There are certain words and phrases that have no fixed definition, so the use of them usually says more about the person using them, than the object they are being used to describe. Like “fascism” in modern times, the term “feudalism” was mostly a term of disparagement in the 18th and 19th century. According to scholars of the subject, the word “feudal” was first used in the 17th century, as in feudal order. It later came into more common usage in Marxist political propaganda in the 18th and 19th century.
Just because feudalism was largely used as a meaningless epithet, it does not mean it did not exist. Scholars generally agree that feudalism was “a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs.” The lord owned the land, the vassal was granted use of it by the lord. The land was the fief. In exchange for legal and physical protection, the lord expected service, usually military service, but also food rents and labor from the peasants.
Marxists later pointed out that the codes and customs that we associate with this period relied on the lord owning the one thing of value, the land. The person at the top of the feudal order had a monopoly on the one store of value and that gave him a monopoly on the law. The old saying about the golden rule is true. The man with the gold makes the rules. This is why as coinage made a comeback in the medieval period, kings took control of the mints. It was both a source a wealth, seigniorage, and a source of power.
A useful example of this is the decision by Henry VIII to dissolve the monasteries of the Catholic Church. By seizing church lands, which constituted about a quarter of the national wealth, and redistributing them to favored aristocrats, Henry fundamentally altered English society. He weakened the power of the old nobles, by filling their ranks with new members loyal to Henry. He also eliminated an alternative source of economic power in English society. Henry was supreme power because he controlled the land.
Feudalism only works when a small elite controls the source of wealth. Then they can control the exploitation of it. In Europe, as Christianity spread, the Church required lands, becoming one of the most powerful forces in society. The warrior elite was exclusively Catholic, thus they had a loyalty to the Pope, as God’s representative on earth. Therefore, the system of controlling wealth not only had a direct financial benefit to the people at the top, it had the blessing of God’s representative, who sat atop the whole system.
That’s something to keep in mind as we see technology evolve into a feudal system, where a small elite controls the resources and grants permission to users. The software oligopolies are now shifting all of their licencing to a subscription model. It’s not just the mobile platforms. Developers of enterprise software for business are adopting the same model. The users have no ownership rights. Instead they are renters, subject to terms and conditions imposed by the developer or platform holder. The users is literally a tenant.
The main reason developers are shifting to this model is that they cannot charge high fees for their software, due to the mass of software on the market. Competition has drive down prices. Further, customers are not inclined to pay high maintenance fees, when they can buy new systems at competitive rates. The solution is stop selling the stuff and start renting it. This fits the oligopoly scheme as it ultimately puts them in control of the developers. Apple and Google are now running protection rackets for developers.
It also means the end of any useful development. Take a look at the situation Stefan Molyneux faces. A band of religious fanatics has declared him a heretic and wants him burned. The Great Church of Technology is now in the process of having him expelled from the internet. As he wrote in a post, he invests 12 years building his business on-line, only to find out he owns none of it. He was always just a tenant farmer, who foolishly invested millions in YouTube. Like a peasant, he is now about to be evicted.
How long before someone like this monster discovers that Google and Apple will no longer allow him to use any apps on his phone? Or maybe he is denied access to his accounting system? How long before his insurer cuts off his business insurance, claiming the threat from homosexual terrorists poses too high of a risk? Federal law prevents the electric company from shutting off his power due to politics, but Federal law used to prevent secret courts and secret warrants. Things change as the people in charge change.
The power of the church in medieval Europe was not just spiritual. They owned vast amounts of land and could marshal tremendous resources in support of or in defiance of the secular rulers. In fact, the reason the Church acquired lands was for exactly that reason. What drives the tech overlords of today is exactly the same thing. Their desire to impose their moral order on the rest of us is driving them to monopolize the source of power in the information age. They are imposing a new form of feudalism on us.
The difference today is that this new religion is ill-defined and lacking in the outward symbols to distinguish it from the rest of society. The rules of the new religion are always changing, making it impossible to predict. No one in the 12th century was unclear about who set the moral order. The local bishop may have been nuts, but he was predictably nuts. The new religion is formless, with moral codes springing from the mob, as the mood of the mob changes. It’s an anarcho-tyranny, because it is an anarcho-religion.
