Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism? by Yanis Varoufakis | A book review
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.ย. 2024
- This video goes through the story of capitalism’s demise, as laid out in Yanis Varoufakis’ book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?
My video on the technostructure (John Kenneth Galbraith’s book, The New Industrial State): • Technostructure & the ...
If you’re planning to buy the book from Amazon anyway, you can support the channel by using this affiliate link:
amzn.to/3VF70Wx
Some of the images in this video were generated by AI.
I recommend you put Yanis Varoufakis’ name on the title. Many people are fans of him but don't know about his book.
Done!
@@thenewenlightenmentwithash8465clicked because I saw his name. Not such a big fan due to his views outside of economics lately. But it’s a good sign the book review will be interesting
"It's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace".
Jack Hanson (Peter Fonda) in Easy Rider
Signing off with an affiliate link to the book is such a delightful irony. Thank you for the review! These concepts are very compelling and congruent with my experience, and spark many ideas.
I work on fed-funded research that often relies on petabyte-scale storage, and major parts of some agencies have migrated their data and become fully reliant on cloud storage and data APIs. Decades-long satellite and modeling datasets are kept on private-sector cloud services, which rent-keep compute and access, even (especially) for public data.
I can’t get enough of your channel
Brilliant man and amazing book. Bought both the audio and paper copy- worth reading multiple times because there’s so much to understand. Yanis is a gift to mankind.
Hilarious.
12:42 _A bureaucracy is a self-perpetuating organism that cares more ant its existence than its function._ - Max Weber
I like Mark Fisher's term Capitalist Realism better. At any rate, Fisher's work should be looked at when we discuss morphing of capitalism - capitalism, like communism, is constantly changing to maximize the capitalist wealth. Remember, this is a much more robust system of motivation than isms like communism or feudalism.
If itsso robust, why does it require so many impovrished 3rd world laborers?
OMG, I am bingeing your videos. Very enlightening. Looking forward to the new one!
Yanis is a real one, and so are you
you are great at the calm explanation of difficult concepts
Any system created by humans is determined to deteriorate. Capitalism is based on greed and the concentration of money. But this concentration also creates a concentration of power -- power to change the conditions of the game in favor of those that wield that power. And thus capitalism basically destroys itself by destroying the basis for a healthy capitalism and instead creating a capitalistic dictatorship.
Yes, but capitalism is actually built on scarcity, initially natural scarcity and scarcity is triggering self-preservation mechanisms like "greed", which is just hoarding, also known as private property from which the contract law results around which the entire world is built but which is obviously artificial scarcity, so the entire market system, no matter what word comes before the ism, is a fundamentally and profoundly anti-economic slave control system that is only about creating scarcity artificially through property and the contract law to exploit it for power, it is a slave control system and not an economy and money is the tool of greed and impersonal slavery, because unlike everything else money doesn't spoil and so allows hoarding into infinity and beyond and made slavery to the most normal thing ever, known as wage labor, people doing all the work for some basic necessities and indoctrinated wants, like cattle in the past but cattle was freed by technology while humans were conditioned to fear technology, actual progress and freedom aka. unemployment.
Capitalism emerged from the surplus energy/labor of the steam engine followed by the combustion engine. Global oil has peaked and energy/labor is declining. Non essential goods and services are the first to lose there market. Techno feudalism emerges from ‘dying’ capitalism.
Techno-Feudalism is the next level of capitalism/feudalism/slavery.
I love the way you discuss further reading recommendations along the way. Definitely subbed and looking forward to watching your backlog. 👍
I would like to own my identity and my online presence. I would no longer like to be used for someone else's profit.
How that can be done? Not a clue. Wish someone would write a book.
You could also set up a communal private internet in a neighborhood or condo, apartment or small town.
A very interesting clip. Is it just me, or is there something ironic in its final words about supporting the channel by buying the book from Amazon through an affiliate link?
Ironic and unavoidable 😂
Life is ironic
Rent on rent on rent
Support socialism by buying a book on Amazon so I can make a tiny profit off it. Biggest hypocrites ever.
It's fresh to see economists discussing these issues, very interesting!
None of them even know the non-ideological definition of the word "economizing", they aren't economists but preachers of the market religion, caught in the same delusions bubble for hundreds of years and can't get out of the infinite capitalism versus blahblahism nonsense, while it is never about capitalism versus blahblahism but only about free market capitalism or not free market capitalism, unregulated or regulated, capitalism is the religion of property, trading and money itself, an ideology that is built on scarcity and is therefore only about self-interest, competition and hoarding(property) = selfishness, infinite war for survival and greed, a fundamentally and profoundly anti-economic slave control system.
