"... To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of Progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine." E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops
I am a high school teacher in the US with almost a decade of experience at the high school and middle school levels. I have only ever taught Gen Z and will be teaching Gen Alpha in the coming years. I could say so much about how disheartening it can be to teach the literal first generation of completely digital natives. For a variety of reasons, I am constantly thinking about, researching, and observing the effects of tech on our young people’s minds and worldviews. I have deepened my observation and conviction this year that attention has become an increasingly valuable commodity. I began telling my students very frequently that the most important thing they can give is attention. In fact, it very well may be an evolving form of currency under the model of technofeudalism if I’m understanding the premise correctly. Regardless, this is extremely interesting. I’m glad I came across it and will continue to digest and question it. Ευχαριστώ Yanis from a fellow Greek!
Yanis wants palestine free. But he doesnt care about tibet or my father's country laos being exploited and silenced by the invading country (chxna) he supports so much. Before u come at me with americans bombed laos: Laos gave americans the green light to bomb the communist away cuz only thailand and americans answered our calls for help. And unlike the communists that he supports so much, americans evacuated laotians into bunkers. Treated them like ppl unlike the slaughtering communists. He has no idea what he is saying. Wants freedom for some but not for others. Why is laos speakin chinese in its northern parts now? Where is sombath somphone? Why is yanis supporting a country that silences our people , exploits natural resources, invades and forces us to assimilate to them in our own culture and country? Yanis knows what he is sayin? Nah. What an utter hypocrite who hasnt healed yet. Nice day ☮️🍉
I am wondering if you perceive various forms of visual entertainment - videos, video games, tv, books, social media - dulls our ingenuity and ability to think for ourselves and learn/practice thinking for ourselves. Do you see evidence of this?
Really enjoyed this book Yanis, it was personal, informative, and very well written. The Technofeudal future looms large on the horizon but the contours are only visible because of your work
Yanis wants palestine free. But he doesnt care about tibet or my father's country laos being exploited and silenced by the invading country (chxna) he supports so much. Before u come at me with americans bombed laos: Laos gave americans the green light to bomb the communist away cuz only thailand and americans answered our calls for help. And unlike the communists that he supports so much, americans evacuated laotians into bunkers. Treated them like ppl unlike the slaughtering communists. He has no idea what he is saying. Wants freedom for some but not for others. Why is laos speakin chinese in its northern parts now? Where is sombath somphone? Why is yanis supporting a country that silences our people , exploits natural resources, invades and forces us to assimilate to them in our own culture and country? Yanis knows what he is sayin? Nah. What an utter hypocrite who hasnt healed yet. Nice day ☮️🍉
Holy shit. This makes too much sense. I am Gen Z, probably spend 8 hours a day on my phone. I’ve had that intuition for a while, that there was some kind of inconsistency between traditional capitalist model and my experience of spending hours on end on social media, with the sheer amount of people doing the exact same. Simple advertising seemed an unconvincing explanation to how valuable was our attention really, with innovations making the extraction of it more and more efficient (think the shorter and shorter length of videos, and then the rise of tiktok). I was unconvinced by marxist theory of profit, because it would imply that amazon’s profit would be zero if it happened to replace every worker by a robot and A.I. However, if you think of Amazon as a landlord for capitalists, with consumers as laborers who contribute to increasing the value of the digital land, then it fills the gap I felt was missing. The idea of activity on the cloud by users being seen as work that increases value of the cloud land would explain Elon Musk’s decision to pay Twitter users for their virtual work. It would explain Reddit’s decision to go public on the stock market. What a landlord wants is not profit, it’s cashflow. This digital land is infinite, but owned by a single entity, meaning that a potentially infinite amount of vassal capitalists can rent for space in this cloud space. The only limit to the amount of money you can make as a cloud landlord would then be real-world government policies preventing people from access to your space, a lack of choice for equally good or better cloud alternatives and the amount of humans on earth. It would also explain why Elon musk likes the idea of people having many children so much.The Endgame would then be colonisation of Mars and other planets to obtain resources necessary for the continued expansion of humanity and our population, with the research being carried out by the technofeudal landlords as the ones with the most capital to invest in such things. I had to use a bit of imagination and extrapolate. However, my outlook on this whole techno feudalism thing is : it’s really scary, and I am not happy with this idea. Worst thing is I can actually see it coming since it’s happening already. I had to sit down for a good 20 minutes after this video since I was so dumbfounded by what I was hearing. I could maybe see a revolution eventually happening if all the behaviour of individuals was not monopolised by a single entity. If all jobs disappear, in a way akin to twitter, a universal basic income could become meta with the possibility of earning more according to your internet activity and the increased activity you can generate from other users. Fuck.