The solution to this will not be the same as last time. There is no secular authority willing to challenge the power of the new theogarchs. Mark Zuckerberg went to Congress and lied his face off, knowing they were afraid to lay a hand on him. By the 2020 election, social media will have banned Trump and all Trump supporters. The solution, in time, is the people in these oligopolies will have to fear the peasantry in real space. The same civil authorities that are too weak to oppose the theogarchs will be too weak to protect them.
The core power of this tech fuedalism is communication. I don’t want to need F book or Google but I need to speak to my family and friends and I need access to the dissident thoughts of the Molyneux’s and Z’s. If Google can kick me off the platform them my phone doesn’t work. If Verizon cuts my internet I don’t have an alternative at the moment. Since the Gov is in big techs pocket, they have no incentive to turn tech into a regulated utility. It’s why one of the most important things Trump could do is break them up. I don’t think individual action will have an effect. We aren’t that organized and will be even less so when the comms are taken away.
This is how to push back. This is why we need more of our people in office:
Louisiana Bars Banks From $600M Deal Because of Gun Policies
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/louisiana/articles/2018-08-16/louisiana-bars-banks-from-600m-deal-because-of-gun-policies?int=undefined-rec
But. Feudalism also developed into tradition that soften the power relations between ruler and ruled. The vassals started out owning their fiefs only for life. But then managed to be able to will them to their descendants. And the peasants were useful because they also served as soldiers in the baron’s private army.
Note that feudalism ended in Britain when Henry VIII nationalized the armed forces (with the help of taxes and credit from the merchants) and the peasants were “hurled” upon the labor market because they were no longer useful as soldiers in the baronial armies.
The problem with the cozy feudalism between the rulers and the tech barons is the problem of injustice that might lead to peasants with pitchforks.
So, you want us to wait a few hundred years for things to settle out?
There is always a yoke on the peasants, now you just feel it
Where’s the Constitution now?
They took the “free press” long ago
They drove you from Lawfully Assemblying IRL
at Charlottsville
They have de-platformed You effectively off the internet silencing your freedom of speech and your red pills
And they never had to even touch your precious right to bear arms.
You called them Cucks and worse, you beat them at Meme War, what did you expect?
The beauty is, the normies, like all 300,000,000 of them don’t even know it happened.
“Civil Rights Commission”. The American version of the Human Rights Commissions in British Commonwealth countries, such as the loons making Mark Steyn’s life hell.
If we didn’t have these inquisition courts of the State religion, holiness spiral religious fanatics would have no place to conduct their trials, or grounds to bring a suit of heresy.
It’s more insidious than just anarcho-tyranny. The tech elites are using the medium to brainwash the masses and create a hive-minded peasantry that is obedient and psychologically malleable. Our ancestral forebears acquired belief via direct interaction with reality. In the modern age of technological indoctrination, all belief will be programmed via mass media repetitive messaging, overt penalties for nonconformity, and subliminal rewards/gratification. This practice is now a science and it’s implementation is covert evolutionary change.
It’d be great if Trump would start talking about these real issues and not just getting into endless fights with the press and stirring up drama. But that would require him to not be the egomaniac that he is.
Brilliant. Justice tends to be had one way or another. The tech companies will be broken up only after the civil authorities afraid of them now are too afraid to do otherwise. In the meantime, welcome to the Soviet Union Part 2. It did happen here, only the “it” was communism and the delivery mechanism was quite the capitalist innovation.
Actually, modern capitalism is the very same communism. In Russian prison slang, this trick is called “putting onto orbit” . It means that one and the same force creates conditions to put sheeple running in the circle. Capitalism and communism is like 2 party system. Desperate electorate rushing left and right without understanding that both parties are actually the same. It is very same like good cop, bad cop.
By the by, unless I missed it, there appears to have been no response from Donald Trump to this very public, very obvious and very co-ordinated pitchforking of so many of his supporters online. Why is that, I wonder? I appreciate that he may have his hands full cleaning out the swamp but just a judicious tweeted warning to the Globohomo Central might have a cooling effect on them.