Too bad she can't see the larger story about the shift to the "rentier class" via the government. What made the building in her rest home example extra valuable was the permits and approval after going through the government-demanded convenience and necessity requirements. They were not just buying land and buildings, but obtaining permissions worth years of legal and political efforts.
If there were fewer and faster government regulations and permissions required, a competitor could buy or lease a building and hire workers and by paying less for food from a lower-cost market-based supplier beat the cost structure of a rent seeker owner and destroy his whole rent-seeking game. The rent seeker needs the government to protect him from competitors and want-to-be competitors. You only need a few percent economic cost advantage to kill off a rent seeker and someone who actually cares about the business can easily get that much advantage, except when the rent seeker has the government in his pocket.
In today's world of Angel Investors (AI) and VC investors, capital is not the limit to creating competition to kill a rent seeker. It is almost always regulation and government actions that prevent competition, often in the name of protecting competitive markets.
A good example is solar-grade silicon production which provides the raw material for making solar panels whose market is expanding worldwide to help with CO2 emissions and global warming. At one time a few decades ago the production was in the US and EU with some in Japan and a massive shortage appeared when Germany subsidized solar power. The shortage was so large that the spot prices were 10 times the production cost from a new facility making a huge profit opportunity. However, with our highly regulated economies in the West, it would take 5 to 10 years to get the required government permissions for a new greenfield plant of the required scale. This permission process would result in everyone claiming "stakeholder" status an opportunity to extort rent from the group wanting to build the facility. Meanwhile, an individual in China built a 1.5 billion dollar facility in less than 1.5 years that he paid for in profits the first 6 mo of operation. Now China controls some 90+% of the world's solar silicon production. The raw material is SiO2 which all countries have and capital which Western countries have, but we don't have government permissions.
We do have specialists getting "permissions" that are just almost pure rent seekers. For example, desalination of seawater provides 50% of all the water used by Israel and the technology is both cheap and mature with many components "made in USA" and the membranes invented at UCLA in the 50's. A company proposed a plant for So. California but demanded water prices three time higher than the same water as Israel, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Greece, etc. They wanted "rent for the permission". They did have the costs of buying ex-senators and other connected people to get permission and it took over a decade of effort. International contract prices for water from seawater desalination are the same as our present long-distance transported water all the way from the San Francisco Bay area. As the the water is pumped over 4,000 feet mountain passes, even the energy cost is the same.
I remember, during the '90s, I worked with a corporation that had a plaque entitled, OUR VALUES in every nook and cranny of their offices. One day, a guy who was showing me around said, "the problem with us is that we have values, but we have no principles whatsoever!"
Yanis is well known in Europe (financial crisis ... Greece ... Merkel).
When companies become 'too big to fail' they are no longer part of the Free Market.
When essential utility monopolies are privatised, the result is not part of the Free Market.
If a Free Market is considered essential to 'Capitalism', then Yanis is right - what we have now needs a new name.
Where is this free market you talk of.
Nah, they still compete.
Nah, privatised monopoly is more free market than if it's owned by the state.
@@nietur
Who can compete with a monopoly? It doesn't make sense.
Especially if that monopoly is in an essential utility.
The monopolies that own utilities here in the UK are so overloaded with debt they are functionally bankrupt,. but they are backed by the state, so they cannot fail.
Who can compete with that?
@@nieturtell that to my electric bill. Privatization doubled my bill, and service is worse than ever. No competition to be had.
That is exactly free market as free market can be free market, it is just not the fairy tales that you fell for, unable to think critically and believe things that are even more absurd than Disney cartoons.
I read "The Aflluent Society" by John Kenneth Galbraith and "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard in the 60s with other books in a similar vein. Combined with your thoughts and references, can we accuse capitalists / financiers of going so far as to dumb civilization down in many ways, some subtle, to skim money.
Aloha
Always looking for a scapegoat
Learn the history of Consumer Culture, learn about Public Relations Propaganda there you got it all in every single detail, just google for example 'history of consumer culture' and read the articles.
@@tuckerbugeaterLearn about the history of consumer culture, it is a well documented fact.
Please put Yanis' name in the title. It will get many times more views. I'm subbed to your channel now but I only came because I saw his name in the title picture- and that it was suggested after I finished watching a Yanis video!
Good idea! And done.
