You probably think you still live in a capitalist world. You buy stuff, you sell your labor, and Jeff Bezos gets richer. It feels like the same old game we’ve been playing since the Industrial Revolution, just with faster shipping and better screens. But if you listen to Yanis Varoufakis—the former Greek finance minister who’s spent his life poking at the gears of the global economy—he’ll tell you that the engine actually stalled years ago. We aren't in capitalism anymore. We’ve drifted into something much weirder, much older, and significantly more parasitic. Basically, technofeudalism what killed capitalism is the shift from a world of markets to a world of digital fiefdoms.
It's a bold claim.
Most economists are still arguing about inflation rates or supply chains, but the "technofeudalism" argument suggests we’re missing the forest for the trees. In a traditional capitalist setup, profits are the prize. You make a widget, you sell it for more than it cost to build, and you pocket the difference. But look at the biggest companies today. They don't just sell widgets; they own the space where widgets are sold. They aren't merchants. They’re landlords.
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The Day the Market Died
Think about Amazon for a second. When a third-party seller puts a pair of socks on Amazon, they aren't participating in a "free market" in the classical sense. They are entering a digital estate owned by one man. Amazon takes a cut of every sale, charges for "fulfillment," and decides whose socks get seen first based on an algorithm no one else can see. This isn't profit; it’s rent.
Varoufakis argues that two things effectively murdered capitalism: the privatization of the internet and the way central banks reacted to the 2008 financial crisis. For decades, we thought the internet would be this grand, democratizing commons. Instead, it was fenced off. We traded the open web for "platforms."
Then came the "cloud capital." This isn't just machines or software. It's a type of capital that lives on servers and has the power to command human behavior. Every time you post a review, like a photo, or navigate with GPS, you are training the algorithm. You are producing value for the platform owner for free. In the old days, a factory owner had to pay workers to create value. Now, we do it voluntarily every time we unlock our phones.
Rent is the New Profit
In a capitalist society, if you want to get rich, you have to innovate to beat the competition. In a feudal society, you just had to own the land. If you owned the valley, the peasants had to give you a portion of their grain just for the privilege of existing there.
Technofeudalism operates on that exact same logic.
Companies like Google, Apple, and Meta don't really care about "beating" competitors in a fair fight. They want to be the infrastructure. If you’re an app developer, you must pay the "Apple tax" of 30% to exist on the iPhone. You aren't competing with Apple; you’re paying tribute to the lord of the manor. This shift from profit-seeking to rent-seeking is exactly why technofeudalism what killed capitalism. It has drained the dynamism out of the economy. Instead of investing in new technology to make things cheaper or better, the biggest players just invest in ways to lock users further into their ecosystems.
It's kinda like we've gone backward.
The 18th-century Enlightenment was supposed to move us away from the whims of lords and toward the objective reality of markets. But markets require price signals. On a platform like Uber or Amazon, the price isn't set by supply and demand in a way that’s transparent. It's set by an algorithm designed to extract the maximum amount of "rent" from both the worker and the consumer.
The Cloud Proletariat and the Cloud Peasantry
Under capitalism, you had the bourgeoisie (the owners) and the proletariat (the workers). It was a simple, if often brutal, relationship. Technofeudalism complicates this by turning us all into "cloud serfs."
- The Cloud Serfs: That’s you and me. Every time we upload a video to TikTok or a photo to Instagram, we are improving the "cloud capital" of the platform. We aren't paid for this labor. In fact, we pay for the devices that allow us to perform this labor. We are the peasants tilling the digital soil.
- The Cloud Proletarians: These are the people who actually work for the platforms—the Amazon warehouse workers, the Uber drivers. They are managed not by a human boss, but by an algorithm. The "boss" is literally a piece of code that tracks their every movement and optimizes their path to ensure maximum rent extraction for the cloud lord.
- The Cloudalists: These are the new lords. They don't need to produce anything. They just need to own the "cloud" where the rest of us live our lives.