Edit: concerning my last paragraph, what I meant was that the monopoly of the landlords being the influence on people’s behaviour, they can eventually abort any willingness of revolution (since they control access to information) and gaslight you into believing the statu quo benefits you, and eventually any system they want to set up WILL be set up. In an inceasingly automated world, all jobs would not disappear because the cloud landlords need capitalists to exist; however they could very well be tempted to increase user activity by paying the users themselves, in a fordist-like manner. Money that would then be reinvested in the system through paying for the vassal capitalists, who themselves would have to pay rent to the landlords.
looking forward to how you navigate the cloudalists @yanis. i know i am, like many, waking up to being a cloud serf while at the same time catching up to what late stage capitalism was/is. it's all a lot. but that's life. here's to being a radical attention activist fighting in the clouds!
How does Walmart compare to Amazon where Walmart provided its own fiefdom in which we would consume goods from the sellers which Walmart agreed to charge rent for shelf space? I see the difference in the extraction of free labor from the proletariat and the scale, but it seems to me there is still a great deal of overlap.
I suppose the key difference is Walmart's rent for shelf space is a vertical monopoly (Walmart is distributor and the sellers are suppliers) whereas Amazon (is becoming) a horizontal monopoly - competition becomes impossible because (as a metaphor) Walmart is one store in a city of stores whereas Amazon becomes the city itself. Amazon charges rent to both the distributors and suppliers. Does that make sense?
I guess WM is much closer to the traditional market since once you get in you see what every other buyer sees, and hence you could exercise capitalism since your choice to buy is based on somehow objective, shared shelf representation (somehow objecive, since WM still has a say whom to shelve and at what price). But I suppose the big jump is that in a virtual marketplace, one that uses extensively algorithms to make bespoke connection between seller ans buyer, both have no control on this connection and this virtual marketplace by driving all buyers and sellers to its platform, erases the options for buyers to persuade sellers on their terms. For this ownership the platform now charges rent to sellers who have no practical or realistic option to exercise their right to sell otherwise (I.e. without a lord). The final draw in the conclusion comes from the realization that the above situation effectively obliterated the market as a place where buyers make decisions bars on offerings and sellers ever fine-tuning to persuade buyers, by replacing it with feodal like platform.
@@Tehan123 its reaching a point of singularity, something of this scale will become so ubiquitous an entirely seperate framework will be required, built upon the last, to understand what we are even facing. Amazon extends past just a monopoly, its not real. There is nothing that is truly lost by removing something like amazon from the equation other than excess and convenience, amazon didnt even truly innovate, it just did what regular stores do and scaled it up by digitalizing it. Amazon is an Idea, its not a thing, and its value is entirely speculative and betted on. What does amazon actually own other than miles of conveyor belt, shelving, and a fleet of Rivian trucks? What does amazon actually supply other than something that goes away with a power outage? Its all superflous. It could be however, very useful, if it was coopted to centralize and aid with the distribution of material needs under a socialist framework. Kind of a mouthful, and i may not have all the correct words to express myself, but i hope there is a point in there that is somewhat coherent.
The funniest thing about this is the average bloke who embraces market economies who thereby thinks of himself as embracing capitalism, staunchly its defender, lives in no such world. The death of ‘free markets’ of agency, choice, competition, markets and even property, the IMF’s definition of capitalism, all passes without a ripple of emotion.
