Technofeudalism

Technofeudalism PDF Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1685891241
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
In a revelatory and pathbreaking work, the #1 international bestselling economist opens our eyes to the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world . . . “The Thucydides of our time.” —Jeffrey Sachs Big tech has replaced capitalism's twin pillars—markets and profit—with its platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labor like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism . . . Perhaps we were too distracted by the pandemic, or the endless financial crises, or the rise of TikTok. But under cover of them all, a new and more exploitative system has been taking hold. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies after the crash of 2008 went to big tech instead. With it they funded the construction of their private cloud fiefdoms and privatized the internet. Technofeudalism says Yanis Varoufakis, is the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and is the greatest current threat to the liberal individual, to our efforts to avert climate catastrophe—and to democracy itself. It also lies behind the new geopolitical tensions, especially the New Cold War between the United States and China. Drawing on stories from Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power, and, ultimately, what it will take overthrow it.

Technofeudalism

Technofeudalism PDF Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1685891241
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a revelatory and pathbreaking work, the #1 international bestselling economist opens our eyes to the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world . . . “The Thucydides of our time.” —Jeffrey Sachs Big tech has replaced capitalism's twin pillars—markets and profit—with its platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labor like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism . . . Perhaps we were too distracted by the pandemic, or the endless financial crises, or the rise of TikTok. But under cover of them all, a new and more exploitative system has been taking hold. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies after the crash of 2008 went to big tech instead. With it they funded the construction of their private cloud fiefdoms and privatized the internet. Technofeudalism says Yanis Varoufakis, is the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and is the greatest current threat to the liberal individual, to our efforts to avert climate catastrophe—and to democracy itself. It also lies behind the new geopolitical tensions, especially the New Cold War between the United States and China. Drawing on stories from Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power, and, ultimately, what it will take overthrow it.

Technofeudalism

Technofeudalism PDF Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1685891233
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In a revelatory and pathbreaking work, the #1 international bestselling economist opens our eyes to the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world . . . “The Thucydides of our time.” —Jeffrey Sachs Big tech has replaced capitalism's twin pillars—markets and profit—with its platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labor like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism . . . Perhaps we were too distracted by the pandemic, or the endless financial crises, or the rise of TikTok. But under cover of them all, a new and more exploitative system has been taking hold. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies after the crash of 2008 went to big tech instead. With it they funded the construction of their private cloud fiefdoms and privatized the internet. Technofeudalism says Yanis Varoufakis, is the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and is the greatest current threat to the liberal individual, to our efforts to avert climate catastrophe—and to democracy itself. It also lies behind the new geopolitical tensions, especially the New Cold War between the United States and China. Drawing on stories from Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power, and, ultimately, what it will take overthrow it.

Another Now

Another Now PDF Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612199569
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
What would a fair and equal society actually look like? The world-renowned economist and bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis presents his radical and subversive answer in a work of speculative fiction that recalls William Morris and William Gibson The year: 2035. At a funeral for Iris, a revolutionary leftist feminist, Yango is approached by Costa, Iris’s closest comrade, who urges him to carry out Iris’s last wish: plough into her secret diaries to tell their story. “But”, Costa insists “leave out anything that might help Big Tech replicate my technologies!” That night Yango delves into Iris’s diaries. In them he discovers a chronicle of how Costa’s revolutionary technologies had unveiled an actually existing, fully democratized, postcapitalist society. Suddenly he understands Costa’s obsession with the hackers trying to steal his secrets. So begins Yanis Varoufakis’s extraordinary novelistic thought-experiment, where the world-famous economist offers an invigorating and deeply moving vision of an alternative reality. Another Now tells the story of Costa, a brilliant but deeply disillusioned, computer engineer, who creates a revolutionary technology that will allow the user a “glimpse of a life beyond their dreams” but will not enslave them. But an accident during one of its trial runs unveils a cosmic wormhole where Costa meets his DNA double, who is living in a 2025 very different than the one Costa is living in. In this parallel 2025 a global hi-tech uprising, begun in the wake of the collapse of 2008, has birthed a post-capitalist world in which work, money, land, digital networks and politics have been truly democratized. Banks have been eliminated, as well as predatory, data-mining digital monopolies; the gig economy is no more; and the young are free to experiment with different careers and to study ”non-lucrative topics, from Sumerian pottery to astrophysics.” Intoxicated, Costa travels to England to tell Iris, his old comrade, and her neighbor, Eva, a recovering banker turned neoliberal economics professor, of the parallel universe he has discovered. Costa eventually leads them back to his workshop in America where Iris and Eva meet their own doubles, and confront hard truths about themselves and the daunting political challenge that "the Other Now" presents. But, as their obsession with the Other Now deepens, time begins to run out, as the wormhole begins to deteriorate and hackers begin to unleash new attacks on Costa’s technology. The trio have to make a choice: which 2025 do they want to live in? Varoufakis has been claiming for a while that we already live in postcapitalist times. That, since the 2008 crisis, capitalism has been morphing into technofeudalism. Another Now, a riveting work of speculative fiction, shows that there is a realistic, democratic alternative to the technofeudalpostcapitalist dystopia taking shape all around us. It also confronts us with the greatest question: how far are we willing to go to bring it about?

