The Rise of Techno-Feudalism

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Globalisation and automation are impacting society shifting it to a feudal like state. The disruption that has followed globalisation and automation has eliminated vast numbers of businesses and destroyed millions of middle-class jobs. Rising productivity from automation has not been re-invested, and has not yielded replacement jobs. Adding to the uncertainty for ordinary people there is a global housing crisis rendering many property-less serfs. The only prospering classes are professionals and tech oligarchs who benefit as algorithms replace human relationships.

Following a period of greater wealth distribution and opportunity, society is returning to an era of greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism.

What is Techno-feudalism?

In a Feudal society lords had control over the peasants because they owned the land that the peasants lived on and farmed. In compensation for the privilege of living on, and farming the lord’s land, lords extracted rents from the peasants. Rent-seeking was a major form of economic exchange in Feudal society. It is characterised by the extraction of value without any reciprocal contribution to productivity.