Societies have to do that in order to remain coherent and organized. If you have ever been responsible for small children you know you have to teach them all kinds of things which make no sense to them but which are necessary for survival in whatever kind of social order they are going to live in. The punishments for noncompliance are often very rough.
I think the point of Varoufakis's idea is that if you interact with modern internet systems you cannot avoid giving away information that can be used against you. I'm not sure there are any candidates to vote for who are not capitalists - but then he also implies that the notion of 'capitalism' itself no longer applies.
>>"but then he also implies that the notion of 'capitalism' itself no longer applies."
This is where I completely disagree with him. I actually read his "Technofeudalism" book, and was quite disappointed (compared to his other book "Talking to my daughter about the Economy" which was excellent).
I find this whole "technofeudalism" framing to be more of a "marketing" ploy and "coinage of new terms" more to draw attention to Varoufakis and his (not so original) idea, rather than any NEW form of capitalism.
>>"if you interact with modern internet systems you cannot avoid giving away information that can be used against you."
NOTHING new here. We all knew that since before Edward Snowden. Anyone who didn't must have been sleeping under a rock.
I think it's the linking of the two aspects that is interesting - the 'feudal' bit - i.e. the very extreme skewing of where power lies, through the distorted distribution of money, enabling ever more manufactured consent, diminishes our ability to vote for different options. And on the tech side, we are becoming more like peasants than wage slaves by the change from being paid in money which you can freely exchange for goods to where we will be paid in electronic money, bitcoin or even something like amazon coin whereby our spending can be restricted to certain outlets, limiting our ability to avoid them - the old 'company store' model writ large.
I understand his arguement, but there's nothing new (even about the linking aspect).
Example: customer loyalty points, store points, repeat customer discounts, and so many other examples (including discounts for company employees).
People still buy using REAL money (one has to purchase or mine cryptocurrencies using REAL money before they can spend it). People still buy REAL (material) products and varied services (in different forms, including digital). Now, instead of buying the old fashioned way, people are buying online. Again - nothing new.
Also, what percentage of the global population does/behaves the way Technofeudalism describes? A still quite small percentage. How many people REALLY own Ring devices or Alexa, etc. globally? A minority of the population.
I think he failed in comparing the present circumstances/behavior to feudal behavior.
What Varoufakis describes is just another form of exchange of value WITHIN the system of Capitalism. So we do it on online platforms (Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart, Apple Store, Android Store, spotify, netflix, whatever). So we let these platforms/devices give us suggestions based on our preferences. So these platforms use our data to guide our purchasing habits. Advertising does the same thing (eg. online ads). In fact, the revenue model for these "so-called cloud companies" is primarily Advertising (Google, Meta and other social media companies, even Amazon to a certain extent).
Varoufakis is desperately trying to convince us that what we see happening is something NEW. It's not. He uses all kinds of examples to make us think that the system has changed (from Capitalism to Technofeudalism). It hasn't. Yes, we do have MORE models of "exchange value behavior" within Capitalism, but it's still Capitalism.
I am not as smart or articulate as you guys and yet I am wondering if i sense something missing from this conversation: it isn’t just about advertising and consumerism - ‘it’ being our use of/ reliance on the internet and all the data that is exchanged there; we are being shaped beyond what we buy, and even beyond what/ how we think and come to ‘know’ what we know. our choices in an ai-dominated world will become more and more limited and thereby our agency further and further removed from us. can you get what i’m laying down and maybe even articulate it better than I did? does it matter if it happens under capitalism or feudalism? It does, I imagine, in the sense that use of language matters, but let us not lose track of what is happening, which is further loss of agency. I do think this is NEW in scale and we might be on some sort of brink.
i do not think that further loss of agency is inevitable; i do think that if we continue using our advanced technologies within these systems, then it does certainly become increasingly inevitable, while we will be fooled into thinking that where we spend our money, etc. makes a difference, but the difference will be so minute that it effectively won’t be a difference at all. so, yeah, i fear AI in the hands of the powerful, which is where it will reside, ultimately. I understand it isn’t new in the sense that technologies have always been used by the powerful to shape society to their advantage (even theater was long ago used thusly) and yet i do not think that this excludes the possibility that we are on a threshold of no return. i suppose it could be all too easy to feel that way. or it could prove to be an accurate hunch. it is extremely hard to decipher the waters we swim in as they are part of us.
except that nowadays we collude and propagandise ourselves!
It's always been that way. Conformity is one of the most powerful forces in human society. Heck people used to gang up and kill non-conformists.