Summary of Yanis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism

Summary of Yanis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism PDF Author: Milkyway Media
Publisher: Milkyway Media
ISBN:
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
Buy now to get the main key ideas from Yanis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism In Technofeudalism (2024), Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism has been replaced by a new, more exploitative system. In this new era, workers are subject to intense surveillance and control by algorithms. Power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a few Big Tech giants, leading to a technologically advanced form of feudalism. Varoufakis explains the profound implications of this system for society as a whole and outlines how we can reclaim power from this new ruling class.

Raging Twenties

Raging Twenties PDF Author: Pepe Escobar
Publisher: Nimble Books
ISBN: 9781608882335
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
In RAGING TWENTIES, Pepe Escobar smashes a triple-wide jumbo bulldozer of erudition and insight through the painfully narrow and now Big Tech-fortified Overton window of conventional American political discourse. This volume includes 25 essays written for Asia Times, Consortium News, and Strategic Culture in the incomparable year of 2020 and adds a new introduction, afterword, and table of abbreviations. Educated people of all political persusasions will enjoy Escobar's stinging prose and his display of his wide-ranging and truly global knowledge of poetry, history, and political philosophy. American readers already skeptical of the dominant narrative will enjoy this scintillating dissection of the mammoth hypocrisy involved in the standard governmental and corporate narrative. And those with perspectives similar to the American mainstream will benefit from reading a truly Other-centered exemplar of the several billion people who find the political perspectives that are commonplace in Asia, Europe, China, Russia, and Iran more congenial than those of a US establishment that has gifted the world with seventy-five-plus years of continuous war. Escobar's first book in the US, Globalistan (Nimble, 2007), brilliantly anticipated the future of a disintegrating international system in an era of "Liquid" (hybrid) war. These were followed by Red Zone Blues (2007); Obama does Globalistan (2009); Empire of Chaos (2014); and 2030 (2015), all by Nimble Books. From the Introduction: The Raging Twenties started with a murder. That lethality was amplified when a virus cannibalized virtually the whole planet, devouring time. As time has been standing still-or imploded-ever since, we cannot even begin to imagine the consequences of the anthropological rupture caused by SARS-CoV-2. A new world starts when language-either a living entity, or a virus from outer space (William Burroughs)-starts metastasizing new words. A basket of concepts already stand out. Circuit breaker. Biosecurity. Negative feedback loops. State of exception. Necropolitics. New Brutalism. Hybrid Neofascism. And, as we shall see, New Viral Paradigm. The proliferation of new words-and concepts-paradoxically developed in parallel with the slow fade out of The Word. Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe summed it all up: "This end of the word, this definitive triumph of the gesture and artificial organs over the word, the fact that the history of the word ends under our eyes, that for me is the historical development par excellence." We all now live in Google town. Suddenly, we were forced to identify the lineaments of a new regime. A new mode of production: a turbo-capitalist survival engineered as Rentier Capitalism 2.0, where Silicon Valley behemoths take the place of estates, and also the State. That is the "techno-feudal" option, as defined by economist Cedric Durand. Squeezed and intoxicated by information performing the role of a dominatrix, we were presented with a new map of Dystopia, packaged as a "new normal", featuring cognitive dissonance, a biosecurity paradigm, the inevitability of virtual work, social distancing as a political program, info-surveillance, and triumphant Trans-humanism.

