"in all times some must be rich, some poore, some high and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in subjection."

-- Governor John Winthrop, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630

so if you believe that #tRump is not a #russianAsset, please described what he would be doing differently if he was a russian asset.

#fascist #feudal system
#democracy is more than voting!

Every day, I’m sounding more and more like a #conspiracy nut, but I think it’s pretty clear that #Trump and #Vance and who knows who else, are controlled by #Russia. I have no doubts, by next week, the US will send money and equipment to Russia. In a month, Trump will send troops to back Russia to fight the #Ukraine. Back in the #US, they are doing as much damage as they can, on purpose, so they can sweep the current system away, and make a new, #feudal #dictatorship run by #musk and his #billionaire buddies.

Gibt es den Begriff schon - VerschwörungsRealität

https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Diesem-Umsturz-Plan-folgt-Musks-Machtuebernahme-article25563880.html

Japan's Supreme Court has finalized a lower court ruling ordering a publisher to delete its lists of areas where people discriminated against as descendants of the country's feudal outcasts live or had lived. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/12/06/japan/crime-legal/supreme-court-feudal-outcast-finalization/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #crimelegal #supremecourt #publishers #discrimination #burakumin #japanesecourts #feudal

Japan’s top court finalizes order to erase feudal outcast area lists https://www.byteseu.com/534637/ #burakumin #discrimination #feudal #Japan #JapaneseCourts #publishers #SupremeCourt

The concept of #rent is a throw-back to a #feudal/manorial economic system and should have no place in modern #economics. It creates a parasitic #aristocracy that provides no labour or services. #Landlords do not provide #housing; they create artificial scarcity and raise prices.

Today in Labor History June 24, 1525: The Church reconquered the Anabaptist free state of Munster. The Anabaptists had created a sectarian, communal government in Munster, Germany, during the Reformation. They controlled the city from February until June 24, 1525. They were heavily persecuted for their beliefs, which included opposition to participation in the military and civil government. They saw themselves as citizens of the Kingdom of God, and not citizens of any political state. Their beliefs helped radicalize people during Germany’s Peasant War, a revolt against feudalism and for material equality among all people. Some of the early Anabaptists practiced polygamy and polyamory, as well as the collective ownership of property. The more conservative decedents of the Anabaptists include the Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites.

The Munster rebellion has been portrayed in several works of fiction. My all-time favorite is “Q,” (1999) by the autonomist-Marxist Italian writing collective known as Luther Blissett. They currently write under the pen name Wu Ming. Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote an opera about it 1849, Le prophète.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #polyamory #anabaptist #germany #protestant #reformation #amish #feudal #equality #collective #books #fiction #novel #historicalfiction #author #writers @bookstadon

#DefaultsMatter, because while *some* people are confident enough to fiddle with them, many people are not. And it should not be necessary for them.

Everyone deserves software already configured for #UserNeeds, not some #Feudal master.

@thestrangelet

@malwaretech
I'm encouraged because even thou we have challenges ahead, at least with the fediverse we have the will, skills and the tools to fix it.

The #fediverse system provides a way forward unlike twitter or meta or any other closed #feudal system.

The challenge before us is to use the tools to save ourselves.

#democracy is more than how we vote!

#floss #foss #gnu #software
free software is #freespeech

"I wonder what happened to turn John’s [#Gruber] attitude…
The #EU… does not allow big companies to “own” markets because #freemarkets (in the EU’s eyes) are good, and privately owned ones that allow big companies to stop being capitalists and act like #feudal lords are bad. Facebook, Apple, and the rest have been doing this in digital for a long time, and the EU has decided it’s going to stop."
https://ianbetteridge.com/2024/04/19/what-a-difference-four-years-makes/

𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘧𝘦𝘶𝘥𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮

"In its most compelling stretches, Technofeudalism argues that Apple, Facebook, and Amazon have changed the economy so much that it now resembles Europe’s medieval feudal system. The tech giants are the lords, while everyone else is a peasant, working their land for not much in return."

https://www.wired.com/story/yanis-varoufakis-technofeudalism-interview/

We cry shame on the #feudal baron who forbade the #peasant to turn a clod of #earth unless he surrendered to his #lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the #worker is #forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of #hunger. #communism #peterkropotkin

Did you know that there's a place in #Europe that still has a #feudal system?