All signs we see in this current world do not point to "a better place" in 10,20,30 years, but rather to destruction. Dictatorships already become more fashionable and even within the framework of so called "democracies" it becomes clearer and clearer, that in reality we already have a dictatorship of global corporations. This will NOT create "a better place" for 99% of people, but a place of exploitation for those.
Maybe we can talk again in 100 years.
Thank you for presenting and reviewing Yanis Varoufakis' book. ❤
Very neat, though the final section, essentially about a US perspective on 'socialism as communism', missed the point (view from UK) about "socialize" as being "of the people" (Lincoln, Gettysburg). It's maybe just a little bit more than semantics ;-)
It maybe also worth folks looking at the way the likes of Amazon etc go about 'dispute resolution' that give the idea that 'the customer is always right' is equivalent to the idea that customer has any control (in a market sense). The customer is merely pacified, as is the supplier, and the rent taker proceeds unhindered.
Really good your review and use of reference and knowledge
Thanks I’ve been to lazy to read it, keep it up these type of book reviews
yeah, reading is way too slow i want it downloaded right into my brain. within 10 years, we will. crazy time in history.
If it says Yanis, I click. A brilliant thinker.
Yep. Even when I don't completely agree, it's basically impossible to ignore his perspective.
What is that? Reformed communism? @@TheRealNickG
Really nice job, loved your analysis. Justa side note, I'm quite sure it is Bretton Woods at 13:57, not Brenton.
I think financialization provides value to real people on an abstract level. Mortgage backed securities mean lower interest rates for borrowers and higher ones for investors. People have mortgages and invest into bonds.
Great video. This book sounds like a must read for anyone seeking to understand the modern economic system.
capitalism has been dead for decades. we now have corporatism (facism) small business and competition is not wanted. regulations are so conveluted that only huge corporates can afford to do it.. all by design
And then it became cloud capital. As the corporation no longer is operated by people, but software.
It's the natural direction of capitalism, that's what the "it's no longer capitalism" people don't understand, it will always end up like this following "the free market"
“It’s not real capitalism”
The only possible outcome of capitalism from its very fundamental functions, profit, consolidation and the fact that money doesn't spoil like everything else and so allows hoarding into infinity and beyond. This is capitalism, pure clean free market capitalism as free market capitalism can be free market capitalism, you people were just brainwashed by some Disney cartoons instead of learning about the system and history, never even understood that what they think is good is only good for them because they profit, they win which is only possible when others lose, you never even understood that they are the haves and you are the have-nots, that they are the winners and everyone else the losers, that when they say that capitalism is the best ever, that they are talking exclusively about themselves.
@@spoonikleIt always was and is operated by people, instead of putting everything in a cloud of mystery, better learn about the system, it is just the natural way of capitalism, inevitable accumulation through profit, consolidation and the fact that money doesn't spoil like everything else and so allows hoarding into infinity and beyond, capitalism is an ideology that is based on scarcity and is therefore only about self-interest, competition and hoarding(property) = selfishness, infinite war for survival and greed.
Hi Ashley, great explanation of some complex economic and sociological concepts that describe the techtonic shifts in the global economy. More so how these paradigm shifts change how we organise our social a political world.
Yanis Varoufakis's book seems more approachable with your review and explaination of his key observations.
As to the astonishment you expressed regarding the nursing home example. I too was surprised that you were unaware of the microeconomic process of vertical integration of a parts of a company's supply chain. My exposure to the concept was in my Sociology major at university. It was one of the features of how corporations have organis d themselves across nation boundaries. To the extent that the legitimacy and jurisdiction of Nation States are undermined.
The dominant economic theory does not explain the real functioning of economic activity and the processes that create the production of social wealth. Since the official economic theory is only a set of assumptions that serve to legitimize the current notable imbalance in the distribution of social wealth, until a new theory is founded that has as its basic assumptions the real living conditions of economic agents and population, all current formulations only serve to legitimize and rationalize those who hold real market power.
Obey your geek overlords!👑 "User" is the new "peasant".
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Great video.
Very consistent with Michael Hudson, I believe, albeit some different emphases. I guess too that Yanis is describing some of the forces that Turchin identifies as driving elite overpopulation and popular immiseration.
The explanation of the new Cold War feels novel. A factor you did not seem to mention is the role of government. In the US and much of the western empire / vassal states (I live in one of them) FIRE interests dominate policy. The US in particular can be described as a plutocracy much more than being democratic. But seemingly the Chinese government at least tries to subordinate capitalist / rentier groups to the state rather than allowing them to dominate it. This might affect how things play out. Just a thought.
