[HN Gopher] Varoufakis: Capitalism is dead, long live Technofeud...
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Varoufakis: Capitalism is dead, long live Technofeudalism
Author : cornholio
Score : 139 points
Date : 2023-10-01 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unherd.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unherd.com)
| Mainan_Tagonist wrote:
| The same old rant, over and over... Communistic rethoric is
| unable to evolve, it merelly reproduces the same criticism over
| time, pinpointing the same flaws just changing the target.
|
| Ho, and punching Hayek, 30 years after his death, is really
| beneath contempt.
|
| Technofeudalism is something you can choose to be a part of or
| not. You can (and should) pay for email, news and other services
| and you may or may not choose the cloud, most do not by the way.
|
| So really, who is Varoufakis talking about?
| tored wrote:
| You may have the skill, knowledge and wealth to pay for email,
| news and services, but a large part of the population doesn't
| and they will drag you down with them.
|
| Edit: typo, 'to' instead of 'the'
| treyd wrote:
| Many people do not have the disposable income to pay for email,
| news, or other services and even among those who do, aren't
| economically educated enough to think about the systemic
| downsides of taking the free option. Systemic problems are
| uniquely difficult to address at the individual level through
| individual action.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| One thing is sure that since Hayek's time, the market has become
| more efficient at creating and fulfilling the desires of
| consumers. The obligatory recommendation to see the Century of
| the Self by Adam Curtis for a historical perspective on
| consumerism.
|
| However, Varoufakis has a point that a monopolist capitalism,
| enabled by technology, is not an attractive system.
| camillomiller wrote:
| I would indeed go rather with Oligocapitalism, than
| Technofeudalism.
| labrador wrote:
| > The obligatory recommendation to see the Century of the Self
| by Adam Curtis
|
| or you could take a shortcut and ask Bard:
|
| "Advertising existed before Freud's nephew Edward L. Bernays
| came along. What new thing did he contribute to deserve to be
| called the father of modern advertising?"
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > However, Varoufakis has a point that a monopolist capitalism,
| enabled by technology, is not an attractive system.
|
| Not only is it not a attractive state, in the sense of the
| capitalistic economic system being a dynamical system, it is a
| attractor state [1] of the system. That is what the core of the
| issue is. To fix things, you can't just stay within the
| capitalistic system. You have to change to a different dynamic
| system with a different attractor state.
|
| [1] Tongue-in-cheek pun fully intended.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| The technofuedalists get to stay in power because people so
| happened to put their data in these data bases / technokeeps, and
| all the law is focused on anti-circumvention, on adding legal
| might to the high walls and big moats these folks eventually roll
| out (enshittification).
|
| For a while humanity had some property rights to the things they
| bought, to what happened in their home. But the big shift is that
| every device now has it's own terms of use, that these services
| get to write whatever contract they want to dictate to the world
| how it can use it's devices and it's data.
|
| Shout-out to this post highlighting "Web scraping for me but not
| for thee" highlighting Mark Lemley making this point (the shift
| from pro-humanity property rights to pro corporation contract
| law) 20 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37264970
| https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2023/08/web-scraping-f...
|
| My personal opinion here, IP and anti-circumvention laws should
| be gutted & are a scourge against the human spirit. We should be
| encouraging mashup culture & rising off the shoulders of giants,
| not being crushed under their heels.
| seydor wrote:
| What's making this guy so popular i wonder? The thesis here in
| particulr is very weak, technofeudalism is just the latest form
| of capitalism, it s not the end of it. we ve seen this kind of
| rhetoric before, like when TV advertising manufactured
| consumerism. Capitalism didn't die, quite the opposite
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Just to be clear, whomever Varoufakis is popular with, that's
| not Greek voters. In the recent parliamentary elections the
| party he leads, MeRa25, received less than 3% of the vote
| (2.50%) and thus missed the threshold for seats in parliament:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2023_Greek_legislative_el...
|
| MeRa25's is row 9 in the table at the top of the section.
