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>"why neoliberal capitalism is the only real villain of the book" I doubt that neoliberal capitalism will be "the real villain" 100 years from now. Capital is

>"why neoliberal capitalism is the only real villain of the book" I doubt that neoliberal capitalism will be "the real villain" 100 years from now. Capital is in the process of being superceded by information (a further rarification/reification of social relations). Either way, it's hard to imagine neoliberalism making a good sci-fi villain. At all.

jacquesm 10y ago
> Capital is in the process of being superceded by information Sometimes I really can't follow comments on HN for technical jargon, this one I can't follow because I have no idea what you're on about. How do you see capital being replaced by information?
- L_Rahman 10y ago
  I'm not the GP but here's an example of larger trend that they might point to in support of their argument: Excerpted from Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-04/hacienda-hedges-and-unicorn-votes https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-04/hacienda-... > One simple story to tell here is that globalization and technology have shifted the bargaining power between entrepreneurs and providers of capital. These days, if you want to start a social-media company, you don't need to raise a lot of money from investors to build a factory. You just need a dorm room, and your parents are probably paying for that. And if your social media company is a success, it can go global instantly with near-zero marginal costs. (Yes, I know, this does not exactly describe Snapchat, which is focused on developed economies and which has weirdly enormous costs, but still.) The path to being a gigantic profitable company is paved relatively more with ideas, and less with capital: Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering, says the “winner-take-all” culture in which a few tech companies emerge as hugely profitable from among a far-larger number that fail encourages investors to give tech executives more leeway. Meanwhile the same forces of globalization and technology mean that there are a lot more people with capital. U.S. tech companies can raise money from China, or the Middle East, rather than limiting themselves to New York and San Francisco. Globalization opens up new markets, which makes good business ideas more valuable, and new sources of capital, which makes those ideas easier to fund. So winning entrepreneurs are more valuable, while capital is less valuable and less scarce. Of course the bargaining dynamic between the people with ideas and the people with capital has shifted. You'd expect to see some of that playing out in price -- investors paying billions of dollars for unprofitable social-media companies -- but at some level, if you are a young billionaire entrepreneur, you don't really need any more money. You might as well bargain for more power, or more freedom.
  - gech 10y ago
    >are a young billionaire entrepreneur, you don't really need any more money Oh good, I'm glad the future can only be described as how the options of a select few are going to be different
    - L_Rahman 10y ago
      That's my mistake, I included a paragraph that wasn't relevant to this specific topic but was covered in the article itself.
- samirillian 10y ago
  Capitalism as a mode of production has many things in common with other modes of production and certain salient qualities that set it apart from other modes of production. In our current situation, the qualities unique to capitalism are being superceded (which is different from being replaced) by qualities unique to the information age, or whatever you want to call it: 1. value is increasingly extracted from peoples' information rather than their labor, 2. informational rather than industrial technologies are in the driver's seat, 3. commodity reification is no longer the most striking aspect of our social relations, etc. At what point do these new aspects of our current "mode of production" reach a critical mass? I assume that by 2140, "neoliberalism" will not have much currency as a concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_(Marxist_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_...
danharaj 10y ago
Neoliberalism is the villain in so much cyberpunk if you look closely enough.

jacquesm 10y ago

> Capital is in the process of being superceded by information Sometimes I really can't follow comments on HN for technical jargon, this one I can't follow because I have no idea what you're on about. How do you see capital being replaced by information?

L_Rahman 10y ago
I'm not the GP but here's an example of larger trend that they might point to in support of their argument: Excerpted from Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-04/hacienda-hedges-and-unicorn-votes https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-04/hacienda-... > One simple story to tell here is that globalization and technology have shifted the bargaining power between entrepreneurs and providers of capital. These days, if you want to start a social-media company, you don't need to raise a lot of money from investors to build a factory. You just need a dorm room, and your parents are probably paying for that. And if your social media company is a success, it can go global instantly with near-zero marginal costs. (Yes, I know, this does not exactly describe Snapchat, which is focused on developed economies and which has weirdly enormous costs, but still.) The path to being a gigantic profitable company is paved relatively more with ideas, and less with capital: Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering, says the “winner-take-all” culture in which a few tech companies emerge as hugely profitable from among a far-larger number that fail encourages investors to give tech executives more leeway. Meanwhile the same forces of globalization and technology mean that there are a lot more people with capital. U.S. tech companies can raise money from China, or the Middle East, rather than limiting themselves to New York and San Francisco. Globalization opens up new markets, which makes good business ideas more valuable, and new sources of capital, which makes those ideas easier to fund. So winning entrepreneurs are more valuable, while capital is less valuable and less scarce. Of course the bargaining dynamic between the people with ideas and the people with capital has shifted. You'd expect to see some of that playing out in price -- investors paying billions of dollars for unprofitable social-media companies -- but at some level, if you are a young billionaire entrepreneur, you don't really need any more money. You might as well bargain for more power, or more freedom.
- gech 10y ago
  >are a young billionaire entrepreneur, you don't really need any more money Oh good, I'm glad the future can only be described as how the options of a select few are going to be different
  - L_Rahman 10y ago
    That's my mistake, I included a paragraph that wasn't relevant to this specific topic but was covered in the article itself.
samirillian 10y ago
Capitalism as a mode of production has many things in common with other modes of production and certain salient qualities that set it apart from other modes of production. In our current situation, the qualities unique to capitalism are being superceded (which is different from being replaced) by qualities unique to the information age, or whatever you want to call it: 1. value is increasingly extracted from peoples' information rather than their labor, 2. informational rather than industrial technologies are in the driver's seat, 3. commodity reification is no longer the most striking aspect of our social relations, etc. At what point do these new aspects of our current "mode of production" reach a critical mass? I assume that by 2140, "neoliberalism" will not have much currency as a concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_(Marxist_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_mode_of_production_...

danharaj 10y ago

Neoliberalism is the villain in so much cyberpunk if you look closely enough.