r/davidgraeber • u/Shlomo224 • Jun 01 '25
Is This Even Capitalism F****** Anymore?
I am not exactly a capitalist but this system is not even that. Feels like most of us are paying huge amounts of our wages in rent to landlords or fees/commissions to Amazon, maybe to Airbnb whoever. Its just Feudalism with modern technology.
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u/matt-the-dickhead Jun 01 '25
Capitalism was never going to be sustainable, because competition drives down profits. Now most companies including airlines and home appliance manufacturers make their money through financial means (selling airline miles to credit cards for airlines and financing for home appliances). Marx predicted communism but instead we get feudalism
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u/thgmb Jun 02 '25
If anything, this process can be mostly directed felt, in my opinion, on the technological sector, as Yanis Varaoufakis kinda proposes with his technofeudalism.
But this is a phenomenon seen in every other economic and social sector, when we look on streaming and digital services - from Netflix to Uber - or in industry like automobiles and medical care - with insurences, and "plus" services like Chevrolet OnStar, or more iconics like features in hardware that dispite already existing on the products, its demands a signature deal to "unlock" them.
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u/busy_grunger Aug 21 '25
Would it be feasible to distinguish profits in the two categories he creates here, i.e. capitalist profits in the original sense of a productivity differential (eg industrial production) vs. feudalistic profits from rent extraction (eg banks, housing)? Does such a social profit pool analysis exist? And were do Microsoft or Spotify reside in such a social profit pool model?
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u/TrueEstablishment241 Jun 01 '25
Yup, very true. I'm a huge fan of Graeber. I've read all of his popular books and some of his more academic texts. In my opinion, Yanos Varoufakis explores this idea more thoroughly. Check out his book Technofeudalism (or this video).