The saddest part of this is that the killing of Capitalism - by Capitalists, with a keen eye for future profit - was not, in turn, replaced by Feudalism of any kind, almost the opposite. The Servile State .. the current reality in which we have all lived for nearly one hundred years .. was and is not based on the quaint notions of binding and mutual good faith (re property) but with the starker tones of commercial dependence and dominance. Faith let alone good faith being a hindrance to 'progress' (toward .. ? .. happiness, material self-fulfillment, and more of everything for all - or nearly all = at a price).
Capitalists mutually, separately, corporately, and privately slaughtered (not merely sacrificed) tawdry 19th-cent Capitalism circa 1939-1949 and replaced it with .. The State, which was already for the most part almost entirely owned or run by them and for them, except in this i) Communism, ii) Romanism, and iii) Intellectualism. Naturally, Romanism was ruled out, as too contrarian, Communism was still rather dicey - though interesting, yet controlling the purveyors of Intellectualism through a faux Socialist form of Statism was the winner of the Profit-For-The-Ages-To-Come-Idea award (and the Capitalists who got in on the funding of this State .. all for your own good .. can still see $$$$ signs until they fold the US Dollar as means of printing cash).
Thus, today, mega-profits can be made through a socialistic-sounding 'Welfare State' provision - or more accurately 'supervision' - more than all the railway builders and oil market cornerers could have begun to imagine, so a State-mandated Net-Zero-Humanity of the Future is no longer the idea of a toxic mind, it is .. for, as you have guessed, our own good, so we shall own nothing, and therefore we will be happy .. in this passing moment (because we have told you so, whether you believe in it or not, willy nilly); technology is a means for imposing the rule of this Servile State, but trustful good faith is irrelevant .. to the projected profit chart stats; the ideas of property, ownership, and fee have long been set aside for cheque, benefit, and rights - so having nothing is indeed a jolly good deal in exchange for independence (until one wakes up to find that one is now, statistically, among the 'excess population' problems to be removed, as the State deems fit, to meet the needs of the Capitalists who fund it, and as democratically accepted).
;o)
That's is show you do a review. Thanks for your efforts
Would you recommend reading his previous book "talking to my daughter" before starting this one, for better perspective?
Definitions are everything that matters in human capital, and the capacity to do work to maintain the capacity in the functional thermodynamical phenomenon of holistic ecological stability will return to civilization collapse when cause-effect of displaced values from goods and services to financialization and privately "owned" materials fails, goes against the ecological cycles of self-defining maintenance.
Greed is a social insanity, and it is quite natural for fight/flight uncertainty to manifest in all the various forms of Capitalism, ie the seeds of self destruction are inherent in the concept in the same way day trading will inevitably fail to win the lottery.
I love it when someone says something you feel but can’t put words to. In the discussion of private equity, you describe its effects as mutations that “don’t immediately blow up the economy, but causes new structures to be created or that self-generate.”
It’s almost like there’s just enough time that it prevents mass reaction, but incrementally swallows value previously enjoyed by those creating the value. It’s Jillian the nurse who is requested to take a pay cut - only after 6 months of no change.
How do the people mount any effective resistance while smoke covers the truth? How would this not be like arguing with a gaslighting narcissist?
Your book presentations are very enjoyable and appreciated. Thank you very much for the intellectual challenge. 😂 ❤
I don't network capital is the same. Cloud capital is literally the virtual space in which economic activities happen, it's similar to land in feudalism. Network capital is a name for the value of networks in economy, which can be manifested in social media but that's not what varoufakis is talking about
Capitalism is not dead. In fact, capitalism is the future of world economics. The reason for why are its free market societies. Therefore, once China and Russia become fully capitalist it has become clear that what has died, is 20th century capitalism. In Iceland, feudalism has been replaced with capitalism with the intent to produce a thriving free market system. Its replacement is going to be 21st century capitalism. Thanks for the video. Very informative and thought provoking. Best wishes from Iceland.
Markets can't exist without capitalism and capitalism can exist without markets.
"Free markets" ALWAYS end up owning the government they are supposed to serve, because if they dont their competition does. Capitalism is just the new form of aristocracy.
Isn't cloud just intangible goods and services? IMHO, the real dichotomy is real economy, including intangibles as opposed to the financial economy. After the economy produces the surplus and distributes it, recipients who do not need to consume their share of the surplus immediately convert the share, or part thereof, into financial instruments (note, I am not calling them assets) which are essentially claims to future surpluses. The problem starts, I think, if they insist that those instruments are assets and start charging interest (rent) on those claims for future surpluses; that is, to put it mildly, a travesty. TBD: if someone else wishes to "borrow" those instruments, then what?