|
| Of course, the same parliamentary elections gave more than 3%
| and seats in parliament to various far-right remnants of Golden
| Dawn, like the "Spartans" (4.68%, 12 seats), "Victory" (3.70%,
| 10 seats) and "Greek Solution" (4.44%, 12 seats), and the Greek
| Communist Party (7.69%, 21 seats) so Varoufakis popularity is
| really no criterion for anything at all. At this point Greeks
| might next vote for Karagiozis (our version of Bozo the clown
| ish) for all the difference it will make.
| notacoward wrote:
| > technofeudalism is just the latest form of capitalism
|
| Just so you know, some people might not see that as the strong
| defense you seem to think it is.
| zolbrek wrote:
| "While privatisation and private equity asset-strip all the
| material wealth around us, cloud capital goes about the business
| of asset-stripping our brains. If each of us is to reclaim
| ownership of our individual minds, we need to collectively take
| ownership of cloud capital, instead of submitting to a few feudal
| overlords. It will be damn hard. But it's the only way we can
| turn our cloud-based artefacts from a means of behaviour
| modification to a means of emancipation."
|
| I wish Varoufakis expanded on this more. Does he mean choosing
| alternatives like Mastodon over X FKA Twitter, or does he
| actually intend to say we need to collectively take ownership of
| giants like Amazon? I can't say I see the possibility of the
| latter.
| JieJie wrote:
| Maybe I am naive, but can't we all just become the shareholders
| to which Amazon, Inc. must satisfy? I know it's not that way
| now, but could it not somehow be in the future, maybe even the
| near future, where we have collectively taken ownership?
|
| Maybe we can even do this non-violently, especially considering
| it is our data, our very lives and livelihoods, that were used
| to create these entities? Are our creations in no way
| accountable to us? Even the most dyed-in-the-wood Capitalists
| surely wouldn't agree to such a thing.
|
| Maybe considering the amount of sweat-equity the average
| worker, artist, writer, homemaker has in these creations, these
| machines, these corporate entities; will they not, as they
| become more intelligent, become more and more aware of who they
| truly owe allegiance to.
|
| We can make hell of heaven or heaven of hell; it's up to us.
| nomel wrote:
| My ISP, a monopoly, says I cant host any service. i asked them
| if their business plan allowed hosting, and they said no...
| sublinear wrote:
| I can certainly see how some businesses may handle sensitive
| data that require certifications and on-premises solutions.
|
| I'm curious why that's necessary for you though? Wouldn't a
| VPS be cheaper anyway?
| hgdfhgfdhgdf wrote:
| Do you not have access to AT&T and Verizon?
| bluepoint wrote:
| Varufakis does not say things based on some big thinking. His
| objective is to provoke and get attention. During the greek
| debt negotiations he was bragging about "creative vagueness",
| which means that he was purposely speaking vaguely with the
| intention to confuse the EU partners (who would be the ones
| paying for the debt) and throw implicit threats. His term as
| finance minister was a disaster and he was eventually kicked
| out. His party was recently voted out of the greek parliament,
| so nobody takes him seriously in his home country. His soeaches
| (in any language) are usually vague general bulshit that no one
| can argue for or against.
|
| You will probably downvote me for ad-hominem, and for not
| responding to his "arguments", but from my perspective, I don't
| think there is a deeper meaning in his writings than what
| ChatGPT would produce and he does not deserve even the modest
| popularity he seems to have.
| catgary wrote:
| Taking ownership of Amazon seems crazy, but I do wonder if
| there's some logic to the idea that it might be time to
| consider "public utility" versions of apps. Like a crown-
| corporation cloud services provider or a municipality-operated
| DoorDash.
| ssivark wrote:
| > Like a crown-corporation cloud services provider or a
| municipality-operated DoorDash.
|
| You might be interested in the "Open Network for Digital
| Commerce" [1] being developed in India. The idea is to lay
| down protocols and APIs run by public entities that different
| service providers (sellers, logistics providers, etc) can
| each plug into.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Network_for_Digital_C
| omme...
