Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

by Yanis Varoufakis

Well, I’m sorry to say, there will be no return to the good old bad old days. First, those torrents of central bank money have already built cloud capital up to critical mass. It is here to stay – and to dominate – because its immense structural power, to extract vast cloud rents from every society on Earth, remains completely undiminished. This would not be the first time a bubble has built up capital that endures after the bubble’s bursting. America owes its railways to precisely this pattern: that bubble burst in the nineteenth century but not before tracks were laid down that are still in place, from Boston and New York to Los Angeles and San Diego. More recently, when the dot.com bubble burst in 2001, bankrupting early internet-based companies whose stock market valuations had reached ridiculous levels, it left behind the network of fibre optic cables and servers which provided the infrastructure underpinning Internet Two and Big Tech. Second, the central bank money has not actually run dry. It is still flowing, albeit at a slower pace which nonetheless suffices to keep technofeudalism buoyant. Central banks can’t afford to stem their flow completely, even if this is what they must do to defeat the Great Inflation. Recent bank failures in California and Switzerland reminded America’s and Europe’s central banks that, if they dare withdraw the trillions they have pumped into the North Atlantic economies, a vortex of volatility is ready to hit the $24 trillion market for...