I believe it’s Bretton Woods. Great Video!
We all take advantage of the internet and all benefit from it. Yanis would not have a voice without the internet
Although not immediately obvious, as humans we are instantly altruistic. We enjoy sharing everything with one-another.
Especially suffering.
Amazon is a store. A store is not a market. Wal Mart functions as a middle man between many sellers and many buyers (and serves to drive a hard bargain that many of us aren't good at, just as Amazon serves convenience and selection). There's no difference. It's profit, not rent (in this case) because if (when) the deal becomes bad enough alternatives are possible. Credit cards and that? Yeah, that' stuff needs to be nationalized.
But Costco has so few lines, just a couple of thousand (compare to Walmart), so where's the 'market', and who are trapped in the market machine.
Amazon has captured 'all' the people through the ubiquity of their access.
You're right. Tech is not a feudal monopoly or why would we ban Tiktok? These are fads. Costco, Amazon, Walmart, Aldi's and other stores coexist with farmers markets and secondhand stores. Rent comes from credit cards/payment processors and their rising transaction fees. We have tech to reduce payment fees to 0.1 cents (research B itc in C sh and the scalin wars a censored part of internet history) but the banks are too bloated to need to compete. Thats where the rent-seeking actually exists, housing/zoning regs and car-culture too. But those are also fueled by easy money from bank loans which incentive wasteful consumer spending and debt-slavery.
The feudal lords have not changed, they have always been the banking system. Control of the banks is control of the country.
@17:00 money pumps: Vanguard (2 trillion in assets), Citadel (control trade flow GameStop), AAPL, MSFT (4 trl), AIPAC (politician), Open (oil), etc
The notion that you can make it to PhD level economics and not learn about private equity and American power structures is wild. Excellent synthesis and insight.
Best advice my dad ever gave me in the early 1960's: "Don't hate the rich, get out there and become rich".
Get rich and watch the world burn around you. @@savage22bolt32
Sounds like in the east you'd have been a party member. It's always easiest to buy into power structures than challenge them.
@@markp6621 often the easy way is not the best way...
We are back to the East India Company Age (ie Military Industrial Complex) when Corporations control Countries!!
Thanks!
Your thunbnails are fun. Killd was a good decision to keep the font size big :)
Also have a look at the book "The Trading Game" by Gary Stevenson (and his channel GarysEconomics) for some similar views about the shift in the economic landscape, though perhaps more focussed on individuals in the rich/poor landscape. He also reflects on how often those who study economics are 'wrong' (aka 'don't need to be right' ;-)
the world would be a much better place if everyone was required to watch your videos
The pivot of power at the top of the structure is its weakest point, under traditional capitalism this was harder to upend because it still had support from shareholders that managed to steer its excesses away from complete disaster, but with the new techno-feudalist structure the pivot of power is paradoxically much weaker as being too centralised ( allowing for a total socialist revolutionary turn in direction ) ... yeah i like the focus of your article on what is cloud capital ( it was fuzzy before ) now i understand is more in terms of financialisation of money markets ( this idea of loans being chopped up into smaller parcels that float around like packets in a TCP/IP ( newwork protocol of the internet ) helps lots, thanks !!!
now that's some clear explanation. thanks
Love your work as always, and one of my favourites is been discussed. Beautiful!! It's a great awakening in many ways, unfortunately with the masses asleep at the wheel , once again! One can be empathic to some extent because it's not in everyone's wheel house to be curious, learn and Care, most want to exist and have simple needs, perfect cover for the narcissistic psychopathy that has slowly invaded and corrupted every corner of life, let alone climate change, and current theatres of , be they hot, cold or techno. Quietly in the background it is the escape of responsibilities that fuel and will continue to fuel and refuel our downward trend as a functional species, firmly rooted in the Activities of the American exceptionalism and wealth, China Russia and Israel are thorns in the side, albeit very painful ones.
Great presentation! But I disagree on a couple of points regarding capitalism.
Renters add value by reducing the risk when they cut up debts. In theory. The problem was that the government got involved and that they grew too large and had to be saved. Of course the saving could have been done better, but that is not how governments work.
Private Equity add value by increasing efficiency. As you say, they're in fact one company that happen to be active in two businesses.