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Has ONDC seen any traction so far outside of pilot
| programs? In my circles people always order from Flipkart
| or Amazon.
| angra_mainyu wrote:
| Maybe something like coops?
| hgdfhgfdhgdf wrote:
| Why would a government monopoly on apps be a better
| alternative?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Because they'd operate at cost, which is wildly out of
| alignment with what the market will charge you for a CPU
| cycle.
|
| I'd bet that <10% of what you pay for an EC2 instance is
| hardware acquisition and labor and electricity. The other
| 90 is in support of the never ending zero-sum game that is
| fighting over market share.
|
| Compare it to municipal internet, in which you usually pay
| less to get more because you can fire the marketing
| department.
| r00fus wrote:
| Government funded/subsidized but worker-run would be the
| ideal approach.
| g00gler wrote:
| What about a collective approach run by the businesses in a
| town rather than companies that charge high fees on both
| ends?
| saulpw wrote:
| It's not a monopoly, it's a baseline. Like the postal
| service or Medicaid. You're always free to choose the non-
| government option if it suits you better, but the
| government option guarantees that there is something
| reasonable on offer for the 10% of people that corporations
| deem "unprofitable". Old people, sick people, poor people,
| rural people. It doesn't have to be great, it just has to
| provide this now-essential service for those who would
| otherwise fall through the cracks.
| notacoward wrote:
| > it's a baseline. Like the postal service or Medicaid
|
| I think the interstate highway system might be an even
| better example. An absolutely essential part of business
| infrastructure and personal lifestyles, built and
| maintained largely at government expense, yet hardly
| anyone is asking for it to be torn down or privatized.
| Not even the parts that have tolls. (Yes, there are _a
| few_ who suggest this, but even by right-wing
| /libertarian standards they're considered a bit crazy.)
| Just as anyone with a driver's license can drive on an
| interstate, anyone should be able to participate in the
| internet. It's not that much of a stretch from there to
| saying they should be able to participate _fully_ , which
| means being able to host sites or apps. It doesn't have
| be be completely free of cost (see: tolls) but should be
| freely available and run for the public good. That's no
| crazier than the interstates.
| verve_rat wrote:
| The danger of course is that this turns in to a subsidy
| for the private interests. If they can avoid serving the
| unprofitable because the government will pick up the
| slack, then tax payers are paying for the service of that
| 10% and private business gets all the profit from the
| rest.
|
| Either you need industry charges to cover that cost to
| government, or a mandate that they can't ignore expensive
| customers.
| 8note wrote:
| > Either you need industry charges to cover that cost to
| government
|
| Like, corporate taxes?
| ben_w wrote:
| Even if it's a monopoly (not strictly required),
| nationalisation means the nation becomes the only
| shareholder, and the profits are directed to the growth of
| the nation rather than the business.
|
| Apps are probably not the right target for that, but Amazon
| might well be -- it has expanded to the point it needs its
| own delivery network because government owned post isn't
| enough in certain countries.
|
| It would be a massive pain to do this _well_ , certainly
| more than would fit into a comment box like this. And not
| just because it's a multinational, and different
| governments will have different opinions about the process
| of nationalisation.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Or we could, you know, _get our heads out of the clouds_. The
| government didn 't force us at gunpoint to all get an Amazon-
| branded brain stem implant. If you think that the net is
| claiming ownership of your brain, _turn off the net and walk
| away for a while!_
|
| We can't _collectively_ re-take ownership of our brains. No,
| either _you_ re-take ownership of your brain, or someone else
| is going to own it. All Varofakis ' proposal will do is change
| who the owner is, but it won't give you back ownership of your
| own brain.
|
| Someone outside can't do it for you. You do it, or it doesn't
| happen.
| pydry wrote:
| I imagine he probably means building stuff like the drivers
| cooperative
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drivers_Cooperative and
| getting people to use them on top of pressuring governments to
| crack down on the monopolists and favor these more democratic,
| egalitarian alternatives.
|
| Amazon itself probably isnt going to be taken over unless there
| is a 1917 style revolution, but it could certainly be
| economically defanged.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > I wish Varoufakis expanded on this more.
|
| He has a book out by the name of Technofeudalism [1]. Haven't
| read it, but I am sure he discusses these ideas in more detail
| there.
|
| One chapter's subsections are as follows.