I can agree that technofeudalism exists and I will probably put the book into my queue because it sounds like you are onto something describing the ecoprism that is the internet. I was hoping you’d explore the influence of neocolonialism and how companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and various Musk companies are involved in the military industrial complex, education, and governments at large. I dont think it’s fair to say, even after having watched the video, that technofeudalism "killed" capitalism, but rather that the technocrats and their offspring have colonized the internet. Regardless, these companies are still beholden to and have a vested interest in western hegemony, unequal exchange, industries of extraction. While these new players have come and “revolutionized” the way we as a population can consume, trade, and finance the overall machinations remain consistent and many of these companies only exist as more efficient conduits for elite value extraction from the masses while simultaneously muddying the waters of class distinction between the common man. The robber barons and kings of old are still running the show i’m afraid, there are just more hands working the cross brace.
the kings of old still run the show, yet I think it's fair to say capitalism killed feudalism. Using "killed" in that way leaves room for acknowledging the kings and robber barons run the show, AND that there's a resurgence of a sort of feudalism, albeit it a technological one -- maybe, let's say some sort of, TECHNO-Feudalism! :DD
Just got my local library in Lockhart, Texas to order this! Can't wait to read it! I just read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Prof. Shoshana Zuboff... I know y'all disagree about the nature of the problem, but I know there's some overlap too -- I'd love to hear a discussion between you two someday. Also, Danae's song is pretty cool -- what a collaboration!
I just saw him walking down Angel place in Sydney and I got so excited and reduced to a fan girl that I jumped up to shake his hand. He was friendly and slightly surprised, I was a little embarrassed I'd interrupted his evening so said thanks and enjoy your evening. I think he is much more worthy of fandom than pop singers. Anyway. Yep.
Fantastic book , put the world we live around into perspective and tell us what is yet to come and how to change the way we traditionally have fought capitalism, because we are no longer fighting with the same beast , it has evolved into something else . Thank you Yanis, keep writing.
Auch! How is it possible Yanis and this important topic doesn't have a decent (and I would say it deserves a great) video edition with some modern techniques and some proper congruent aesthetics.
And you know what's worse? The monstrosity you described doesn't even do anything for us the serfs in the end. Perhaps I was once willing to put up with everything described here, even if I were aware of it (which I wasn't), if at least those algorithms actually gave me what I truly wanted! Nope, we don't get even that: They give us what the governments and NGO's and other private interests want us to see in the name of shaping the world as they see fit, like some sort of techno-Mao stuff. People block you at random, even a joke can get you banned in the name of morality, here on RU-vid I struggle to post comments on any video as the censorship bots auto-delete them at random now and you have to guess a wording that works.
And the conclusion and anwser to the problem is "to own cloud capitalism collectively"...and what is the collective? The State of course. Sounds familar doesn't it.
Bitcoin is precisely the answer to this. A distributed network owned by no-one and everyone at the same time. A public good, where individual ownership of digital property is hard coded into the network.
Oh gosh this comment was about 10 years late. Bitcoin (maybe) was pure when started and for some years later. Now?? Now it has become another asset controlled by giants in wall street and asset managers like Blackrock. It's now free anymore (if it even was ever).
Hmmmm…. Cloud Capital seems to assign the same roles to consumers and workers as the Protestant “work ethic” assigned to its practitioners. New medium same old paradigm of exchange!
some of this shit is crazy but it mostly makes sense to me i think its a socialist view against capitalism in general but it doesnt mean that its not true in a way
Actually mister Yanis is being polite with the subject, I am Romanian antrepreneur having a bussines in my country , hope you all have the patience to read my comment . Everybody knows that romanians are very straight forward , so I am gonna be very pragmatic . I can not use all the words wich I want to choose becaușe RU-vid will erase my comments ( freedom in the free world :)) ) . There is no union in the union , I always said that east Europe from Estonia to Greece , are just the west’s colo_y . In my country the fiscal code is created in a way that legally speaking no one can make profits , if I have an inspection from my government , I can receive a fine for any reason , even if I do everything by the book . So what is that ? I have the right to own a bussines but legally speaking 0 profits and this takes me to a very simple conclusion , I am being descouraged to own a bussines , ratherly go to a foreign corporation and get a job . So the west corporations are taking over the market , this is the 21’s century sla…y . Let’s not talk about the anti-romanian antrepreneur propaganda wich is happening here , so people are thinking how “cool” is to work for a foreign corporation . the west powers fought against each other for hundreds of years , now they came to the conclusion that is better togheter ( EU, NATO) , “THE EUROPEAN FAMILY “ the retoric is real , people are just being mani…..d to think that we are all togheter , it’s is false , they are the parents and we are the children . I will end my comment with this , the subject “eco green “ or how you want to call it , is the most dangerous thing that is happening in the european history (social , geostrategic …etc) , so the fight against “tirants “ ended , now we need to save the planet
Making sense of the world is wonderful but at the same time I can't help but feel like a man named Jeff is going to get his way in the end. Hopefully I'm wrong but right now I think far too many people are already lost in the panopticon. What to do in this situation? It is a problem beyond my intellect to solve.
