[epups]

I like Varoufakis in general and I find this analogy interesting. However, his answer to this question was not satisfactory in my opinion, as many commercial arrangements including malls, are also based on percentages:

Q: A company like Apple might argue that instead of being a fiefdom, maybe the Apple App Store is more like a mall where companies have to rent their stores from whomever owns the building. How is technofeudalism different from the mall dynamic?

A: Well, hugely. Say you and I were going into partnership together with a fashion brand. We go to the shopping mall and we hire a shop, the rent is fixed. It is not proportional to our sales. The more money we make, the higher our price-to-rent margin. With the Apple Store, they get 30 percent of all sales. That’s not at all the same thing. That is the equivalent of the ground rent that the feudal lord used to extract from vassal capitalists.

[jahnu]

Regardless of where you stand on this issue I feel that's a bit of a pointless nit-pick, because he's obviously not referring to those cases where mall rents are based on percentages. He clearly would argue that those would be the same system as the one he is arguing against. It's clear he's talking about the case he sets up to contrast two different models.

[epups]

If it's not about percentages, then what's the difference here? Walmart and Amazon are not fundamentally different. If the Apple Store can be compared to a mall, then we are in the same economic model we've been for decades.

[ilayn]

You can switch to a different location and continue business, should a conflict arises with a landlord in a mall.

With Amazon, if you have a conflict, you are done. You cannot come back to the mall. And there is a single (or very few malls).

In other words, it is not a market, where people come together for business) anymore it is being bound to a higher power to grant you rights of doing business.

[epups]

This is the same dynamics we have seen before. How many national supermarket chains are there? Crossing Walmart or Amazon seem very analogous here. If anything, business in the past was more feudalistic, as people were bound to a given market and they are now able to negotiate more broadly.

All of the replies here seem to point out that monopolies are bad and tech companies tend to be monopolistic. This is obvious and we all agree. However, when asked what is the difference between a mall and Apple Store, Varoufakis did not mention a monopoly or oligopoly as the issue, he mentioned rent. Specifically he mentioned that getting a percentage of profit was the biggest issue. I think this is not a strong argument for calling it a new economic model.

[ilayn]

I would argue otherwise. I have absolutely zero negotiation power. In the past there was more. See Apple-Epic saga or multiple reports that show Amazon manufacture popular products clones and pushing the original manufacturer down in the search results. These are impossible moves with Walmart. You need to physically erase products to outcompete your competitor.

Secondly, in Walmart we are all physically seeing the same product on the same shelf. With online "markets", I don't even know if I am seeing the stuff I wanted because there is an algorithm that hides certain things from me but shows it to you. These are exceptionally intrusive moves by the mall itself. Walmart could only dream about such manipulations. In the old model, I can still stand side-by-side with my competitor as product options.

In that sense, it is fundamentally malicious and a very new economic model.

[vladms]

I am not that sure it was the case before either. If you have 40 very similar products at Walmart where are they placed? Which one is placed on the top shelf (less visible) which one is placed at average height? How many packages of 1 type of product you have (you can have 10 of 1 product and 1 of another product - which one will be seen first). And so on.

Yes, you can do even more with an online market, but that in my opinion is "do similar things, only faster and more dynamic". Moving products from bottom shelf to middle shelf in all supermarkets = probably 1 week planning/executing. Moving all apps from first page to 3rd search page = probably 5 minutes.

[darkwater]

Exactly. And probably in 300-400 years from now, if Humanity is still there or it can entertain itself studying its past, they will laugh at how we permitted that.

[dzonga]

one example - Yanis gave on channel 4: was Amazon not only owns the mall. But with their algorithm - they can decide to show you what shops they want you to see. in a regular mall -- you can explore the mall willy nilly. nothing is exactly out of bounds in terms of the shops you see. you wanna visit a sex store - that's on you.

on amazon / google etc with their algorithm certain shops / websites are blocked from you ever noticing they exist due to their algorithms.

[TheCleric]

I think this is a fantastic point. Since they own the algorithm and the store, this is like renting a slot at a mall thinking you have a good spot by the food court where you have plenty of traffic, but one day you come in and the mall has placed you at the end of a dark hallway while the mall has replaced your store with one that sells stuff just like you did, but mall branded. Yes you're still in the mall, but good luck making money.

This is something Amazon does now with their basics line. Waits for something to get popular, makes it themselves, and then pushes you down in visibility: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-i...

[bluetomcat]

The marketplace dynamics are different. Numerous physical malls scattered around the world sell different sets of products to local clienteles. A centralised "online" mall sells a single set of products globally, offering a particular subset to a particular customer thanks to a finely-tuned algorithm analysing individual behaviour. It's not quite a "free market" anymore.

[vladms]

> sell different sets of products to local clienteles

> offering a particular subset to a particular customer

Aren't those in fact the same?... It's just that you can adjust faster and more granular, but as you yourself mentioned it happened before as well.

And really everybody talks about "the evil fine tuned algorithm" but when I am looking for something to buy many times those "smart" algorithms make very stupid suggestions and I feel the same as in the supermarket - I need to be very very specific about what I want and look for myself otherwise I don't get it.

[jahnu]

I guess another way to view the point(s) he's making is that the supplier of the thing that enables you to make your own business, prices that thing based on how hard and smart you work and not based on how hard they work.

[Lutger]

I imagine he would argue that such type of malls are a bit like feudal lords, he's otherwise clearly assuming malls have fixed rent.

The missing part, I think, is the monopolistic nature of big tech. In some domains, you can't do business anymore if you're not on one or most of meta's networks. You can't publish an app anymore if you don't pay rent to google or apple. The technoserf has no choice but to voluntarily share profits with his feudal lord.

[tmcb]

This is interesting because many Georgists would say that commercial arrangements like malls only exist because land wealth is a leftover from Feudalist societies.

[project2501a]

It's not about the percentages. It is about the ownership of the means of this centralized techno-capital, to which we have none. It is about the democratization of that capital, even if we have to nationalize it.

[flakeoil]

At least there is competition between malls. You can always move to another mall.