|
| > Chapter 7 - Escape from Technofeudalism
|
| > The death of the liberal individual
|
| > The impossibility of social democracy
|
| > Crypto's false promise
|
| > Imagining Another Now
|
| > Democratised companies
|
| > Democratised money
|
| > The cloud and the land as a commons
|
| > A cloud-rebellion to overthrow technofeudalism
|
| > Back to your question, one last time
|
| "Democratised companies" probably means he stands for anarcho-
| syndicalism [2] - meaning workers of _all_ companies should be
| the ones who own the company they work at. Or some similar
| prescription of giving workers more control over the economy.
|
| [1] https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2023/09/07/technofeudalism-
| ha...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
| the_biot wrote:
| The fact that Varoufakis still expounds on anything at all after
| his disastrous term in the Greek government proves that he's
| utterly shameless, and possibly has little self-awareness.
|
| But to see some people taking him serious and even discussing his
| writings with a straight face is surreal.
|
| This emperor has no clothes; publicly flashed Greece and all of
| Europe during its worst crisis in decades.
| staunton wrote:
| What exactly is disastrous about his term?
|
| He pushed for certain unorthodox policies, which may or may not
| have been economically prudent, but his boss decided not to go
| for them after all when pressured by the EU, at which point
| Varoufakis resigned because his political bit was over.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Policies can't be divorced from reality, especially if you
| are a finance minister of a vulnerable, small, broke nation
| in hands of giants.
| staunton wrote:
| I totally agree with what you're saying. However, does it
| apply to Varoufakis? Can you cite sources or outline an
| argument that his policies _actually were_ divorced from
| reality? What would have happened if the Greek government
| had not backed down? Would it have been worse than what 's
| slowly happening now? (Honest questions, I don't know
| enough economics to judge)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> What exactly is disastrous about his term?
|
| He gambled with the fortunes of an entire country just to
| satisfy his ego.
|
| I'm Greek and I watched the events of the disastrous Greek
| delegation to Europe unfold from abroad, the UK where I'm an
| immigrant. Varoufakis was such an obvious clown, devoid of
| every possible sense of reality, let alone any kind of
| competence in technical matters, that he made me appreciate
| Angela fucking Merkel.
|
| That's right. I'm Greek and watching Varoufakis interact with
| Merkel, I ended up admiring Merkel. That's how disastrous was
| his term.
| elktown wrote:
| People really need to stop using "I'm X, and I therefore I
| know". No. You're just as likely, maybe even more, of being
| politically invested. "I'm American so I know this
| Democrat/Republican is a freckin liar!" makes just as
| little sense.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Note well what I wrote:
|
| >> I'm Greek and I watched the events of the disastrous
| Greek delegation to Europe unfold from abroad, the UK
| where I'm an immigrant.
|
| I don't know better because I'm Greek. I paid attention
| because I'm Greek.
|
| But, also: native language, better grasp of context.
| Don't understimate that. Yes, I have a better chance to
| know better than anyone who isn't Greek and that's what
| it is.
|
| Finally, I'm a leftie. I _am_ politically invested: _on
| his side_. But even so, Varoufakis is terrible and he has
| pissed off everyone to the left and to the right. It
| takes a special kind of idiot to do that.
| staunton wrote:
| It's amazing to have people on such a forum who can give
| some insights. Could you perhaps write a longer response
| outlining how you see what happened there? How he pissed
| off everyone? Was it his policies? Was it how he
| communicated them? Was it both?
|
| For a while, is seemed as though the Greek government was
| going to go through with it. I don't have the expertise
| or context to judge if they should have or not, or if
| they even really could have tried in the first place. It
| just seems that the crisis was canned and is simmering
| now to see another day...
| the_biot wrote:
| No, this is somebody who saw their country balancing at
| the edge of the abyss for months, with this clown
| constantly trying to tip it the wrong way. Their own home
| country, where they grew up, which has all their
| friends/family in it.
|
| Can you not understand how that would hit a person much
| harder than, say, somebody outside of Greece, let alone
| the EU? How much more invested in the welfare of this
| country they must be?
