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Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

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Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#21

Post by feedforward »

Anotheroneagain wrote: post #5

I don't think this is a good comparison. The core problem we face is overproduction. Vastly more can be produced than can be consumed. When you try to boost the economy by "job creation" and investing more money, you essentially pay people to keep other people busy. It isn't serfdom, they don't serve their lords, who take a share of their work. They work to reduce the available workforce, so that overproduction is av…

> The core problem we face is overproduction. Vastly more can be produced than can be consumed.

Varoufakis agrees overproduction is a problem and alludes to it in many places. The Global Minotaur - "Profit can only be envisaged if the level of overall future demand is strong. Unfortunately, the future is unknowable. The only thing business folk know for sure is demand is never strong for long..."

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#22

Post by Anotheroneagain »

dragontamer wrote: post #12
Anotheroneagain wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course of houses. Houses are the best example - they can be built for invested money, then bought as an investment, closing the loop. The fact that you can't afford one is secondary, there are thousands of empty houses anywhere, their prices are just kept high by the incoming capital.

USA housing starts is collapsing. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST It's no wonder why house prices are so high when we are (inadvertently) cutting housing supply. USA production of houses needs to be twice as much compared to 50 years ago to keep up with population growth... But we've lost housing production in recent years, not gained it. We are moving in the wrong direction. ---------- There's plenty of deb…

I suppose that everyone began to realize that it must end sooner or later, especially after Evergrande's collapse.

Nobody's going to live in those houses. What would you want to reverse for what reason?

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#24

Post by dragontamer »

Anotheroneagain wrote: post #22
dragontamer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA housing starts is collapsing. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST It's no wonder why house prices are so high when we are (inadvertently) cutting housing supply. USA production of houses needs to be twice as much compared to 50 years ago to keep up with population growth... But we've lost housing production in recent years, not gained it. We are moving in the wrong direction. ---------- There's plenty of deb…

I suppose that everyone began to realize that it must end sooner or later, especially after Evergrande's collapse. Nobody's going to live in those houses. What would you want to reverse for what reason?

America is not China.

China built a ton of fake houses all around. America in contrast has too few houses, an influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal), and an entire generation of young 20-to-30s year olds who want a house before they start raising a family.

The houses are clearly needed here in America. Its not like China's Evergrande fake-house bullshit. When my terrible childhood home in the Ghetto is selling for $500,000, I know that there's some bullshit supply/demand issues right now. Okay, the former Ghetto has been gentrified a bit. But thats still causing some knock-on-effects that are preventing new families from moving in right now... No one likes a declining crime-infested area where everyone's leaving / trying to escape from. But the area has over-boomed now and not enough new houses/dense houses have been built, so there's suddenly a housing shortage after 20 years.

Etc. etc. etc. Some areas (Ex: Detroit) have entire neighborhoods of terrible houses that no one wants. But other areas need new houses. The only solution is to consistently build houses as demand comes up.

Never pull the fake bullshit that Evergrande did. But similarly, never stop building houses either. There's a balance here.

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#25

Post by mlazos »

yakau wrote: post #23

Capitalism is inherently flawed as it relies on infinite growth in a finite world, to put it simply.

Innovation enables growth without raw natural resources. For example, the internet drastically improved productivity (GDP/time) by making communication faster. Also services are intangible, but provide economic value. If someone can now provide services to millions, that’s growth. We are nowhere near the terminal point of growth in my opinion.

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#26

Post by mlazos »

Describing tech platforms as a place where users work for no pay is quite an exaggeration. Apple and Microsoft for example do not conform to this business model. In fact the business models amongst the tech giants are so varied to group them all into “cloud capital” is ridiculously reductionist, and gives grift vibes to just capitalize on the current change in attitudes toward big tech. Honestly this article is so unspecific as to feel that it’s saying nothing. Maybe that’s on purpose to market for the book but I can’t tell. In the end, the pursuit of monopolies currently is the exact same mission that all capitalists have had for generations, he fails to make a distinction in my opinion between then and now. I think the current state of the world can still be described using the rules of a capitalist system, and I fee that competition between the tech giants more fierce now than it has been in the past decade.

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#27

Post by zer00eyz »

sdenton4 wrote: post #10
zer00eyz wrote: post #6

The fundamental flaw in this argument is that it does not account for every corporation that came before tech. What about RCA, GE, Westinghouse? What about US Steel, what about Standard Oil, what about AT&T. IBM, Intel have already started to fall. What makes this crop of companies any different than all the ones that has come before them. Nothing. The singer sewing machine came out at 125 bucks per unit. The annual…

Did you not read the article? The premise is that the current tech giants are effectively only wanting to set up situations where they can extract rents. This is different from making sewing machines in a competitive market, or even in a monopoly. I think the argument has problems for other reasons - there's still lots of innovation going on, for example - but I think there is a line to be drawn between current vc pr…

I did read the article.

Rent only happens when cost is high and supply is constrained. Look at housing. Rent seeking isnt sustainable as compute gets cheaper and cheaper. Access is knowledge, sewing, second hand cars: access is portion of knowledge.

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#28

Post by dariosalvi78 »

js8 wrote: post #3

My question to Varoufakis is this (and I used to be skeptical of his distinction because of this, but I am less so today). If these systems of power are maintaining themselves through cultural hegemony, as Gramsci has described, what is the cultural hegemony, or ideology, here? The traditional capitalism has ideology rooted in liberalism and the concept of meritocracy. You are good at what you do, you sell it in the…

just look at comments here from Apple fanboys and you can see how the culture (everything that Apple does is good) shapes the behaviour (buy more, at inflated prices, accept all of the anticompetitive stuff they do)

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#29

Post by yakau »

mlazos wrote: post #25
yakau wrote: post #23

Capitalism is inherently flawed as it relies on infinite growth in a finite world, to put it simply.

Innovation enables growth without raw natural resources. For example, the internet drastically improved productivity (GDP/time) by making communication faster. Also services are intangible, but provide economic value. If someone can now provide services to millions, that’s growth. We are nowhere near the terminal point of growth in my opinion.

That it does, but all sources of innovation are fueled by natural resources in some form further down the supply chain from thought to product.

Re: Are We Transitioning from Capitalism to Silicon Serfdom?

#30

Post by tareqak »

js8 wrote: post #3

My question to Varoufakis is this (and I used to be skeptical of his distinction because of this, but I am less so today). If these systems of power are maintaining themselves through cultural hegemony, as Gramsci has described, what is the cultural hegemony, or ideology, here? The traditional capitalism has ideology rooted in liberalism and the concept of meritocracy. You are good at what you do, you sell it in the…

> The traditional capitalism has ideology rooted in liberalism and the concept of meritocracy. You are good at what you do, you sell it in the free market, you make money. So how this transformed in the cloud feudalism?

"Move fast and break things." [0]

"Software is eating the world" [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Move_fast_and_break_things_(mo...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen#Industry_influ...

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