Technofeudalism
What Killed Capitalism
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- 9,49 €
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- 9,49 €
Publisher Description
‘What an amazing piece of work this is. Ground-breaking, thought-provoking and highly accessible. Everyone should read it. The dark, scary, exciting song of our age. 100 out of 100’ IRVINE WELSH
Capitalism is dead. Welcome to technofeudalism.
In his boldest and most far-reaching book, the visionary economist and number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis shows how the owners of big tech became the world's feudal overlords – replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy and rewrite the rules of global power.
But as Varoufakis also reveals, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison.
‘An epochal, once-in-a-millennium shift . . . this isn't just new technology. This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power’ Observer
‘An urgent demand to seize the means of computation’ CORY DOCTOROW
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The revolution has already occurred—and while capitalism lost, communal ownership certainly didn't win, according to this sweeping polemic. Economist and former Greek finance minister Varoufakis (Talking to My Daughter About the Economy) contends that capitalism died when the physical means of production—machines, factories, and services—were superseded by virtual platforms that, in feudal style, seek "rent" rather than surplus profit derived from labor. He calls this new economic reality "technofeudalism," a system dominated by enormous companies existing largely online that transform users into the equivalent of medieval serfs, toiling (posting and networking) for free on land they don't own (apps). Walking readers through the economic developments that led to this point, Varoufakis cites the flood of cash that flowed through banks and governments in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as the catalyst behind the monopolization of the internet by corporations like Amazon and Apple that silo users into "cloud fiefs." Throughout, Varoufakis's exuberant prose amuses. (On the financial deregulation that led to the 2008 crash: "The social democrats had become the era's lotus eaters. As they gorged on financialization... its honeyed juice lulled them into the belief that what had once been risky was now riskless.") Readers who feel burned out by intrusive apps, relentless advertising, and inexorable algorithms will revel in this fiery complaint.
