Technofeudalism

Cory Doctorow advances the position that capitalism isn't evolving into socialism (as classical Marxism predicted) but into a new form of feudalism:

Capitalists Hate Capitalism

His explanation of the difference between "rents" and "profits" is new information to me (being a bear of very little brain where economic theory is concerned, anyhow). "Rent" in the technical sense used by economists means "income derived from owning something that the capitalist needs in order to realize a profit." It's passive income, so to speak. In Doctorow's example, the manager of a coffee shop has to compete actively with other shops to attract labor and customers. The landlord who owns the building, though, receives money from rent no matter who occupies the space.

In these terms, a gigantic storefront such as Amazon, to which all the individual sellers pay rent, exemplifies "the contemporary business wisdom that prefers creating the platform to selling on the platform" -- "technofeudalism." Doctorow offers several examples, e.g., draconian noncompete agreements forced on employees, the expansion of IP rights to absurd degrees such as the author who attempted to own the word "cocky," and patent trolls whose "only product is lawsuits."

One related abuse he doesn't cover in this article but discusses elsewhere is the universal software marketing practice of not selling electronic products outright but "licensing" them. A "buyer" of a Kindle book, for instance, doesn't literally own it like a hard-copy book, for Amazon can remove the text from the customer's device at any point for any random reason. Granted, this probably doesn't happen often (I haven't experienced it), but the only way to avoid that risk would be to refrain from ever connecting that device to the internet again -- hardly practical.

By Doctorow's title, "Capitalists Hate Capitalism," he means, "They don’t want to be exposed to the risks entailed by competition, and feel the goad of that insecurity. They want monopolies, or platforms, or monopoly platforms." Unlike in many of his essays, in this one he doesn't suggest hypothetical remedies but simply describes a problematic situation.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.