The main thing you, and I think most left leaning people, misses with capitalism is that the capitalist isn't the one in control. The market is in control. The employee can just get hired by another company if the wages are lowered.
*
I think he is wrong about rent vs profit. They are still accountable to the people since we stop using google if the search results are bad. Just like we would stop watching tv if it was only ads and no content.
I do however think that the internet business is a bubble. Or at least the sort of leverage that create very destructive bubbles. Information becomes cheap, and with that less ad revenue, which will have an devastating effect when the whole system is so intertwined. What's worse, the normal interest-based economy is based on the growth of the internet-business and will come crashing down too.
A bonus problem with such a crash is that the international companies such as Amazon has destroyed most of the local undergrowth which might result in the dominance of an ineffective Amazon on a smaller market. An economic implosion.
I suspect that is the moment that capitalism dies, when we get stuck in a permanent decline when the growth economy fails.
You're right, they're still operating under capitalism. Tech is not a feudal monopoly or why would we ban Tiktok? These are fads. Costco, Amazon, Walmart, Aldi's and other stores coexist with farmers markets and secondhand stores. Rent comes from credit cards/payment processors and their rising transaction fees. We have tech to reduce payment fees to 0.1 cents (research B itc in C sh and the scalin wars a censored part of internet history) but the banks are too bloated to need to compete. Thats where the rent-seeking actually exists, housing/zoning regs and car-culture too. But those are also fueled by easy money from bank loans which incentive wasteful consumer spending and debt-slavery.
The feudal lords have not changed, they have always been the banking system. Control of the banks is control of the country.
Servers should be terrestrial capital. They behave like machines. No network effect, no marginal costs going to zero.
oh my goodness can't wait for your review of "Debt"
His definition of capitalism is suspect as it does not seem to be the standard of economical capitalism. I wonder how the Soviet Union fits into his model? Corporatism, another economical model, has a feudal like structure as private partners of the government control their particular sector of the economy. There is also direct government control in some sectors.
47:00 Isn't this just capital income vs. labour income? I didn't get this. You say as more profits are created by influencers, the economy is more about what they want rather than what the people want? But they do what makes them money, so they do what people want.
I don't know what your background is but regardless, a percentage of us have no empathy. We usually call them "sociopaths". These creatures look and act (generally) just like us but life is a game to them. They win different ways but many of them seek out power positions. Our government and police forces bare full of them. So capitalism doesn't make people greedy - greedy people rise in capitalism.
I greatly appreciate you and your explanation of Yanis' book. Thank you so much!
Best advice my dad ever gave me in the early 1960's: "Don't hate the rich, get out there and become rich".
@@savage22bolt32 why would I want to become an exploiter of human beings?
@@apetivist why would you want to be the same as all other human beings?
she's really great at explaining it. whats her name does anyone know?
everyone has a different point of view and Yanis should know more about what happened, if he did, someone would tell him he can't say that info and he will be reviewed and told what to take out of his book. From what I saw in the US, in 2001 my friend was selling his home and he got 3 or more Chinese buyers fighting over his home, some would tell him they would pay him $30,000 more than others. His home was in a bad location, that doesn't matter, this was done over and over, where my home worth $270,000 went to 1 million in 2007, one of my neighbors sold his home at that moment for over $900,000. Then the crash happened, where all the people on the top pretended they had no idea what happened. This same problem happened in Europe, they didn't have Chinese investors, yet they were stupid enough to lend large amounts to people who they knew couldn't pay it back. When the shit hit the fan, Europeans owed the money even if the home was sold for less. Banks went after them and they couldn't do anything about it. Today we have a European group of people ruining the world and no one is again doing anything about it, just like the financial crisis. Crime everywhere, floods of immigrants, paid for by a few wealthy investors who don't give a damn about society as a whole. We are stupid for believing so much in fake news, worse fake politicians who are enjoying putting on a show on our dime.
book recommendation: "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" by Yanis Varoufakis
Hey these are really interesting ideas. Keep them coming.
I was wondering if you could review Mark Fisher's Captialist Realism.
Markets and how we get profits change, but don't go away.
thank you
I just discovered your channel, I already love it, do you have a discord?
I'm glad to see you again Ashley! You should read Alexander Bard's "The Netocrats". It's a different take on "techo-feudalism". The advent of this new Elite that understands and yields the power of Networks. I think it's a better framework because it leads to "Attentionalism" as the next stage of the world. You should join the Intellectual Dark Web 🙏
This technofuedalist model describing the new US/China cold war vis a vis the US dollar reserve currency seems to fail to account for the ability of US capital markets to re-absorb money surpluses created by global trade. One of the primary reasons for US dollar dominance is the unmatched relative safety and elasticity of US capital markets, particularly US treasury securities, to absorb these surpluses.
