Technofeudalism, Enshittification, and You...
When we are partially blind to aspects of our way of life, we lose its meaning, and then the joy of life, and we unconsciously contribute to making our world the way it is.
2/4/24—Zurich, Switzerland | Image by Ralph Drasba from Pixabay
The term “enshittification” was coined by Cory Doctorow as the “process that online platforms undergo from being user-friendly and valuable to gradually turning into revenue-driven platforms at the expense of user experience.” I am borrowing the term to bring attention to the fact that the same marks the rest of our lives as well—our societies, communities, families, relationships, and work have been enshittificated.
This isn’t a nostalgia for the past—I’ve never had that. It’s an invitation to wake up to reality because a life worth-living cannot be built on false assumptions.
My take on societal transitions
My early years were marked by the transition from Communism to Democracy as a political system, and from Planned Economy to Capitalism/ Market Economy as an economic system. Most of my readers come from what we would call the developed world, as well as from developing or emerging economies which have embraced a similar transition ever since.
Roughly 35 years ago, I was one of those on the streets requesting the perceived opportunities associated with Democracy and Capitalism. Fast forward to today,
I’ve learned that when it comes to transformation of economic and political systems, by the time we —the so called “ordinary” people — understand what’s happening, it has already happened.
Going back to those times, most people believe that “Capitalism” won the Cold War. They are kind of right but maybe for all the wrong reasons. It’s a longer story with many different details but at the core of it—according to me— is that Capitalism won by inspiring the communist leaders that they can make more money in a capitalistic system, especially in view of the already started globalization. Hence, they orchestrated the transition. For example, in Bulgaria, several hundred people were chosen to take out money out of the Bulgarian state (allegedly US$1,5 billion in 1980s value) and bring it in suitcases to banks in Austria, Switzerland, and other countries. They were helped by people in the West who could see the advantages within the already gathering strength globalization. That process was done and finalised well before people like me went on the streets to demonstrate “for democracy”.
The transition from communism to capitalism in the end of the 80s was designed many years before Glasnost and Perestroika were announced to the wide public. Similarly, the 1917 October revolution was organised and financed by the West way before Russians went on the streets.
Going back to my first-hand experiences, once the old system was dismantled and the new road to market economy and democracy was embraced, the money from the suitcases came back as the first private investments. In times when no one else had access to capital, this money was used to to start the first private companies (banks, media, infrastructure, communications, etc.) and buy existing companies through privatization. While this was going on, people were kept distracted and in fear. By the time people woke up of their fear, the process of initial accumulation of capital was complete and the foundation of capitalism were in place.
Fear as a mechanism for distraction and manupulation is a whole story in itself. The essence is that whenever people are stirred into fear, their focus is shifted away from important events in the background.
Fast forward to today, I think that Democracy and Capitalism have been exchanged with a new system, and we are now asked to accept the values they’ve chosen for us.
So, what’s this new system?
I will bring in a few definitions and a little data…
My definitions are copied from Wikipedia and other sources without pretending to encompass everything—I am only bringing attention to a few specific features.
Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. According to Wikipedia, since 2005, we’ve been experiencing a "Democratic Recession". A 2020-report of the Freedom House marked the fourteenth consecutive year of declining scores when it comes to political rights and civil liberties. Freedom House reported also growing practices of Transnational Authoritarianism, aiming to police and control dissent beyond state borders.
Authoritarianism is characterized by highly concentrated and centralized power. It tends to embrace the informal and unregulated exercise of political power, a leadership that is "self-appointed and even if elected cannot be displaced by citizens' free choice among competitors", the arbitrary deprivation of civil liberties and little tolerance for meaningful opposition. A range of social controls also attempt to stifle civil society and create allegiance through various means of socialization and indoctrination.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.
Techno-feudalism is a term introduced by a book with the same name by Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister of Greece, and a professor of economics. According to him, capitalism has been transformed into techno-feudalism, printed money has replaced private profit as the driver of economies, and markets are giving way to platform-based fiefdoms. He thinks that we mistake platforms such as Google or Amazon as market places, while “value extraction has increasingly shifted away from markets and onto digital platforms, which no longer operate like oligopolistic firms, but rather like private fiefdoms or estates.” Just like in feudalism, where ordinary people’s livelihood was governed by their lord's land.
