Techno feudalism

[Moriarte]

Old cars are more reliable than new cars, if no one buys a car that spies on them no one will make one. The same applies to phones, but we need to sort of the software infrascructure to make it easy and safe.

I am seriously contemplating buying a car from the 80-ies or even earlier. There are several specimens, mostly German made, which are unbreakable and non-traceable electronically. Some old Mercs, you know what I mean.

The screws of control will only be tightening, I have no illusion left there.

Twitter is not physical infrastructure. There is every chance that the mainstream will move to something else, and it will be left fighting over the right wing attention with Trump Social, Truss Social and all the others.

With respect, I disagree. Not physical - maybe, but infrastructure just the same. If you check views counts of largest X channels, app store popularity you will see X is lightyears ahead of competition in most large countries as the new main source of direct news. The only thing bigger than that are Chinese hubs. The latter is population factor of course.

I am often reminded of Nvidia-Amd duopoly as an example of how big only becomes bigger if it has competitive advantage (CUDA). Remember speculations 15 years ago how AMD will reach and overtake Nvidia one day because it’s on the cheap and all that jazz. Well, this conversation is over now.

Twitter/X is very convenient to capitalist class as the only true connection to customers and the world. It will stick, unfortunately. If I am wrong on this one, I’d appreciate if you remind me of this in case of alternative future happening.

 

[Akka]

I agree there definatly seems to be a need to push people away from big tech, but still that is easier that armed rebelion.

I disagree. Armed rebellion in a non-tech environment is easily graspable, the enemy is physical, in front of you, and his power is through physical constraint. It's "fightable". Dangerous and not easy, but it's right dab in the middle of human psychology - it's the "natural" fight for survival. Angry people can slip by and organize. The entire "underground fight" rely on being unnoticed until the time is right.

A technological dictatorship, though ? You're monitored, evaluated and singled out automatically once the tech and the infrastructure are in place. There is no more "going under the radar" when you are under surveillance by technological tools able to run 24/24 and process your data real-time.

I agree they could, but they are not there yet. We could all ditch andriod and fecesbook tomorrow, and host all our posting on tor. We have the tools of our liberation, and have had them since before we went over to big tech. We do not need to break any laws, spend any money, just a little bit of a learning curve to get up to speed on the tech.

Well, samely, people under a regular dictatorship "could" just all decide to rebel or ignore the orders from above. Anything is possible is we simply assume people "could" just all to chose something as one. But we don't work like that, and that's why intrusive tech has been possible to begin with, because there is a whole array of reactions that preclude a unified one. You can see in this very thread people who don't care about, and even actually SUPPORT the idea of being under permanent control.
There is a massive (I'd say even a majority) who simply don't care and can't/won't see farther than "it's convenient".

We're back to the previous disagreement : you consider armed rebellion harder (because it's more dangerous), I say it's easier (because psychologically, people fighting physical threats is much more going to happen than people fighting against nebulous, possible threats that come with convenient day-to-day practicalities).

 

[Estebonrober]

And you are right to complain, because I went on a tangent about comparisons of Musk and others with the oligarch+state thing of the thrid reich, tech-fascism. But the thread was about a feudalism comparison, the fragmentation of power, weakening of the central state. Such a 1980s thing.

Thta can be skewered with far more ease: none of the "techno-feudal" corporations have even something as simple as the Pinkertons. The armed force they depend on to protect their privileges, ther property, is the state's. There is no return to feudalism ongoing.

What I do see happening is politcians in power trying to use tech to do something like fascism. What they reallyw ant is to remain in power even desite being reviled and obviosly incompetent. Again, The UK and Starmer are perfect poster-boysMore so than Trump and the US. The tech corporation bosses seeking to curry favour with the fools who have these programmes of clinging to power by repression are not feudal overlords. They are just capitalists doing what capitalists always did: use proximity to politics to get themlseves more rents, more wealth.They can't and won't threaten states. If states as they exist today disaggregate imo the anarchy will vbe violent but brief.

