictatorship garnered little comment from western nations, who were afraid of upsetting their nuclear-umbrella.
Well, the plan then, if other countries start pulling away from US tech/hegemony as you suggest they will do, and are doing, is to use overwhelming military force with unending waves of AI-powered killer robots capable of combat in land, sea, and air. Use them everywhere, all at once, against everyone in a titanic billionaire temper tantrum the likes of which has never been seen on Earth. Because, if Karp and Thiel and Andreesen and all the other tech oligarchs don’t get their wish, they will absolutely attempt to totally annihilate the planet in a massive temper tantrum.
Sure, but let’s call it what it is: fascism. We need to stop inventing fancy names for things that have existed for a century.
There is a difference, but largely in the industry whose capital backs this new fascism. In the 1920s and ‘30s, the dominant / ascendant form of capital was manufacturing capital, so those were the biggest backers of German fascism (both in Germany and the US). In our time in the US, the ascendant capital is big tech, but most of their assets are in cloud computing. This will inform the face it puts forward, so it does change the modes and styles of its propaganda, but you best believe the same fascist goals are at the heart of it all. So I say: call it fascism.
The goal of neoliberalism was always neofeudalism. It was the means to this ends.
Entrepreneurs don’t unionize
Buy GGLL, Google owns mobile, its not going anywhere.
It also uses efficient TPU for AI, so has an advantage there too.
It’s the age of “Mega Tech Corporations”
If corporations become immune to oversight by state legislative bodies, they exert pressure on governments and transform into feudal structures.At this point, countries that host technology companies have a major role to play.Today, if a technology company has billions of dollars, it can certainly pressure the government to act in its own interests.At this point, the government needs to create legal regulations for these types of companies.
Dark Enlightenment.
*(tech)warlordism
