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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

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.

ricardobeat 3y ago
Sellers using FBA can get up to that 40% mark. Yes, you’re paying for services, but Amazon is capturing all of it.
imbnwa 3y ago
>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 3y ago
> 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
- qwytw 3y ago
  > 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.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Comparing 500 century Italy and 19th century Russia is kind of idiotic. Other then that we use the same general word, the political systems are really not that similar. I dislike how people use feudalism as a vague catchall for everything that came before British Capitalism. This is just one of those idioitc theory Marx came up with that has no basis in reality. His theories were not even correct for Britain and he had extremely limited knowlage about the world. But he still was arrogant enough to believe he could deduce 'general laws of history' based on these extremely limited examples from British history (that weren't even correct or complete). But no matter how wrong Marx are, we now must forever pull out the 'feudalism' card anytime somebody dislikes something. Despite historians not even agreeing on what 'feudalism' actually means. European medievalists generally talk about feudalism in a narrow way of how lords would agree to contracts with knights. Global historians tend to use feudalism more as a catch all land ownership by the nobility. > Serfs were effectively slaves Serfs were not one thing. The thing we call 'serfs' had many meanings that changed over 100s of years and was different in each region and depended on that countries specific context. The laws around serfdom were constantly shifting. And beyond the actual laws, we know that very often the real world didn't actually reflect the laws. Making any general statements about serfs simply doesn't make sense. Just as it doesn't make sense to talk about slaves as one thing.

ricardobeat 3y ago

Sellers using FBA can get up to that 40% mark. Yes, you’re paying for services, but Amazon is capturing all of it.

imbnwa 3y ago

>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 3y ago

> 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

qwytw 3y ago
> 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.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Comparing 500 century Italy and 19th century Russia is kind of idiotic. Other then that we use the same general word, the political systems are really not that similar. I dislike how people use feudalism as a vague catchall for everything that came before British Capitalism. This is just one of those idioitc theory Marx came up with that has no basis in reality. His theories were not even correct for Britain and he had extremely limited knowlage about the world. But he still was arrogant enough to believe he could deduce 'general laws of history' based on these extremely limited examples from British history (that weren't even correct or complete). But no matter how wrong Marx are, we now must forever pull out the 'feudalism' card anytime somebody dislikes something. Despite historians not even agreeing on what 'feudalism' actually means. European medievalists generally talk about feudalism in a narrow way of how lords would agree to contracts with knights. Global historians tend to use feudalism more as a catch all land ownership by the nobility. > Serfs were effectively slaves Serfs were not one thing. The thing we call 'serfs' had many meanings that changed over 100s of years and was different in each region and depended on that countries specific context. The laws around serfdom were constantly shifting. And beyond the actual laws, we know that very often the real world didn't actually reflect the laws. Making any general statements about serfs simply doesn't make sense. Just as it doesn't make sense to talk about slaves as one thing.