I agree they are delusional, but if you;ve noticed that has notstopped reactionary parties from trying insane polcies world wide.... I also think you are underestimating jsut how much the Palantir's integration of public and private databases along with IoT and reactive drone response could look like in the future.... Its as dystopian as possible, but the tech is feasible now...

fwiw I just think they believe we are way more governable than we really are, but I;ve also spent my whole life shocked at all the **** people put up with both in their personal and public lives... so WTH do I know.

 

[Estebonrober]

"Techno-[political term]" is usually kinda BS, as @innonimatu says it is just old-fashioned capitalism (which is similar to feudalism in many respects) hiding behind a kind of mirage of "tech" that is able to bedazzle many midwits into believing this is something other than rent-seeking par excellence.

Yea I think the tech here is doing the majority of the lifting here, the vision is there, reactionaries have elaborated on it... Palantir is working on developing systems to implement things just one step removed from this kind of vision....

Maybe this is how capitalism finally kills itself, by leading us back to mysticism (literally food out of the sky lol) and shackles. You can already feel how much dumber conversations are all around you, the level of discourse and interaction we have in the US is fudging pathetic. I'm betting the population over all world wide is following similar trends...

 

[EnglishEdward]

If the humans won't be good errand running serfs, they will be replaced by robots.

This is being tested out in China.

China pits humanoid robots against humans in half-marathon for first time

Twenty-one humanoid robots joined thousands of runners at the Yizhuang half-marathon in Beijing

www.theguardian.com

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Frankly, those models seems very primitive compared to the ones from Boston Dynamics.

Obviosly China needs to invest more in industrial spionage in that field.

 

[Moriarte]

Frankly, those models seems very primitive compared to the ones from Boston Dynamics.

They only seem that way because they have fancy moves. Intelligence is where it's at. The most advanced robots (for techno feudalism!) are currently made by Tesla and several Chinese firms. Few reasons for that.

Tesla has two key ingredients for quick robot training - a number of own factories assembling cars, where robots are currently accumulating experience working assembly lines. Much like Tesla cars learning self-driving and constantly sharing experience in the cloud, Optimus robots learn factory work in swarm intelligence. Example - one robot learns wiping the floor means all robots will learn it. The AI capabilities of Tesla, expressed in data centers capable of executing and storing workflows is another key, which competitors like Boston Dynamics (owned by Korean Hyundai) don't possess.

The Chinese have leaped ahead in robotics. Several reasons converged: Cheap raw materials, salaries, close by supply chain and government grants (2025 - year of robotics in china) means the Chinese are mass producing not only humanoid robots already, but also medical robots (particularly Medbot surgical robots) and others. Robots are expensive. Figure 1 or Boston Dynamics robot specimens are estimated to cost around $100.000-150,000 (and not mass produced) depending to configuration. Some Chinese robots are on sale for $16,000-$30,000 and ready to order (mass produced) today. So, it's not even close when it comes to cost and progress.

Currently all vanguard USA and Chinese robotics firms are training their robots on auto factories. Ubtech robots work in Nio factories in China. Figure 1 robots work in BMW factories and Optimus, obviously works at Tesla. Give it several years and with robot manufacturing costs constantly falling due to competition - no humans will be required to work the auto factories.

Spoiler UBTECH :

 

[Thorgalaeg]

'fancy movements' is another way of saying 'human like movements' which requires a lot of intelligence, sensors, coordination, equilibrium, all things necesary to make a humanoid robots do the same things humans do in the future, which is the point of humanoid robots

Your videos otoh, shows a lot of dolls with remote human apparency but nothing more. I doubt the first factory is able to produce anything at all with those robots. A lot of cuts to show a bunch of slow things doing nothing at all. The strident music and added sounds effects makes it even worse. In the second video they seems to do some selection, but you don't need a humanoid robots for that.

If anything at all I get an even worse impression than with the marathon video, it seems China is not one but a couple of leaps behind in this field. Anyway they don't need robots either. If something is pretty abundant in China is human labor.