The weirdest part? We love it. Or at least, we're addicted to it. The "fiefdoms" are incredibly convenient. Having everything delivered to your door in two hours is great, but the cost is the slow erosion of the very market mechanisms that capitalism was built on.
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Why Central Banks Accelerated the Death
You might wonder how these companies got so big so fast without actually being "profitable" in the traditional sense for years. Look at the money. After 2008, and especially during the pandemic, central banks flooded the economy with "cheap money" through quantitative easing.
Instead of this money going to build new factories or improve infrastructure, it flowed directly into the pockets of the big tech firms. They used it to buy up any potential competitors and to build out their "cloud capital." They didn't need to make a profit because they had a direct line to the fountain of liquidity. By the time the free money stopped, they had already built the walls of their digital castles so high that no one could climb over them.
Honestly, the "market" is becoming a ghost.
Think about your Spotify "Discover Weekly" playlist. You aren't "browsing" for music in a marketplace. An algorithm is curating a selection for you based on your past behavior. It’s a closed loop. The algorithm isn't trying to find you the "best" music; it's trying to keep you on the platform. This isn't a market transaction; it's a behavioral modification.
The Global Implications
This isn't just a Western problem. The rise of technofeudalism what killed capitalism is a geopolitical shift. We're seeing the world split into two major digital fiefdoms: the US-based "Big Tech" and the China-based "Big Tech" (Alibaba, Tencent, etc.).
Europe is in a weird spot because it doesn't really have its own cloud lords. It’s basically a colony of the other two, paying rent to use their systems. This explains why European regulators are so much more aggressive than American ones—they realize their entire economy is becoming a vassal state to Silicon Valley.
When we talk about the "death of capitalism," it doesn't mean we don't have shops or businesses. It means the dominant logic of the system has changed. In the same way that feudalism still had merchants but was ruled by landowners, our current world still has "capitalists," but they are increasingly subservient to the cloud lords. If you’re a small business owner today, you don't care about "the market." You care about your Google Search ranking. You care about your Instagram engagement. You are a merchant living inside someone else's castle.
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What Happens Next?
If we accept that capitalism is dead and technofeudalism is the new reality, the old solutions don't work anymore. Standard antitrust laws are designed to stop monopolies in markets. But how do you use antitrust against a company that is the market?
We need to start thinking about "cloud capital" as a public utility.
Imagine if the data we all generate—the stuff that actually powers these algorithms—wasn't the private property of a few billionaires. What if that data was owned by the people who created it? It sounds radical, but so did the idea of the eight-hour workday back in the 1800s.
Actionable Steps for the Post-Capitalist Era
Moving through a technofeudal world requires a different set of muscles than the ones we used in a market economy. You can't just "vote with your wallet" when the wallet itself is digital and owned by the lord of the manor.
- Diversify your digital presence: Don't let one platform own your entire identity or business. If you're a creator or a business owner, treat platforms like volatile rental properties. Always have a way to reach your audience (like an email list) that doesn't rely on an algorithm.
- Support "open" protocols: Whenever possible, use tools built on open-source standards rather than proprietary platforms. This is the digital equivalent of using public roads instead of a private toll bridge.
- Audit your "free" labor: Be mindful of how much unpaid work you are doing for cloud lords. Every "like," every "check-in," and every "review" is a brick in their castle. It's okay to participate, but do it with the awareness that you are the product.
- Advocate for Data Portability: Support legislation that allows you to take your data from one platform to another easily. This breaks the "lock-in" effect that feudalism relies on.
- Think Local, Transact Global: Support local businesses that still operate in the "real" world market, but use digital tools to help them scale without surrendering to the platforms.
The world hasn't ended; it’s just changed its rules. We spent two centuries learning how to survive and thrive under capitalism. Now, we have to learn how to navigate the digital fiefdoms of the 21st century. The first step is admitting that the old map doesn't work anymore.