And the Weak Suffer What They Must?

And the Weak Suffer What They Must? PDF Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568585055
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
A #1 Sunday Times bestseller [UK] A titanic battle is being waged for Europe's integrity and soul, with the forces of reason and humanism losing out to growing irrationality, authoritarianism, and malice, promoting inequality and austerity. The whole world has a stake in a victory for rationality, liberty, democracy, and humanism. In January 2015, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor teaching in Austin, Texas, was elected to the Greek parliament with more votes than any other member of parliament. He was appointed finance minister and, in the whirlwind five months that followed, everything he had warned about-the perils of the euro's faulty design, the European Union's shortsighted austerity policies, financialized crony capitalism, American complicity and rising authoritarianism-was confirmed as the "troika" (the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission) stonewalled his efforts to resolve Greece's economic crisis. Here, Varoufakis delivers a fresh look at the history of Europe's crisis and America's central role in it. He presents the ultimate case against austerity, proposing concrete policies for Europe that are necessary to address its crisis and avert contagion to America, China, and the rest of the world. With passionate, informative, and at times humorous prose, he warns that the implosion of an admittedly crisis-ridden and deeply irrational European monetary union should, and can, be avoided at all cost.

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism PDF Author: Joel Kotkin
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1641772859
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism. If the last seventy years saw a massive expansion of the middle class, not only in America but in much of the developed world, today that class is declining and a new, more hierarchical society is emerging. The new class structure resembles that of Medieval times. At the apex of the new order are two classes—a reborn clerical elite, the clerisy, which dominates the upper part of the professional ranks, universities, media and culture, and a new aristocracy led by tech oligarchs with unprecedented wealth and growing control of information. These two classes correspond to the old French First and Second Estates. Below these two classes lies what was once called the Third Estate. This includes the yeomanry, which is made up largely of small businesspeople, minor property owners, skilled workers and private-sector oriented professionals. Ascendant for much of modern history, this class is in decline while those below them, the new Serfs, grow in numbers—a vast, expanding property-less population. The trends are mounting, but we can still reverse them—if people understand what is actually occurring and have the capability to oppose them.

Radical Markets

Radical Markets PDF Author: Eric A. Posner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196974
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Revolutionary ideas on how to use markets to achieve fairness and prosperity for all Many blame today's economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right? Radical Markets turns this thinking on its head. With a new foreword by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier as well as a new afterword by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl, this provocative book reveals bold new ways to organize markets for the good of everyone. It shows how the emancipatory force of genuinely open, free, and competitive markets can reawaken the dormant nineteenth-century spirit of liberal reform and lead to greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation. Only by radically expanding the scope of markets can we reduce inequality, restore robust economic growth, and resolve political conflicts. But to do that, we must replace our most sacred institutions with truly free and open competition—Radical Markets shows how.

Techno-Capitalist-Feudalism

Techno-Capitalist-Feudalism PDF Author: Michel Luc Bellemare
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780978115173
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 630