Societies have to do that in order to remain coherent and organized. If you have ever been responsible for small children you know you have to teach them all kinds of things which make no sense to them but which are necessary for survival in whatever kind of social order they are going to live in. The punishments for noncompliance are often very rough.
We are not children.
Speak for yourself. "We" do not do anything of the kind. At least, I don't. I protest. I accuse. I don't vote for the capitalists.
I think the point of Varoufakis's idea is that if you interact with modern internet systems you cannot avoid giving away information that can be used against you. I'm not sure there are any candidates to vote for who are not capitalists - but then he also implies that the notion of 'capitalism' itself no longer applies.
>>"but then he also implies that the notion of 'capitalism' itself no longer applies."
This is where I completely disagree with him. I actually read his "Technofeudalism" book, and was quite disappointed (compared to his other book "Talking to my daughter about the Economy" which was excellent).
I find this whole "technofeudalism" framing to be more of a "marketing" ploy and "coinage of new terms" more to draw attention to Varoufakis and his (not so original) idea, rather than any NEW form of capitalism.
>>"if you interact with modern internet systems you cannot avoid giving away information that can be used against you."
NOTHING new here. We all knew that since before Edward Snowden. Anyone who didn't must have been sleeping under a rock.
I think it's the linking of the two aspects that is interesting - the 'feudal' bit - i.e. the very extreme skewing of where power lies, through the distorted distribution of money, enabling ever more manufactured consent, diminishes our ability to vote for different options. And on the tech side, we are becoming more like peasants than wage slaves by the change from being paid in money which you can freely exchange for goods to where we will be paid in electronic money, bitcoin or even something like amazon coin whereby our spending can be restricted to certain outlets, limiting our ability to avoid them - the old 'company store' model writ large.
I understand his arguement, but there's nothing new (even about the linking aspect).
Example: customer loyalty points, store points, repeat customer discounts, and so many other examples (including discounts for company employees).
People still buy using REAL money (one has to purchase or mine cryptocurrencies using REAL money before they can spend it). People still buy REAL (material) products and varied services (in different forms, including digital). Now, instead of buying the old fashioned way, people are buying online. Again - nothing new.
Also, what percentage of the global population does/behaves the way Technofeudalism describes? A still quite small percentage. How many people REALLY own Ring devices or Alexa, etc. globally? A minority of the population.
I think he failed in comparing the present circumstances/behavior to feudal behavior.
What Varoufakis describes is just another form of exchange of value WITHIN the system of Capitalism. So we do it on online platforms (Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart, Apple Store, Android Store, spotify, netflix, whatever). So we let these platforms/devices give us suggestions based on our preferences. So these platforms use our data to guide our purchasing habits. Advertising does the same thing (eg. online ads). In fact, the revenue model for these "so-called cloud companies" is primarily Advertising (Google, Meta and other social media companies, even Amazon to a certain extent).
Varoufakis is desperately trying to convince us that what we see happening is something NEW. It's not. He uses all kinds of examples to make us think that the system has changed (from Capitalism to Technofeudalism). It hasn't. Yes, we do have MORE models of "exchange value behavior" within Capitalism, but it's still Capitalism.
I am not as smart or articulate as you guys and yet I am wondering if i sense something missing from this conversation: it isn’t just about advertising and consumerism - ‘it’ being our use of/ reliance on the internet and all the data that is exchanged there; we are being shaped beyond what we buy, and even beyond what/ how we think and come to ‘know’ what we know. our choices in an ai-dominated world will become more and more limited and thereby our agency further and further removed from us. can you get what i’m laying down and maybe even articulate it better than I did? does it matter if it happens under capitalism or feudalism? It does, I imagine, in the sense that use of language matters, but let us not lose track of what is happening, which is further loss of agency. I do think this is NEW in scale and we might be on some sort of brink.
i do not think that further loss of agency is inevitable; i do think that if we continue using our advanced technologies within these systems, then it does certainly become increasingly inevitable, while we will be fooled into thinking that where we spend our money, etc. makes a difference, but the difference will be so minute that it effectively won’t be a difference at all. so, yeah, i fear AI in the hands of the powerful, which is where it will reside, ultimately. I understand it isn’t new in the sense that technologies have always been used by the powerful to shape society to their advantage (even theater was long ago used thusly) and yet i do not think that this excludes the possibility that we are on a threshold of no return. i suppose it could be all too easy to feel that way. or it could prove to be an accurate hunch. it is extremely hard to decipher the waters we swim in as they are part of us.