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Briefing: Technofeudalism - What Killed Capitalism (2023) by Yanis VaroufakisExecutive Summary

Yanis Varoufakis, a distinguished economist and former Greek finance minister, argues in "Technofeudalism" that capitalism is dead, replaced by a new socio-economic system he terms "technofeudalism." This transformation is characterized by the triumph of "cloud capital" and "cloud rent" over traditional capitalist "profit" and "markets." The two main drivers of this shift are the privatization of the internet by Big Tech and the response of Western governments and central banks to the 2008 financial crisis. In this new system, a class of "cloudalists" act as feudal overlords, extracting "cloud rent" from "vassal capitalists" and billions of "cloud serfs" (ordinary users providing free labor and data) and "cloud proles" (waged laborers subject to algorithmic control). This new order has profound implications for individual autonomy, geopolitics (manifesting as a "New Cold War" between US and Chinese super cloud fiefs), and the possibility of addressing global challenges like climate change.

Yanis Varoufakis is an Athens-born economist (1961) with a long career as a professor in Britain, Australia, and the USA. He gained international recognition as Greece's finance minister and is known for his critical economic analyses. He is the co-founder of the international grassroots movement DiEM25 and has authored several best-selling books, including "Adults in the Room," "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?," and "Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism."

Varoufakis' central hypothesis is that "capitalism is now dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. In that role it has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call technofeudalism."

• The Killer: The very thing that killed capitalism is capital itself, but in a mutated form: "cloud capital."

1. Key Developments:Privatization of the Internet: By America's and China's Big Tech.
2. Central Bank Response to 2008: Western governments and central banks' actions following the Great Financial Crisis.

• Replacement of Pillars:Markets (the medium of capitalism) have been replaced by digital trading platforms, which Varoufakis describes as "fiefdoms."
• Profit (the engine of capitalism) has been replaced by its feudal predecessor: rent, specifically "cloud rent," paid for access to these platforms and the cloud.

• Mutation of Capital: Cloud capital is a new form of capital, fundamentally different from traditional capital (machinery, buildings). It's described as "a produced means of behavioural modification and individuated command."
• Components: Physically, it comprises "vast data warehouses, containing endless rows of servers, connected by a globe-spanning web of sensors and cables." However, its true value lies in its "content" – the user-generated data (posts, videos, photos, reviews, movements).
• Cloudalists: The owners of cloud capital form a "new class of feudal overlord." They are distinct from traditional capitalists because their power and wealth derive from extracting "cloud rent" rather than profit from commodity production. They have "acquired the ability to do that which the Edisons, the Westinghouses and the Fords never could: to turn themselves into a revolutionary class actively displacing the capitalists from the top of society’s pecking order."
• Self-Reproduction: Unlike traditional capital, cloud capital can reproduce itself "in ways that involve no waged labour." It commands "almost the whole of humanity to chip in to its reproduction – for free!"

Buy: https://www.amazon.nl/Technofeudalism-Killed-Capitalism-Yanis-Varoufakis/dp/1529926092