But that’s a circular argument. The reason why the dollar is always so stable is because all world energy (and especially,oil) purchases are made in dollars and have been since the early 1970s. This keeps the dollar high, resulting in lower inflation in the US, allowing them to also finance a massive (and I mean Massive) national debt - equivalent to just under half the world’s GDP. This they do through debt which as you pointed out is considered a safe market. If the dollar-oil / dollar-global debt pricing model is ever abandoned the dollar will be priced accordingly only to demand for US goods - and then the dollar would drop because roof the trade imbalance and their deficit financing problems. It’s the economic equivalent of a single point of failure…
@@henghistbluetooth7882Has any country tried to price it's oil/gas output in other currencies ? There were rumours. Owning the global reverse currency is, as you say, could become a poisoned chalice.
You can have experts and data scientists scholars books
Universities barman taxi drivers
All will give you a different story to how US dollar. Nothing to do with dollar
It’s what they have protecting it.
That’s the trouble some countries ask the question and they find out.
How your presentation works for me.
A socio-political-economic presentation in Pictures and Words
The Story of the economy ~The New Enlightened by Ashley
~ DEBT tenth anniversary edition Edited by Jeremy Roche
~ Related to Feudalistic Capitalism and to Rentier capitalism is well networked
TECHNOFEUDALISM
Thanks!
BTW, it is Bretton Woods (not Brenton Woods)
Did anyone else mistake Galbraith's book title as "The Jew Industrialist State", instead of "The New Industrialist State"?
The jew Industrialist state sort of made sense in this way; the economic and political leveraging of suffering. 😂😮😢!! Sorry 😞.
The nursing home example is absurd. The lack of understanding is staggering.
You don't strip assets from going concerns, that makes no sense. You strip assets where the whole is less valuable than the sum of its parts..
Healthcare M&A works a bit differently than M&A in other sectors.
The reason where a nursing home (or another healthcare entity) would separate PP&E (and, realistically, non-professional [non-titled"] like "Jillian" employees) is law. There are laws that prevent business entities from controlling "Professionals."
This is nonsense.
good work
This is a fantastic video, thank you!
Yeah as I suspected he misses the mark - too much set in the old ways of institutional leftism. Cover some of Nick Land’s work 🤯
Really great video. I like this one
Cloudists perhaps do extract economic rent in the sense of larger share than competitive demand and supply would provide, and seems there is an element of geopolitics in creating that rent.
25:05 vertical integration
Think of your average banker or wall street nepohire, or immigrant just trying to make more money for their family overseas. They are all rentiers just playing the game. They don't really care about anyone other than themselves
Great work, however, your mic is clipping on every word. I would pull it a little away from your mouth or put a put a low pass at your higher frequencies
To be honest with you, the guy talks a load of crap and could be accused of being a liar. He's biased and his biases are pretty blatant for those who have a clue about economics. It's really not worth the paper it is written on. if you want a better tutor you might like to try Prof. Richard Werner.
Yanis is wrong on just about everything. Amazon is a market just like the old fashion market. When I go into a furniture store I don't know who was there before me. I don't judge the value of the chair based on what other people think of the chair. I pay the price for the chair because I can derive value from the chair or I don't buy the chair because I don't see value in it.
Except Amazon chooses which chairs you preferentially see, what payment systems you can use, and what percentage of a transaction they keep. Ive heard only a few percent is actually used by Amazon to maintain its infrastructure, with the rest permanently being drained from and continually shrinking your local economy. They also have all kinds of ways of "using" customer and vendor data. Vendors are also forced into dealing with a monopoly its requirementsof them, or else being cut off from the majority of online shoppers.
@@markp6621 Yes, there are many issues with Amazon but the answer in not Marxism. Every problem a Marxist sees needs to be solved with Marxism hammer.
The problems with Amazon need to be solved with the justice system. Capitalism works when the consequences for bad behavior are felt immediately.
Also, I don't understand "rent seeking" as a negative. Without rent your savings disappear. The economy has to keep moving in order for your savings to keep its value. If you put your savings in apples the apples go bad. You have lost your savings.
When I think of Post Capital infrastructure, ...Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft building NuclearPowered SuperIntelligent MegaComputers comes to mind.
You know that when you get 10 economists together, you will have a dozen opinions.
