[notacoward]

This gets at where I disagree with Varoufakis (and Zuboff). The rent-seeking dystopia we have is not something "beyond" capitalism, unless one conflates capitalism with free markets - which is and always has been a mistake. The distinguishing feature of capitalism is in the name: a disproportionate favor given to capital. This is especially evident in tax laws, but also IP law, labor law, etc. As Piketty points out, this inevitably leads to pervasive rent-seeking. That's not a "beyond"; it's the (mostly) stable end state once such a system is put in place. It's actually injurious to free markets, and nobody should hate it more than those seeking to enter a market with a genuinely innovative idea. Unfortunately, there are more people seeking to be favored servants than independent people.

[jauntywundrkind]

Technology has alas eroded property rights. We no longer own our vehicles, our cars, our tvs: anything with a computer now has an elaborate contract outlining whatever rights the seller seems to grant us, which can be changed at any time.

Anti-circumvention law applied massive legal weight to this, preventing the world from delving in & understanding the various devices around us. Which is now often defined by millions of lines of code, compiled down to devices, anyhow.

Whether the seller is free to create arbitrary restrictions & constraints on usage during sale, or whether the buyer is free to use purchases as they may is a huge tension here.

And there have been so few corrective actions or regulations to tilt things back in people's favor. GDPR a small collection of rights to data, but does nothing to help enlighten us as to the machines & their functioning. This all feels so infernal, trapped by law which doesn't let us look, trapped by machines where the mechanism inside is often inaccessible & invisible.