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Book Description
With blunt unvarnished realism, it is high-time anarchist-communism steps out from amongst the shadows and finally asserts itself as the most viable revolutionary option and antithesis to totalitarian-capitalism, that is, techno-capitalist-feudalism. After its 150 year long-march, through dense theoretical jungles, voluminous analyses, and multiple pragmatic interventions, anarchist-communism has reached the point where it is now able to throw-off the theoretical muck and political chains of past eras and assertively establish itself on firm ground. Its own firm revolutionary ground, devoid of any crutch. Despite many historical detours, anarchist-communism can now affirm with confidence its own political economy, possessing its own rules, its own logic, and its own terrain of study and method of attack, separate of Marxism. In short, scientific anarchist-communism is the vanguard of radical political economy. That is, scientific anarchist-communism is the new cudgel and information-bomb of the new post-industrial, post-modern anarcho-proletariat, namely, those post-industrial, post-modern proletarians dying on the front-lines of socio-economic transience, poverty, and unrecognition. No longer beaten-down, scientific anarchist-communism now takes its first steps into the new world, dodging bullets, criticisms, and the old clichés. Knowing it can always bend thought and action from now on, it blasts away any counterpoints on its own terms with rigor and certain iron will, since it is today the real proletarian revolutionary force. It is the anarchist power to be reckoned with, structural-anarchism. Make no mistake, we are inescapably immersed in granular trench-warfare against totalitarian-capitalism in and across a litany of micro-fronts. These granular power-struggles are constant, disorderly, and continuously changing their stripes and/or constructs. Consequently, workers have to adapt and change plans, since totalitarian-capitalism is well-equipped to absorb direct conflict into its logic of operation, which always invariably guarantees the accumulation, extraction, and centralization of profit, power, wealth, and private property in service of a ruling capitalist aristocracy. In consequence, we must fight, fight conceptually and fight materially, fight any way we can, since we are fighting for our lives, regardless of the ballot box. Thus, we attack. We attack from the polarities of theory and praxis forever locked in power-struggles. Now open, now hidden, we are caught in a long drawn-out war of attrition, trench-warfare against the logic of capitalism, ad infinitum. This is our destiny. Power resides on the streets. And there on the streets, power is found, picked up, and dusted-off when the ruling aristocracy drops it in haste when it is inadvertently forced into a calculated retreat by the strategic onslaught of the general strike and rampant demolition. Subsequently, this text is a power-tool able to shred through the complex entanglements of capitalist ideology. The text unburdens the reader of the heavy ideological baggage and workload crushing him or her into a lifetime of subservient obedience and docile compliance. Capitalism is totalitarian. It inundates everyday life like 1930's fascism. Thus, the capitalist aristocracy will not give up its ruling supremacy willy-nilly, without firing a shot. The capitalist aristocracy will have to be dismantled piece by piece, street by street. And only the purifying benediction of anarchist revolution, universal and permanent, can exorcize the demon pestilence called, totalitarian-capitalism. Tearing it out finally from the sickened womb of socio-economic existence, so as to cast it down from where it came, pure nothingness. Capitalism does not need workers. It is its own gravedigger. And already, it digs its own baroque grave, six feet deep. All it requires now is a bullet to the head. And it falls in.

How Markets Fail

How Markets Fail PDF Author: Cassidy John
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141939427
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
How did we get to where we are? John Cassidy shows that the roots of our most recent financial failure lie not with individuals, but with an idea - the idea that markets are inherently rational. He gives us the big picture behind the financial headlines, tracing the rise and fall of free market ideology from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. Full of wit, sense and, above all, a deeper understanding, How Markets Fail argues for the end of 'utopian' economics, and the beginning of a pragmatic, reality-based way of thinking. A very good history of economic thought Economist How Markets Fail offers a brilliant intellectual framework . . . fine work New York Times An essential, grittily intellectual, yet compelling guide to the financial debacle of 2009 Geordie Greig, Evening Standard A powerful argument . . . Cassidy makes a compelling case that a return to hands-off economics would be a disaster BusinessWeek This book is a well constructed, thoughtful and cogent account of how capitalism evolved to its current form Telegraph Books of the Year recommendation John Cassidy ... describe[s] that mix of insight and madness that brought the world's system to its knees FT, Book of the Year recommendation Anyone who enjoys a good read can safely embark on this tour with Cassidy as their guide . . . Like his colleague Malcolm Gladwell [at the New Yorker], Cassidy is able to lead us with beguiling lucidity through unfamiliar territory New Statesman John Cassidy has covered economics and finance at The New Yorker magazine since 1995, writing on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan to the Iraqi oil industry and English journalism. He is also now a Contributing Editor at Portfolio where he writes the monthly Economics column. Two of his articles have been nominated for National Magazine Awards: an essay on Karl Marx, which appeared in October, 1997, and an account of the death of the British weapons scientist David Kelly, which was published in December, 2003. He has previously written for Sunday Times in as well as the New York Post, where he edited the Business section and then served as the deputy editor. In 2002, Cassidy published his first book, Dot.Con. He lives in New York.