The flow of history is always interrupted by unexpected events. Feudalism was brought to an end not by arguments or peasant uprisings (which were always brutally put down) but by the Black Death. The feudal lords may despise and fear the peasants but they also need those peasants to generate the wealth that the feudal lords rely on. The peasants and farmers that survived were so desperately needed that they could demand more pay and better conditions and they got both. Eventually, this lead to the renaissance.
Man makes plans and God laughs.
A bit OT: the MSM is doubling down on trying to hold it’s shrinking market share, e.g. by straw-manning Trump’s claims (mainly in tweets) that the “fake news media” are “enemies of the people”.
They (in a coordinated effort by 350 MSM outlets) are going nuts trying to spin it, that he’s branding *all* media as enemies of the people.
I’d never thought they’d get this desperate, to gamble that the people wouldn’t learn the difference, between his words, and their spin of them.
Trump calls out “fake news”, and these journalistic outlets sign up to own the appellation. It would be like Wendy’s calling out other fast foods for using frozen meat, and McD’s claiming “damn right we do”. Mind boggling.
And, the MSM mostly ducks telling us all, when our (lefty) Elites puke out factual falsehoods, see VDH’s latest, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/academic-brand-deflated-ELITE-degrees-worth-less/ . Money quote:
“It is growing harder and harder, to equate elite university branding with proof of knowledge. Barack Obama, another HARVARD Law graduate, proved this depressing fact a number of times, when he asserted that the Maldives were the Falklands, “corpsmen” was pronounced with a hard p, Austrians spoke a language called Austrian, there were 57 states, and Hawaii was in Asia.
Joe Biden, another law-school graduate, once stated that George W. Bush should have addressed the nation on television, the way FDR did after the stock crash: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television . . .” Biden apparently forgot that FDR was not president in 1929, and that TVs weren’t introduced to the public until 1939.
The point is not to cite egregious anecdotes, but rather to reflect on why Americans have pretty much lost faith in their degreed elite.”
The only solution to solve the problem, is getting rid from communism or whatever somebody like to call this “all equal ” stuff. This demands fundamental paradigm shift in western mind. To understand that homosexual and christian priest are not equal people.
Things are very simple for example in Japan.
Why you sell rice bu not potatoes? Because we are in the Japan, that,s why. And why people can build new church but not new mosque ? Because this is Poland, that,s why.
There is no such thing that equal rights. Only will of majority. Who will run over the minority known as white liberal communists. There are native Poles who think that mosque is great . But majority call them communists and bulling them out of country.
There are alt-tech solutions to this problem. “DAT” Decentralized Application Technology. People are working on it. Websites of this form could never be taken down, including DOS attacks by Anonymous and others. There are no gatekeepers. The project sponsor is full of SJW jargon however (inclusive spaces, empower, public good, diverse leaders, sustainability). The technology itself is open source, so even that has no gatekeeper.
https://datproject.org/about
Open source? Fork it. MDGAproject.org
I’d really like to see the use of the term “the new religion” to become widespread! I’ve tried to think of a catchier name (Diversitarianism maybe), but if enough people on the right started talking about the New Religion (note caps!) it might start infuriating progressives, and that might be enough to catapult it into memehood. In particular, if Trump started using the term regularly…
Absolutely. As in the past, the new theocracy is determined to cast down the old’s temples, to murder it, gut it, and wear it’s skin.
Appropriating it’s assets took place first in the cultural space, that it might seize the real space. The old religion was formed in exactly the same way, State is becoming Church as well, and we’re forced to worship it.
I’m afraid that the realspace rebellion will not be a reset, or a civil war, but a long, protracted Ireland Troubles as things get shittier and shittier.
Speaking of real space rebellion, local news in New Mexico is reporting that “the authorities” have destroyed the Muslim School of Child Shooting compound. Love to know what that place must have been hiding.
This is an outstanding and enlightening essay!
What’s the next shoe to drop? I’m guessing that banning wrong-thinkers from being able to use an operating system may become another aspect of deplatforming sometime in the future. Thank heavens for Linux — unless the Linux developers go all SJW on us.
