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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Joel Kotkin
Read between
September 6 - September 10, 2020
Globally, the ultra-rich are an emergent aristocracy. Fewer than one hundred billionaires together now own as much as half of the world’s assets,
Globalization of the economy has served the interests of the upper classes but not the rest.
Just as the clerical elite shared power with the nobility in the feudal era, a nexus between the clerisy and the oligarchy lies at the core of neo-feudalism. These two classes often attend the same schools and live in similar neighborhoods in cities such as New York, San Francisco, or London. On the whole, they share a common worldview and are allies on most issues, though there are occasional conflicts, as there were between the medieval nobility and clergy. Certainly, they hold similar views on globalism, cosmopolitanism, the value of credentials, and the authority of experts.
This power nexus is enabled by technologies that once were widely seen as holding great promise for grassroots democracy and decision making, but have become tools for surveillance and a consolidation of power.
The power of the nobility in the feudal order was justified through the agencies of religion and custom, blessed by the church. The modern clerisy often claim science as the basis of their doctrines and tout academic credentials as the key to status and authority. They seek to replace the bourgeois values of self-determination, family, community, and nation with “progressive” ideas about globalism, environmental sustainability, redefined gender roles, and the authority of experts. These values are inculcated through the clerisy’s dominance over the institutions of higher learning and media,
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One consequence of the current economic trends is growing pessimism throughout the high-income world.
believe that future generations will suffer worse economic conditions than they did,
declining birth rates,
shortage of affordable family housing.
weakened support for liberal capitalism even in solidly democratic countries, particularly among younger people.31 Far more than older generations, they are losing faith in democracy,
The modern yeomanry can still mount a resistance, but the expanding “serf” class, without property or a stake in the system, might prove far more dangerous to the dominant orders.
Alienated elements of the middle and working classes are responding with what might be likened to a modern peasants’ rebellion. It can be seen in a series of angry votes and protests against the policies championed by the clerisy and oligarchy—on climate change, global trade, and migration.
Reversing the slide into a neo-feudal order will require the development of a new political paradigm.
The current “progressive” approach to “social justice,” with its attachment to a powerful central government, will only strengthen the clerisy by vesting more authority in the “expert” class.
On the other hand, the devotees of market fundamentalism, refusing to acknowledge the dangers of oligarchic power and the harm being done to the middle and working classes, might further a political trajec...
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The ideal of an interdependent, ordered society gained new currency in the nineteenth century, partly as a reaction to the social upheaval and physical pollution of the early industrial revolution. Many in the Romantic movement saw much to admire in medieval civilization,
Tory Democracy.
Many powerful right-wing movements of the early twentieth century—National Socialism, Fascism, and their imitators elsewhere—also expressed a nostalgia for the Middle Ages.
reaction against liberal ideals has been gaining force in many countries.
Even in the West, the values that drove the development of the modern world—such as confidence in progress and the benefits of economic growth for the general well-being—have come under challenge.
environmental concerns raise nostalgia for a bygone age.
Environmentalism has even led to a revival of the notion of poverty as a virtue.
Many intellectuals, architects, and planners have promoted values reminiscent of the medieval past as being in better harmony with human nature.
Such backward-looking ideas have been offered as remedies for the weaknesses and failings of modern society. But they might also provide a rationale to discourage upward mobility for the many and to concentrate property in fewer hands.
Where class privilege remained in place over a shifting base, particularly in France, the Third Estate rose up in a violent assault on the last vestiges of feudalism.
The recent ascent of China presents a serious challenge to liberal capitalism as the model for the global future.
China’s new model of capitalism has profoundly antiliberal aspects, including a distinct sense of social hierarchy, an autocratic central state, an enforced ideology and thought control.
As China’s power has waxed, the economies in most advanced countries have stagnated.
The slowdown of population growth, especially in high-income countries, is another aspect of societal stagnation.
Shrinking populations in advanced countries will threaten economic growth by limiting the size of the labor force, and will undermine the fiscal viability of the welfare state.23 This is one reason for the receptiveness of Western governments to high levels of immigration from poorer countries,
Technological advances once fueled growing prosperity for the many. Today, automation and the use of artificial intelligence promise to accelerate social divisions both between and within countries.
What is more likely than mass unemployment in the Western world is a continuing decline of the middle class, as many are forced to subsist in the so-called “gig economy.”
Between 2005 and 2014, the percentage of families with flat or decreasing real incomes rose to over 60 percent in the twenty-five most advanced economies.
A technologically driven society tends to show a widening gap between the “elect” who are highly gifted in science and tech, and the many who are not.
In the face of these social challenges, the intellectual classes in the higher-income countries—in the universities, the media, and the arts—almost universally seek to deconstruct the values that guided their countries’ ascent and provided the foundation for widespread prosperity. Instead of concerning themselves with addressing the consequences of economic stagnation—more poverty, social immobility, class conflict—many in the clerisy and even the oligarchy promote the ideal of “sustainability” over broad-based economic growth.
The new feudalism won’t feature intrepid knights in armor or fortified castles, or raise soaring cathedrals filled with liturgical chants. Instead it will boast dazzling new technology, and be wrapped in a creed of globalism and environmental piety. Yet for all its modernity, the coming age looks set to replace liberal dynamism and intellectual pluralism with an orthodoxy that puts a premium on stasis and accepts social hierarchy as the natural order of things.
In the Middle Ages, the power of the nobility rested on the control of land and the right to bear arms; the power of today’s ascendant tech aristocracy comes mainly from exploiting “natural monopolies” in web-based business.
Antitrust actions in the United States have fallen by 61 percent since the early 1980s,
monopolistic or duopolistic power over some of the world’s most lucrative markets.
China has spawned its own plutocratic elite, too:
The merger of a wealthy tech elite with the political ruling class has created an aristocracy of intellect that replicates the historical role of the Mandarin class in Chinese culture and governance.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of China’s technological growth is in the government’s use of artificial intelligence to regulate society and public opinion.
a technocratic economy is engendering a new kind of hierarchy, favoring highly skilled technicians and engineers. Their dominance will grow as technology plays an ever greater role in the economy, while the value of labor further declines.
The people running today’s IT firms do not see middle managers—much less assembly-line workers or skilled artisans—as peers. Their worldview is aligned with the upper echelon of the educated workforce.
It is unlike the industrial era, when corporations depended on people with a wide range of skills:
the tech giants employ relatively few people in proportion to their revenues.
In the developing technocratic worldview, there’s little place for upward mobility, except within the charmed circle at the top. The middle and working classes are expected to become marginal.
they generally don’t expect their workers or consumers to achieve more independence by starting their own companies or even owning houses.
part-time entrepreneurial ‘gig work’ and government aid.”
radically expanded welfare state.
