Michael Hudson argues that the industrial capitalism of a previous era has given way to a new form of financial capitalism. Today’s financial capitalists, unlike capitalists in Marx’s day, now claim their share of the surplus by passively extracting interest or economic rents…

what do y'all think of this? It makes some good points and Micheal Hudson is probably not right, but I have one criticism to make. One of his arguments that the richest people are still industrial capitalists (because they started businesses that do stuff), not finance capitalists, but as Cory Doctorow points out, those companies are basically just rentiers at this point. Amazon makes most of its money hosting other businesses on their site, "Meta" makes most of its money hosting being a middleman connecting advertisers and unpaid content creators poorly. Thus, it seems at least the emperial core has increased rentierism. This doesn't mean it's not built on peripheral industry and that reindustrializing the west would benefit average people, but it does seem to be good news about the decline of empire. Other thoughts?

  • WayneBarloweFan@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    the techno feudalism thing is really annoying to me but day's post isn't it either. also these companies are insurers and real estate speculators and landlords themselves

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yea the term is just a rebranding of imperialism but only to tech industries. It provides nothing of value.

    • alicirce@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Just a quick correction, this isn't written by Day. As noted in the forward, it is by JW Mason:

      J. W. Mason is Associate Professor of economics at John Jay College, CUNY and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

      • WayneBarloweFan@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        1 year ago

        sure inaccurate phrasing worth clarifying, i did reference most of the stuff on there is reposts and translation in another comment

    • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Techno feudalism is stupid, the rentier thesis is far better, Mason’s piece is interesting, but I don’t feel like it fully addresses it.