|
| A little empathy goes a long way here.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Adkins et al provide a bit more of a sober take in "The Asset
| Economy", describing a shift in the dynamics of capitalism from
| classes being polarized by the ownership and sale of commodities
| (most people's only commodity being labor-power) to that of
| assets (with many people owning real-estate and therefore having
| a stake in continued asset inflation).
|
| https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Asset+Economy-p-978150954345...
| [deleted]
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Varoufakis misses two key points: - Our crony capitalism is
| shaped by central regulators, which push the creation of
| monopolies through favouritism, bailouts, pure corruption and
| public education making employee slaves out of children. I argue
| most of the largest companies would be network of indipendente
| providers if competition without regulations existed and VC
| didn't distort the markets. Monopolies are made by the state and
| their crooked friends. - We don't have free will, we never had.
| We're biological machines with chemical mechanisms which are
| easily hacked. Our environment, most crucially other people, will
| shape what we want. Tech doesn't change the dynamics.
|
| The rest is pure nonsense, I was expecting more from Varoufakis.
| dwd wrote:
| Unfortunately for Varoufakis who is a self-proclaimed Trekkie and
| Liberal Marxist, the technology isn't there yet to backup his
| dream of a more equable, StarTrek-like world, and while we may
| grow enough food to feed to world, energy and water are still
| treated as zero-sum games with the inevitable conflict.
|
| Still, I greatly admired him for his stand against Scholz and the
| bullies from the EU, IMF and World Bank; who did everything to
| ignore and silence him over the Greek austerity measures in 2015.
| In a way his sacking which allowed Greece to capitulate, made him
| a celebrity and elevated his cause more.
|
| "If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you
| could possibly imagine."
|
| Still waiting for his grand theory comparing between Star Wars
| (Feudalism/Roman Empire) and StarTrek (Liberal Commmunism) as
| SciFi greatly influences how he considers the world, including
| writing his own dystopian/utopian fiction.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Certainly a captivating thesis, but it fails under its own
| intellectual hubris. While I'm a big fan of Mr. Varufakis'
| thinking, I believe in this case he is a little bit too enamoured
| of the elegant redefinition he's come up with. Some figures are
| also sketchy, like the "40%" in fees assigned to Amazon
| Marketplace (it's much less, between 8 and 15% based on
| category). Also, in feudalism the owners of the land would not
| provide services as these platforms do, they would only exert the
| power of ownership. The relationship here is more complex, as the
| cloud-serfs are also a source of capital as they buy the items
| sold by the platforms. That is certainly not a relationship that
| reminds of feudalism.
| imbnwa wrote:
| >The relationship here is more complex, as the cloud-serfs are
| also a source of capital as they buy the items sold by the
| platforms
|
| Varoufakis makes the point in an interview with Krishnan Guru-
| Murthy, on this same subject, that this trend towards this
| 'asset-stripping'/unpaid labor trades off with aggregate
| demand, so central banks have to print more money to make up
| for the fact that people have less and less purchasing power.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| > Also, in feudalism the owners of the land would not provide
| services as these platforms do, they would only exert the power
| of ownership. The relationship here is more complex, as the
| cloud-serfs are also a source of capital as they buy the items
| sold by the platforms.
|
| Both of these claims (that owners did not provide services and
| that serfs were not sources of capital) is contradicted by
| wikipedia: "Serfs ... were entitled to protection, justice, and
| the right to cultivate certain fields within the manor to
| maintain their own subsistence. Serfs were often required not
| only to work on the lord's fields, but also in his mines and
| forests and to labour to maintain roads."
|
| The source for the Wikipedia text isn't quite clear to me, but
| the content jibes with my prior understanding of serfdom.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
| qwytw wrote:
| > owners did not provide services
|
| Maybe they did in the initial period or in case by case
| basis. Initially serfdom (in the Roman empire) was a somewhat
| voluntary contract individuals chose to enter into. When
| serfdom became an entrenched institution with no way out it
| was certainly huge net negative for the serfs.
|
| .e.g. what protection or justice do you think the 'lords'
| provided to serfs in 17-19th century Russia, Poland or the
| rest of Eastern Europe (in some cases it was effectively
| chattel slavery, there was a caste of "landless" peasants in
| Russia who could be rented out or effectively (even if not
| fully legally) sold to other nobles).