An extremely cogent column! What we have in the West is wholesale looting of the peasantry by rootless metropolitan elites, and their well bribed servants in the permanent government. The Feudalism of the past was so much better, because the looting was extremely limited by the need for a reasonably functional peasantry…There is fear, however, that this profitable anarcho-tyranny won’t last. I have first hand evidence of increased interest in safe boltholes by some of these functionaries. But New Zealand isn’t that large…
I mentioned something similar before, Apologies if that sounds dickish. I lived in New Zealand for a while so I tend to keep an eye on the news. Newly passed legislation now ban foreign nationals from buying property. Potentially Australia to follow suit. The housing market in NZ had became extremely difficult for young people to get on the ladder. Plus with all that Land being bought up by The Billionaire Boys club it was starting to piss off the native Whites and Maoris. Thiel bought some huge amount a while back and started a trend. He seems to sympathise with our side so I wouldn’t begrudge him. So that avenue has been cut off for globohomo. https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=%23&ved=0ahUKEwiYx4nQqvLcAhVKIsAKHXvWB3kQxa8BCCswAw&usg=AOvVaw0VTJzWxrN8ZFOD4xbU2nov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MiqPQ1dVg4
Better link, pointg being that if we can get them to be tied to us, it means we’re tied to them. Symbiosis isn’t easily discarded
Interesting analogy. I read a book years ago, a history of English castles. They changed hands through history as the Lords picked the wrong ruler in the many wars, and the castles (and lands) were awarded to the lords who fought with the winning kings, clear up to WW1. But there weren’t any patents on the land, unlike the tech example. Seems like the kings are serving the Lords these days, rather than vice versa, and the church is in exile.
“Theogarch”– I think you can take credit for coining a new word.
If twitter banishes trump, by my estimate 20-50% of users will quit and shareholders will sue. Not gonna happen. Of course Jack would love to, but it would create such a mess and blow the left’s cover wide open
…There is no secular authority willing to challenge the power of the new theogarchs…. Maybe Trump can come up with something. He’s pretty good at taking on the powers that be, has access to a lot of resources, and still has a year or so to rein them in. I’d say it all depends on the mid-terms. If there should be a Trumpian wave, watch out.
There’s not going to be a Trumpian wave and anyone who think there will be needs to be talked too very very slowly.
Not necessarily, any recent wins for the GOP have tended to come from either Trumpian policies or Trumps backing, Royal Moore notwithstanding. I don’t see some great Blue wave. The coalition of the fringes has pretty much nothing in common, if it was to get in power it would result in an orgiastic virtue signalling spiral that would consume itself. Most of the momentum in the West, with the exception of the Anglophone World is legitimatly with Nationalist Populist parties. The Magic Negro was ultimatly annointed as he was no realistic threat to Wall Street and the Globalist agenda. Trumps been a very different Beast, hence the lack of support from his own parties Corporate Avatars.
“I don’t see some great Blue wave”
Then you’re really not paying attention to polling, election results, fundraising, or anything else for that matter.
BillH, I think you triggered Berty.
Why? No demand?
A phenomenon I have been observing in recent years, and especially the last six months or so, is that the petit bourgeois with some cash is checking out of bank deposits and traditional securities, and going for land or rental properties, in a big way.
Rental property buyers appear to be aping the feudal landlords a bit, but, at least to me, they are ignoring the lack of liquidity, renter’s rights movements, and the potential for rent controls. Also, here in CA, they are paying top dollar for properties. Long time landlords tell me they are getting out while the getting is good. My own experience is that buying real estate while the prices are depressed is the way to go, but today’s prices are for suckers.
Others, such as myself, are buying rural land with water access, and with compatible neighbors living at a distance. Sunk money (like buying gold or lead), but something tangible—“meatspace” stuff.
People intuit where this is all going, but there is a difference between those who see themselves as some sort of petit feudal lords, and others who see ourselves as kulaks.
I’ve heard Z say, “economics is downstream of culture,” or something to that effect. However, I think this post clearly demonstrates that culture is downstream of economics.