I wonder what would dr. Cockshott say on this with his Newtonian views. It smells not very materialistic to my uneducated taste. Where is the conservation laws in these new super profits? Who loses value to whom here? What's the value's path? Is it more exploitation then the good old before-WW1-capitalism? How is none of the two pillars of capitalism mentioned is commodity production? As far as I know feudalism to serfs brings anything but precariousness.
So the algorithm manipulates our desires, at the end of the day for what we spend our money on, after we work for wages. I guess the point is to then to _seize the algorithm, to not be manipulated into wanting what we do not need._ Meanwhile the machines, AI, is creating art and deepfakes music, being creative, we are still working like machines! The 10% for the big guy cutting the foam off the top of every purchase is a clever way to make money when they own the means of circulation. The more we interpret the world, the more we change it through that interpretation.
Creating art is generous. There are algorithms trained endlessly on all human works that then produce what the algorithm thinks you want by making predictions. Whether or not you can call it art without human intentionality is up for debate. There probably needs to be a new word to describe what it is that algorithms and automation produce.
@@micro-organism-pv5gd an ironic and expedient combination? like all bourgeois "solutions" just combine total opposites, destroying both sides in the process.
This is why something like the fedivese is an antidote. People are the algorithm. The one pillar it needs really is a federating e-commerce component. I’d like to see municipalities and coops perform this function. Everyone should have a town e-market stall if they wish. Through federation towns can link their markets.
Hi Yanis. I have been following you with admiration since you were in an elected keft goverment and the crisis that followed and the humiliation by the EU Greece suffered and ending in the gross betrayal of the Greek people. You resigned then. I was wishing during the crisis and the humiliation of your country and people that you leave th EU and regain your soveregnity. You personally refused afterwards that Greece should exit the EU. You were a marxist but accepted capitalism. Maybe now you changed your mind and agreed with Sweden decision not to join the EU. How did European countries with different languages and cultures accept to be subordinated to a EU created by the CIA and by USA???????? USA is a union of 50 states with the same langage and culture. Even the Arab Countries can unite as AU because the speak the same langage and culture. How could you sell your great country and people to the German banks??? Do you repent now committing this crime to your own country and your own people?? What would you have done during this crisis differently and what was the best solution for Greece?? am interested to know your opinion now.
Yanis wants palestine free. But he doesnt care about tibet or my father's country laos being exploited and silenced by the invading country (chxna) he supports so much. Before u come at me with americans bombed laos: Laos gave americans the green light to bomb the communist away cuz only thailand and americans answered our calls for help. And unlike the communists that he supports so much, americans evacuated laotians into bunkers. Treated them like ppl unlike the slaughtering communists. He has no idea what he is saying. Wants freedom for some but not for others. Why is laos speakin chinese in its northern parts now? Where is sombath somphone? Why is yanis supporting a country that silences our people , exploits natural resources, invades and forces us to assimilate to them in our own culture and country? Yanis knows what he is sayin? Nah. What an utter hypocrite who hasnt healed yet. Nice day ☮️🍉
I'm sorry, but I think this is a bad idea. I want to be extricated from the modern technological nightmare. I do not want it to become instated as an institute of society so that the populace is convinced it is their friend. Not in my name.
@@hardy_har Of course I believe there is, or I wouldn't have written that message. What makes me hesitate from giving an answer is that, if we really think about it, a realistic answer to that question would be much more complicated than a youtube comment could accomplish. I think that the main problem is that people who think like I do here are a distinct minority, and without political will nothing will change.
