[haddr]

The counterarguments are really weak to refuse the analogy. They actually might convince a more aware reader that the opposite is true. E.g. Voluntary participation argument asserts that everyone has choice. This is equally true as saying that an alcoholic can simply stop drinking. In the economy where the winner takes all this is not that easy…

[dgb23]

There's also an issue that many tech savvy people miss: Most people have a very hard time using and understanding software, even if they use it regularly.

The attack surface of people who are easy to manipulate or exploit by Big Tech is shockingly large. But it's not just about personal responsibility or social pressures, but in large parts just about a lack of technical competency and internet literacy that the vast majority of people can't afford to get and maintain.

[klabb3]

I read the book and the post. I’m glad to see the rebuttal so weak, it strengthens my conviction that Yanis is onto something and is using historical analogies appropriately.

While most arguments are just technical gotchas, there’s a fundamental topological difference: in a feudal system you have one lord (apparently, you could generally not move without permission). With the new ”cloud serfs” you maintain multiple relations with different lords. Thus, you currently have more freedom of association- and migration compared to actual serfs, to a meaningful extent.

The system is very recent though, and consolidation of power (often through acquisitions) is already massively common and in every lord’s playbook. If they could, the mega-corps would absolutely want to buy other megacorps. Overall the system looks nothing like the idealized version of ”free markets” as taught in schools.

[dgb23]

Free markets are wonderful, but they require free agents to participate in them. That includes consumers and workers. Noam Chomsky even described Amazon as a totalitarian employer once I think.

I find it distasteful to use the ideal of free markets to defend large, oligopolistic corporations, their atrocious business practices towards consumers, workers and partners and their irresponsible treatment of the environment.

Those aren't your entrepreneurial ventures that participate in a free market. They are established institutions that can exert extreme power in economic, legal and political terms.

[dpig_]

I really don't understand what mechanisms could exist in an ideal free market to stop monopolies. What is a monopoly other than a hyper-successful agent on the free market? What kind of a free market is one that would restrict such a monopoly? It's incoherent.

[klabb3]

Why obsess over idealism and purity? We (most of us) don’t do that with individual liberty. Sure, we should have guiding principles for deciding how to regulate markets, just like we have for civil liberties. But for everyone except anarcho-capitalists, bikeshedding the purest philosophical interpretation is just navel-gazing.

[specproc]

I think the weakest of some pretty weak points by the author. The involuntary and extractive nature of the system is precisely what makes the feudal analogy strong.

[0thgen]

Sure, there are pressures for resource procurement that influence our decision making.

The difference is whether the hierarchy is baked into the legal system and less difficult to vertically navigate.