The #crown dependency of #Sark is a curious place. It has no paved #roads & #cars are forbidden, #women only got the right to inherit #property in 1999, & the whole island is, to this day, a fiefdom.

This means the #monarch is the head, with a #lord (seigneur here) as the executive power & the tenants (effectively liegemen) as the vassals.

Sark has to pay the #king a yearly #knight's fee.

It's £1,79.

In the US, the debate about #gerrymandering is intense and consistent. In the U.K., it’s just reported as inevitability.

Recently someone described the U.K. to me as a “modern #feudal state” and it’s making more and more sense every day.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67361138

«Markets have been “replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets”. The moment you enter amazon.com “you exit #capitalism” and enter something that resembles a “feudal fief”: a digital world belonging to one man and his algorithm, which determines what products you will see and what products you won’t see.

If you are a seller, the #platform will determine how you can sell and which #customers you can approach. The terms in which you interact, share information and trade are dictated by an “algo” that “works for [Jeff Bezos’] bottom line”.

The capitalists who rely on this mode of selling are granted access to the digital estate by its virtual landowners, the Big Tech companies. And if “vassal capitalists” don’t abide by the laws of the estate, they are kicked out – removed from #Apple’s App Store or #Google’s search index – with disastrous consequences for their business.

Access to the “digital fief” comes at the cost of exorbitant rents. Varoufakis notes that many third-party developers on the Apple store, for example, pay 30% “on all their revenues”, while #Amazon charges its sellers “35% of revenues”. This, he argues, is like a medieval #feudal lord sending round the sheriff to collect a large chunk of his serfs’ produce because he owns the estate and everything within it.

This is not extracting profit through the production or provision of goods and services, as these platforms are not a “service” in the sense in which the term is used in economics. They are extracting rents in the form of the huge cuts they take from the capitalists on their platforms.

There is “no disinterested invisible hand of the #market” here. The Big Tech platforms are exempted from free-market competition. Their owners – “cloudalists” – increase their wealth and power at a dizzying pace with each click, exploiting a new form of rent-seeking made possible by the new algorithmically structured digital platforms. Parasitic on capitalist production, they are now dominating it.

But something even more transformative has happened, Varoufakis argues.

Even though most of us are regularly interacting with capitalists and earning wages via our labour, now, for the first time in history, all of us contribute to “the wealth and power of the new ruling class” through our “unpaid labour”.

Every time we use our cloud-linked devices – smartphones, laptops, #Alexa, Google Assistant, #Siri – we replenish the capital of the Big Tech cloudalists. This in turn increases their capacity to generate more wealth. How? We train their algorithms, which train us, to train them, and so on, in a feedback loop whose goal is to shape our desires and behaviour. They are “selling things to us while selling our attention to others”.»

https://theconversation.com/is-capitalism-dead-yanis-varoufakis-thinks-it-is-and-he-knows-who-killed-it-213992

Ein #Erzählstrang in Bezug auf #SocialMedia: Die #Macht zur #Einführung, #Gestaltung und #Abschaffung liegt bei #feudal​en #Herrscher​n wie #Musk, #Zuckerberg und #Dorsey.

#Kennzeichen für #Feudalismus: ein #System der #Umverteilung auf #Grundlage #juristisch​er #Recht​e (hier #Nutzungsrecht​e) und #Tradition​en. #Überschneidung #politisch​er und #wirtschaftlich​er #Überlegung​en

vgl. https://ifwo.eu/@sozialwelten/108788161009926276

#FAS, 5.11.23, #Medien, S. 39, Annette #Dittert - Bye-bye, liebes #Twitter!