this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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The idea that we are entering an era of techno-feudalism that will be worse than capitalism is chilling and controversial. We asked former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to elucidate this idea, explain how we got here, and map out some alternatives.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (15 children)

lol Yanis is def making the rounds cuz of his new book. He also talked about this on Adam Conover's podcast, Factually a few weeks ago.

iirc he's saying that we're at the point where some of the richest people have moved from owning the means to actually produce things to providing platforms for exchanging goods for money to happen on, while basically charging rent. He compares it to feudalism in that a company like Amazon or Apple with its app store are feudal lords who come in and collect money off of each transaction made by the "serfs" (people who sell and buy things on these markets), basically in exchange for being allowed to list. And increasingly, its getting harder and harder to do business without dealing with one of these tech giants. I think he mentioned how WeChat is another good example of this in China, where they're involved in like everything

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Isn't that exactly what the EUs DMA is trying to address

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Interesting, it seems so, but the DMA isn't "marketed" as such or explains the problem and doesn't suggest plausible solutions. What is needed I think is a kind of federation for marketplaces, so they need to use some kind of open protocol that allows others to use the same network of vendors etc. But it seems you could build on top of the DMA.

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