@@hardy_har well that's no excuse for not writing it out anyway. If you have a blog you can put a link to it on your youtube profile and we could reach it through there
@@Omniraptorr I think you meant to reply to me. I don't suppose you want to discuss it instead? I rarely use the internet, so for me of course the fact that the cloud has so much power is of course caused by the incessant use people choose to make of the internet. That is why I said there is no political will. Yes, I will write out my ideas, but you are talking about an idea on this particular subject I assume? The issue is, you are talking to me and I have very particular ideas about how our political community should be organized, and I recognize that politics should happen through discussion. I believe my own personal views are too complicated even to explain in a single blog post, and my desired outcome would of course be related to them. But, if you would like to hear a possible alternative that is related more or less to how the political system currently works, I will give you an example of an alternative: Firstly, we could regulate which data firms are allowed to collect from users, of course limiting it significantly. If companies believe this interferes with ad revenue, they can monetize their websites. I think that, because our current way of life is so dependent on computers and the internet, such a policy would necessitate the simultaneous investment in state owned infrastructure which provides things like safe, private, and free emails and other necessary services which will be used in state-related affairs.
You are constantly misusing the word. Socialism does not mean central planning and Communism does not mean Authoritarianism and Capitalism does not mean free markets. Socialism: Ban for ownership of economic capital Communism: Classless society from the end of accumulation of capitals Capitalism: Accumulation of capital Here in Scandinavia the worker's unions gave up revolution in exchange for the owners paying welfare taxes and making job contracts. Social democracy is not Socialism
Yanis ,is there any way i can contact you by telephone? I'm not too good with the computer. Is there any way i can contact a site by email easily and leave you my number?
Hold on. You're a busy man. I have radical ideas . Maybe you'll scroll through my comments and if you feel like talking or messaging sometimes possibly I wouldn't mind sending you email comments . I have a similar idea about work than you do but I believe the solution is to evolve beyond the money system entirely. I believe it's possible to engineer better solutions over time. Why chase wealth? That's a waste of time and resources. Why not ensure universal wealth automatically for needs? I have many opinions. But they're good ones. I view work as an infinite endeavor. So therefore it makes more sense to do as little of it as possible and become more efficient to free up other kinds of wealth like free time. I believe in efficiency. I believe crime cannot be eliminated but simply reduced by making universal wealth roughly within the same range or degree for everyone. Alot of problems can be solved or reduced with little to no effort if the solutions are universally based to benifit everyone as a parameter for success. I really like your idea about extra compensation for the dirty jobs if cash were retained. But prefer to spread the load around to minimize contact with such work. So if the societal solutions affect everybody roughly the same it benifits everyone to avoid careless decisions that cause damages to other individuals. Most of it would be intellectual before implementation of planning action. We want to minimize wild experimentation where damages might happen. Less police and less jails and courts would be necessary as the impetus and incentives to crime are eliminated closer to zero percent if wealth is reimagined and the range of solutions due to individual's variance of needs are being met within a relatively close even range to reduce emotionally psychological impulses and typical thought processes from creating undesirable outcomes more often to decrease crime rates. In japan they don't litter the streets too much . That in turn reduces work cleaning up. To reduce energy consumption rooms can be made slightly smaller and rounded to reduce energy for heating or cooling. The idea is to get a larger percentage of individuals on the same page voluntarily and without using force. That benifits society,the world. The universe in a better way. We'll always have to deal with insanity which is a natural occurrence of entropy in matter . Entropy destroys us. But entropy can be slowed,remain the same or increased. Currently entropy has been increased on this planet. Entropy forces matter to disintegrate and evaporate into the void. But it also creates variety and keeps things moving forward as time itself is the directional flow of matter and a byproduct of entropy. Everything about matter flows towards evaporation and expansion as energy is conserved returning to the infinite eternal void from whence it came. Whole cities are best built from the ground up with innovative ideas to reduce energy needs to survive and resource subtraction rates from any stockpiles. Cleaning and maintaining buildings and homes with better materials and feng shui designs for emotional ,physical,spiritual,and improved mental health increase general wealth. Unlimited modern day wealth is the mark of insanity. Capitalism and the money system favors the insane. Psychopaths are dangerous and a constant threat to civilizations. The best way to depose of them in power is to have everybody take a brain scan which will expose psychopathy. There's other types of insanity too. Sociopaths,narcissists,bipolar ,and i'd include schizophrenia round out possibly one billion insane individuals on earth embellished deep within financial spheres. And because they're truly insane makes it impossible to reason with them beyond personal gain. Alot of the insane are wall street billionare types. All nations are controlled by the insane. Left unchecked they will increase global warming. That's the mark of insanity.