If you are still not sure what I am talking about, here is some data from the Visual Capitalist. If market capitalization of corporations were equivalent to GDP:
Apple is larger than 96% of country GDPs putting it symbolically in “the G7”
Microsoft would be the 10th richest country in the world
Amazon is larger than 92% of country GDPs
I would probably careless how the system is called and which is the richest entity if it was not for…
The ENSHITTIFICATION of our way of life
To illustrate my point, I will bring a few facts from my country of birth Bulgaria (currently the poorest country in the EU) and USA - the largest economy in the world.
Longevity & Health
Around 100 years ago, Bulgaria was one of the top countries in the world with the number of centenarians, and 30 years ago, they were still writing about the longevity of people in Bulgaria like for example in the Independent and in the Los Angelis Times. Fast forward 30 years, Bulgaria has the smallest longevity in the European Union and the highest mortality rate in the world at 15.4 deaths per 1,000 people. I don’t know about you, but I cannot call that progress.
You may say, well, small and poor country, bad politics, corruption, etc. All right—let’s look at the top country in the world then…. People in the United States live a few years more than Bulgarians, but let’s see how they live. Nearly half of Americans (46.4%) reported meeting criteria at some point in their life of mental illnesses compared to 27% in Europe. Both of these numbers are huge—for comparison, in my young years, mental illness was something extremely rare.
These same last 30 years have marked also an explosion of deceases everywhere from Bulgaria to the USA like dementia, Alzheimer, diabetes, obesity, the list goes on. In the USA, more than 2 in 5 adults have obesity, while in Europe this number is 1 in 6.
Homelessness
Homelessness in the USA reached 650,000 people one year ago according to a report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development compared to being almost negligible 50 years ago. With the current unprecedented increase of immigration, this number is expected to jump considerably. Similar is the situation in Germany which has the highest number of homeless people in Europe. Bulgaria in my childhood had zero homeless people, and now their numbers are increasing as well.
Food & Nutrition
Talking about enshittification, this one’s easy. Let’s take tomatoes for example. Even the most expensive tomatoes sold today cannot come close to the tomatoes I used to eat as a child, neither as a taste, nor as a nutrition. And, trust me, I’ve seen the most expensive ones with prices that may shock even a wealthy person.
That goes for all food we eat. The reason for that are the industrial methods of production, genetically modified everything, as well as the damaged soil, which some say is irreversible. Recent studies indicate that soil degradation is directly linked to the chronic disease epidemic.
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is considered to be one of the most precious aspects of democracies. And yet, step by step, we found ourselves in unprecedented levels of censorship, and the way-way worse— self-censorship. The latter has taken unprecedented proportions and is a signal of something much bigger.
We know what’s right but we find ourselves unable and unwilling to express it.
The list continues, and it’s way too long to cover here. And yes, there are also many aspects of our life where we see progress. Yet, can anything be called progress if access to shelter, nutrition, health, and freedom of speech are under question?
AWAKENING to what is…
Blinded by promises of abundance, we’ve accepted scarcity of worth.
Here is how I see the dominant believes in the so called Western (developed) world, and consequently many developing and emerging economies:
We live in capitalistic countries built on the principles of democracy.
Gender equality and diversity are driven by a focus on human rights.
Wars are driven by a desire for preserving our way of life.
Immigration is driven by a desire to help people in need.
Economic growth leads to prosperity.
There is a freedom of speech.
We elect our leaders democratically.
Self-censorship is a necessary way of protecting other people’s rights.
Upward social mobility justifies separation from families and communities.
Everyone against any of the above is threatening our way of life.
Here is how it looks instead, according to me:
A new system has exchanged democracy and capitalism. Consequently, there is a new way by which power is distributed and it’s not through electing politicians which means that it’s not a democracy. The new power elites are unelected and they use the pseudo-democratic persuasive style of leadership (in its essence, autocratic)— i.e. they take decisions and implement them, and then take the time to try to persuade us that these decisions are good for us.
Including women in the workplaces, and importing low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants, are textbook ways for boosting economic growth.
Bringing most women to the workplaces has left a void when it comes to the upbringing of young people, and that void has been filled by social media.
It’s again a textbook fact that wars and sick people fuel GDP growth.
Lately, economic growth led to extreme inequality.
Wars have always been driven by a desire to gain resources and new markets.
Gender diversity—in the form we see today—is fueled by people who believe in transhumanism and human augmentation, and genetically modified everything.