For example, as Z mentions, land was the only store of value because a farmer could only grow enough to support himself and a little extra. There was no surplus to allow the urban concentration or specialization of labor we see today. Transaction costs were high and there was no way to preserve foods, so there was a limited ability for a true market to form because local players had a de facto monopoly. These factors, and others, gave rise to feudal culture. Because land can be worked by nearly anyone, you have owners of land lording over an undifferentiated mass of peasants. Since anyone could come in and take your productive land, you have to secure it with armed warriors. Since most trade is local, communities are small and idiosyncratic.
In the same way that environment shapes genetics (and ultimately a people and culture), the hard realities of scarcity and productivity sculpt culture.
Yeah, Matt, culture is often downstream of economics, and, downstream of a society’s technological choices, see https://Whiskeys-place.blogspot.com/2012/01/charles-murray-and-white-class-divide.html (esp. his response to a reader, where he lists the most fateful tech changes, e.g. “1. The Moldboard Plow; 2. The Printing Press….”).
And, as Zman argues in his Theory of Everything: Part VI, “Each decision you face is the result of previous decisions.”
So, what you do with a surplus today, constrains your options tomorrow.
Saving in gold coins forgoes the steady interest payments one expects from Bonds, in exchange for protection from a hyperinflation which could bring huge losses to your Bonds.
For a complex but gripping view, of the ultimate fate of the Dollar in world trade etc., see
https://fofoa.blogspot.com/2014/08/Dirty-Float.html, and
https://fofoa.blogspot.com/2015/05/clean-float-why-Dollar-must-Collapse.html .
Clearly not. The culture that birthed feudal society predated the economic arrangements. Manoralism grew out of the Roman villa system that existed in the late empire. Yes, there is a feedback loop between culture and politics, but the culture always comes first, just as the egg always precedes the chicken.
I was thinking yesterday about how much I would pay for a phone that didn’t track me, and didn’t come pre-loaded with all kinds of software and social media apps that can’t be deleted running in the background.
I think I’d pay a decent premium for such a device.
Unfortunately you and maybe a hundred other people. No market it for it.
Disagree. I think there is a market for it. Everyone in the NRA would probably buy one and that’s around 6 million people. If Trumptech sold that phone, you could probably double that number in sales
Look for a BlacK Phone by Silent Circle. They launched these about 4 years ago, but stopped making them. Very granular app security settings for any android app, and all encrypted Comms. They were just too early IMO. I might buy one.
I’d go for that.
Go for a dumbphone. Do you really need Google Maps?
I really need Pandora and my electronic audio library. And, unfortunately, my work Outlook app.
I do, and I use the phone for almost everything I do in business- because *everyone* uses and depends on it now in my industry.
E-docs are a standard, and Maps remains far better than GPS. My phone is my mobile office.
Heck, I only use a computer for my one spreadsheet as a sole proprietor, or for nickel-dime trading. Sorry.
Thank you. Have been waiting for someone else.
There isn’t a phone that is 100% what you are asking but there is a “close enough” version which is anything running the now defunct Windows Phone platform.
M$ has abandoned the platform so the spyware / tracking is minimal. There are rudimentary apps that are useful but you needn’t be anywhere near the Google or Apple ecosystem of hidden backdoor protocols and ‘always on’ monitoring.
I just dumped my ‘Google Ankle Monitor’ a few months back for one of these. It is functional, but not elegant. A small price to pay IMHO.
How about a phone with a simple stealth mode button? And yeah, I do want maps and banking and Paypal and Pokemon Go and everything else to work. And I require social media to have lots of right-wing content that reflects the real desires and “hot takes” of the people I choose to follow. None of this is too much to ask or even technically difficult. Demand regulation now.
landline. have never had anything but and with a laptop have never felt the need to be followed by my phone. same thing with owning an older vehicle to avoid tracking and control. You don’t have to pay much for it, either. can’t believe so many people gave those up in favor of “sure, interfere with my privacy any time” camera/gps/data mining phones. (PS also avoid alexa, TV, any “smart” devices. don’t need ’em, don’t want ’em)
As a minimum (or an alternative), how about legislation that mandates that a phone user must opt in to tracking his data? I.e., the factory default is “no tracking.”