Don't take everything you heard here as fact.
You're full of wisdom.
@@tuckerbugeater just a corny old man.
Economists have predicted 8 of the last 5 recessions!
@@justme-hh4vp 🤣🤣🤣
Hmph
The House of the Mouse Disney Corporation is a classic Rentier Class, they have gobbled up many companies into a monopoly... YOU might NOT like Toxic Masculinity BUT their campaign to boycott Disney is actually working, crippling Disney's bottom line !!!
NOW we need China to bring their Cloud economy GLOBALLY as an Alternative to the American Rentier Oligarchy Class, ie China's BRICS & BRI New Silk Road.... as competition.... Why do the middle class have to pay extra tax on American junk EV cars, when Chinese EV cars are just as good and cheaper... Middle class need to cut out the middlemen of Bankers and Lawyers
it is all capitalism, Technofeudalism still deals with capital....
Yanis has some nice insights but he is also looking at the future with capital and ownership, the two big power factors that incentivise all the destruction that lead us to this point.
we will destroy ourselves if we fight for ownership and capital, and to make sure you know what capital entails: it is any credit system, barter, fukking blockchain/crypto, trade. because it all leads to power hierarchies and death of civilization.
I thought this was a disappointing review, especially from an economist. There are numerous problems with Varoufakis' these that could have been discussed but none of these are mentioned.
- You don't mention that in his book he talks a lot about the "new Cold War" but he has nothing to say about preliminary battles and drive to a new hot world war. Why is NATO at war with Russia in Ukraine? Why is US imperialism preparing for war with China? Isn't there a contradiction between a world economy divided into competing capitalist nation-states? Why can't capital escape the nation-state system it created? Varoufakis obviously doesn't think these questions have anything to do with capitalism or of any danger worth mentioning. He thinks capitalism is stable.
- 27:05 "The 2008 crisis untethered the economy from profits" Did it? How? Theoretically Varoufakis is dishonest and his references to Marx are disingenuous. He wants to claim the authority of Marxism without clearly showing that he disagrees with Marx's conclusion that the profit-system will collapse due to its own contradictions, especially that the cycle of money-commodity-money which produces the extraordinary growth in the productivity of labour is also the source of its crisis. Varoufakis at once asserts and denies the labour-theory-of-value. He says at one point "we give our labour to the cloudalists" but he doesn't note that profit always came from surplus value that was unknowingly given by workers to capital. At 56:47 the review quotes from Varoufakis about "surplus value" but he never explains it.
- The theoretically bankruptcy of Varoufakis leads to many absurdities. At one point he says. "On the 15th of August 1971 Nixon told the world that they would no longer exchange foreign held dollars for gold at that fixed price ($35 US per ounce of gold), in other words 'no more gold for you from our vaults, our dollars are now your problem'. Non-American central banks suddenly had no alternative than to use dollars instead of gold as reserves to back the value of their currency. The dollar began to resemble an IOU."
But what are dollars an IOU for? It's obviously not gold any more. Perhaps more dollars? Varoufakis doesn't explain because he can't explain.
- 0:21 "he's actually a socialist and has been a socialist sort of all his life". In what way? His whole ideology is capitalist reform, not its overthrow. Fundamentally Varoufakis thinks capitalism is all about "power", that value is subjective and capitalism is NOT the expansion of capital through the extraction of surplus value from the labor of the working class.
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FWIW: Varoufakis reads his own book in full on TH-cam here:
Yanis Varoufakis - Technofeudalism [Audiobook]
th-cam.com/video/gioEct6Kexs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=QtoYtb5M3ng01lZ7
7.5 hours (save your money if you want to hear what he says.)
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For those who want to understand Karl Marx:
The contemporary relevance of Karl Marx, 200 years since his birth
th-cam.com/video/eamti34XKUs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=aQm7rfHtKuR7y0gW
Never take the advice from people who don't have skin in the game.
Capitalism will never die unfortunately
Adam Smith Capitalism died in his lifetime. What we call capitalism is industrial feudalism or corporatism. Nothing has changed. The 1% rule, and don’t think that socialism will change the rule.
Very nicely done indeed.
But, if I may, you might do well to mute all of the unnecessary insertions of "like" into sentences in which it has no place.
If you are not expressing a liking for something, or likening one thing to another, it is extremely off-putting to hear this word so very, very frequently.
I am aware that it is extremely common, and that many people seem not to realize that they are saying it, but in an otherwise wonderful and worthwhile video, it really does spoil things.
With many thanks.
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