There used to be a sense of freedom of speech but it has been exchanged with censorship, and even worse— self-censorship is at unprecedented levels.
Families and communities are critical elements of any society if wellbeing and prosperity are the objective.
When we question all of the above, we are trying to preserve sacred aspects of our way of life.
Why should you care?
When we are partially blind to aspects of our way of life, we lose the meaning and joy of life and we unconsciously contribute to making it the way it is.
I am speaking from first-hand experience, and I will take you back again to the times of transition from communism to capitalism. At that time, you could say that I was an young, well educated, and smart person, and yet…
In those times of transition—just as now—there was an outpour of information. I found myself utterly surprised by some of it— it felt as if there has been an invisible wall (or several) and I may have been smart, but only until the borders of the walls.
When it comes to what’s behind “the walls”, I was programmed not to see and hear it, and I would argue with people if they try to tell me. That’s called brain-washing.
If you have lived your whole life in a Western society, you are already thinking—of course, she was living in a communist country after all. Well, you would be wrong. One year after the above realizations, I found myself for a first time in the USA. Here I am— in the heart of democracy and freedom, right? Well, that’s not how it felt when it comes to information. After listening to the news, my first impression was that the USA has taken brainwashing to a whole new level. I was impressed by how much better they were at it than the communist regime. Why? Because, in the late years of communism, we knew information was kept away from us, and some of us were finding alternative ways to be at least partially informed. At the same time, the average person in the USA had no idea that information was kept away from them. They thought there is a freedom of speech and free flow of information.
You may agree, or not. The bottom line is that you cannot take good decisions for yourself and others if your understanding of the world includes too many “walls”.
How do these “walls” look today?
We see them when it comes to all the important issues of our time. Covid, the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, gender issues, inequality, power structures, AI, the future of work, digital currencies, health, diet, etc.
Majority of people find themselves on one side of a “wall” completely unwilling or unable to hear the information coming from its other side. All that of course is not without the help of the algorithms that govern the flow of information coming to us.
I think that lately we call all such information conspiracies— i.e. that’s anything that contradicts the perceived paradigm we think we live in.
Many believe that they are preserving their way of life by refusing to look at what’s behind the wall. I also still do that sometimes when I get overwhelmed. And yet, I know now for sure that when we do that we contribute to the enshittification of life in general, but we also do that to our own life.
We know that we are “behind walls” if we find ourselves utterly surprised or completely unable to understand aspects of what’s happening in the world. That “surprise” is a sign that we live in a different and false paradigm.
Why should we bother?
Realizing “what is” opens new possibilities, empowers us, and makes it possible for us to live lives of abundance, joy and meaning.
I’ve always known this on some level but I’ve really come to understand it through my work with Systemic Constellations. When we have an incomplete or false understanding of any situation, any potential decisions we make are far from ideal. And vice-versa…When we are able to deepen our understanding of reality without judging, blaming, fearing— we discover a whole new range of possibilities.
One example how realizations bring new perspectives…
In the so called democracy, one of our main rights is the right to elect official representatives. In the techno-feudalism we live in, the leading powers are corporations, or as we saw above—the new techno-feudals. We don’t elect these techno-feudals as we would elect politicians.
We may think that we don’t elect them, but effectively we empower them with every dollar we spend— i.e. every time we choose convenience over values.
If you know anything about business, even just a little bit, you would know that even the most powerful corporation is nothing without its customers and its employees. We are the fuel in their engines. With automation they would need us a little less as employees, but where would the power of a corporation be without its customers?
We’re the power feeding those in power—the techno-feudals are the king on the stage from my article on empowerment. They are as powerful as the next employee, and the next customer.
Yes, maybe it is difficult to move from one employer to another and from one supplier to another. And yet, the reality is every big techno-feudal still has an alternative. That will soon not be the case but it still is.
None of that however is possible if we continue to live lives of isolation which upward social mobility have led to. I will bring here the headline of the book Team Human of
:“Our technologies, markets and cultural institutions- once forces for human connection and expression- now isolate and repress us. … It’s time to remake society together, not as individual players, but as the team we actually are: Team Human.”
Your Next Steps
What I know for sure is that if you are constantly surprised by aspects of our reality, you need to change your understanding of the paradigm we live in. Only when we understand “what is”, we can co-create “what we want it to be”— that starts with our individual lives and continues with our collective reality.
Following are some suggestions for simple next steps for very busy people.
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