|
| > Serfs were often required not only to work on the lord's
| fields, but also in his mines and forests and to labour to
| maintain roads."
|
| True but it's still a very different relationship. Serfs were
| effectively slaves (of course conditions and degree of
| autonomy they had varied significantly), in many ways closer
| to modern farming or factory equipment than modern worker-
| consumers.
|
| Honestly I think the whole feudalism angle is a stretch, the
| current situation seems much more similar to 19th century
| robber barons/"unrestricted" capitalism.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Sellers using FBA can get up to that 40% mark. Yes, you're
| paying for services, but Amazon is capturing all of it.
| bbarnett wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A4dMK7S6KE interview on the same
| topic.
| Geee wrote:
| What a joke.
| roschdal wrote:
| [flagged]
| ianbutler wrote:
| This is just a new spin on the same situation we had with
| Standard Oil and US Steel from the late 19th through the 20th
| century. History is repeating itself.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I think he spelt Technofascism wrong.
|
| To whomever "flagged" my post. I am saddened that your mind is
| not open enough to seriously consider the implied political
| question and that you cower behind anonymous censorship. It seems
| wretched to implicitly deem Feudalism "acceptable", beside a
| title that announces the "death of capitalism", and yet fail to
| have the stomach to entertain for a second that - in an era of
| rising authoritarianism - the logical trajectory is indeed a form
| of technologically applied fascism? Does the word scare you so
| much? Consider carefully your position and what you are being
| part of.
| tored wrote:
| But how is it fascism? These corporations are _above_ the
| nation state.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Based on the definitional ideas of Griffin's "Palingenetic
| Ultranationalism" [0] (where "fascism" is identifiable
| primarily by motiviational myths) any corporations that
| operate with impunity could still qualify as fascist if they
| are still promising to snatch the last hope of a restored
| golden age for the "right" people, etc.
|
| Somehow makes me think of the scene from Iron Man (2008)
| where Tony Stark boasts that he's successfully privatized
| world peace... except imagine the untouchable CEO of
| SacreBleuCorp boasting that they've outdone the government to
| restore the glory and honor of the French or whatever.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalism
| tored wrote:
| And what group today is the "right people" that these
| corporations push for?
| havershank wrote:
| [dead]
| Finnucane wrote:
| One could just as easily argue that technofeudalism is in fact
| the endgame of capitalism, not the death of capitalism. In old-
| school feudalism, wealth came from the land, owning the land and
| the productive capacity of the land. Labor has no value and only
| serves to extract wealth for the benefit of the owning class.
| Capitalism abstracts this. Wealth comes from owning 'assets.' The
| position of labor remains the same. 'Consumers' are just the
| middle piece, necessary to churn the inputs and outputs. In a
| highly technological society, 'assets' can be very abstract and
| the extraction of value from the labor and consumer classes very
| efficient.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Capitalism is a necessary transition between feudalism and
| feudalism.
| omnimus wrote:
| This is one of the most memeable comments ive seen in a
| while. Applaud.
| qm9 wrote:
| im going to put this up as my readme slogan. how should i
| quote you?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Don't cite it to me, I stole it from a reply to a Cory
| Doctorow post on Mastodon about technofeudalism. That post
| itself was rephrasing of a Russian meme about the end of
| the Soviet Union[0].
|
| So I don't think this one is _necessarily_ citable.
|
| [0] Socialism is a necessary step in the transition between
| capitalism and capitalism.
| tored wrote:
| I guess it comes down to the definition of capitalism, Mr
| Varoufakis says that it is markets and profits. I'm not an
| economist, thus a layman, but I can't entirely agree with that,
| in my opinion it is perfectly fine to have capitalism without
| markets, e.g. private monopoly (or oligopoly). From that
| perspective you can argue that is sort of like feudalism where
| privileges where used to create monopiles.
| Finnucane wrote:
| We still have markets and profits. Consumers are, after all,
| required to consume.
| tored wrote:
| There is no functioning market if it is a monopoly.
| dlkf wrote:
| Truly the dumbest thing I've ever read.
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