 

[Moriarte]

fancy movements' is another way of saying 'human like movements' which requires a lot of intelligence, sensors, coordination, equilibrium, all things necesary to make a humanoid robots do the same things humans do in the future, which is the point of humanoid robots

I don’t feel I need to reduce Boston’s achievement. I cheer for them all - American, Chinese, Japanese - bring them on I say. But you should know that as with humanity, jumping is the primitive stage, intellect is the advanced one. Many modern companies skip the parkour and go straight for the juice - cloud collaborated, reinforcement learning -powered, distributed-intelligence enabled Interaction. There will be niche use for Boston’s products, but 99% of use case will not be about mimicking human walk, backflipping and dancing. Impressive nonetheless, yea.

In the second video they seems to do some selection, but you don't need a humanoid robots for that.

You are missing the point. If a $16,000 upfront payment robot with $2,000 annual maintenance can work 24 hour shifts on a factory, then why do you need human? The human who wants more money, who has opinions, needs to sleep and medicine wants to go on vacation. Place youtself for a second, mentally, inside a caitalist’s mind. This is not a 20 year away distant illusory opportunity, my human brother. This **** is mass produced already.

it seems China is not one but a couple of leaps behind in this field.

Inform yourself on the subject. Youtube only has small demos. Nothing serious. I suggest robotics exhibition if there is one near you. To grasp the scale and see in person, which humanoid robots are superior and in which fields.

 

[Moriarte]

Dexterity is an easy, or at least straightforward goal. Intellect is more challenging. Both will be solved. People will steal the fruits of work of robotics from one another, with passage of time, that’s normal. The far bigger problem for everyone is that there is only one place in the world, where we can currently produce this sort of thing in any substantial numbers. Can this latter thing even be solved at this point? You tell me…

 

[Hygro]

They probably would like to follow Hitler's playbook. They forget that Germany went into WW2 bankrupt, to duch an extent that they had to go to war for the loot, or collapse economically

How can someone who so articulately argued chartalism in 2011 hold this position in 2025?

 

[Hygro]

"Techno-[political term]" is usually kinda BS, as @innonimatu says it is just old-fashioned capitalism (which is similar to feudalism in many respects) hiding behind a kind of mirage of "tech" that is able to bedazzle many midwits into believing this is something other than rent-seeking par excellence.

I too returned to this thread to endorse that part of inno's post.

It's okay to flavor your capitalism. Imperial State Company Capitalism, Late Stage Financialization Capitalism, Techno Feudalism Capitalism. But as Kaiserguard always reminded us, whatever his username is now, Neoliberalism was just liberalism. It's all still capitalism.

 

[Lexicus]

No, capitalism is ONLY like feudalism in the sense that they both deal in unequal power relations. Pretty much everything else about them of consequence differs.

I mean, rent is a big commonality between the two, and the modalities of the employment relationship in capitalism are essentially taken from manorial relations in feudalism.

 

[Snowygerry]

Idk - there is no "rent" in feudalism, you are "given" land in return for (military) services, then you can collect taxes from the land you're given, might be a technical difference, but still,

if you're given a plot of land in lease you are now the legal owner, you accumulate wealth for your offspring, if you rent it you do not.

A "loan" in feudal terms was most often hereditary, a rented plot of land returns to the original owner when you die.

 

[Lexicus]

Idk - there is no "rent" in feudalism, you are "given" land in return for (military) services, then you can collect taxes from the land you're given, might be a technical difference, but still,

if you're given a plot of land in lease you are now the legal owner, you accumulate wealth for your offspring, if you rent it you do not.

A "loan" in feudal terms was most often hereditary, a rented plot of land returns to the original owner when you die.

Rents were conceptualized as a charge for the peasants' use of land (and usually also other forms of capital such as tools and draft animals) owned by the landlord. The main value of being awarded landed titles in exchange for military service was the rents that could be extracted from the people who actually worked the land. Whether to refer to this as "taxes" or rent is mostly semantic; I prefer "rent" because of the connotations it has about the privatization and fragmentation of state power in most of medieval europe.

Also technically you're right about land tenure being temporary but a consistent marker of good kingship in medieval sources is putting a son "on the honor" (ie, land and titles) of their father, and it was really only in England that the king's notional power was matched by his de facto power, with the landed nobility in almost every other part of Europe being a significant center of power in its own right, at times rivaling and challenging the powers of kings but always constraining their freedom of action.