In fact, at the time feudalism established itself there was no division between the state and the church (at least not in Germany). The king was a worldly and a spiritual ruler and he appointed bishops and gave away fiefdoms to church officials as he saw fit. The pope was first and foremost the bishop of Rome and not much more. That changed around 1100 a.D. when the kings had to give up the right to interfere in church matters and the clergy was reformed to be more in line with biblical teachings but even after that wordly leaders still hold a lot of religious influence.
A lesson the wannabe feudalists of today should keep well in mind is that while they do undeniably have a lot of cultural (=religious) power they have no wordly power at all. Even if one graciously takes the financial statements of Twitter, Facebook, Amazon etc at face value and doesn‘t deduct the part of it that is subsidies or Ponzi scheme they have budgets the size of small European countries, but no sovereign territory, no army, no secret service (though this point might be debatable) and no way to directly make laws in other words: no way to mess up their opponents than libel. If a sufficiently powerful group within the US Government (let’s say a banned and pissed off Trump + allies) ever decides they have had enough and pulls the plug on them they will be absolutely helpless. And there are a lot of ways to do that. Data protection laws, tax regulations, cancelling subsidies as the soft way. Hard options are conceivable, too. Might just be that some of these companies were violating fundamental US laws which could lead to them being shut down entirely.
I am starting to believe these companies are using the Black Mirror episodes of techno dystopia and control as a guide for how to go forward with their operations.
RedIce and Jay Dyer talk about this.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-31Tu50egA
Three words of advice: Buy. More. Ammo.
OK any suggestions, people? I mean other than the solution, in time, being the people in these oligopolies will have to fear the peasantry in real space. So, we can’t fight the elite scum and their control of the Internet? We can’t build our own platforms? Well, we suck and losers of history endure what we must. All hail the Globalist Elites of the 21st century.
Well, I’ll suggest not doing the Birkenhead Drill since few deserve saving and those that do will be helping. Instead, let’s just set fire to anything that will catch. Tlingit Liberation Theory, if you would.
Awesome. Great, thanks for the useful and intelligent comments everybody.
Life of the party much?
Okay, if you’re new, get out there and google Neighborhood Protection Team. It’s stuff about basic skills, basic community and basically being a decent human being. If your competence level, your location or just you in general hinder this in any great way then you’re pretty much bent. Fix it
Sharpen your mind, harden your body and there’s a point at which you don’t need more guns, you need more friends.
But you will need guns, and if you think you won’t then do not bother wasting serious people’s time.
Ymmv, and I do wish you the best luck.
Technology has eliminated actual debate. So called and un-elected “spokesmen” for cause “X” has his message amplified for the good of the cause and any dissenting voice is (virtually 😉 ) smothered using algorithms, algorithms that are getting so good that most have never noticed that there was any argument .
The path is being well cleared.
Seems like the fact that we’re here now negates that. Yeah, Twitter and FB, but one is unnecessary for staying informed and the second so in-your-face from the start that many of us have never gone near it. Something will come along to replace social media, just as corporate media has been replaced.
This is a great opportunity for somebody like Kim Dotcom(or some other IT wiz kid) to provide us with digital alternatives
Facebook and Twitter are prime candidates for nationalization on the Yukos model. Twitter is an especially good case to be nationalized given its inability to make a profit while still providing an important public forum. Profits of the nationalized company could be divided on market share to foreign countries to assuage fears of the Trumpenreich controlling the flow of information. In the case of Google/Microsoft/Amazon, the search function at a minimum needs to be regulated as a public utility. It may be necessary for the state to claim “golden shares” in those companies, which have been in violation of tax laws for almost their entire existence, to say nothing of the government aid given to them.
I’ll also throw in that Wikipedia is a worthy candidate to be seized from its leftist administrators and put under the control of the Library of Congress. Obviously this is pure spite on my part, as its one of the few pieces of tech infrastructure that retains the old “hacker ethic” of being free information. Not as if there aren’t numerous copies of Wiki anyways. It is galling that they continue to rattle the tin cup for donations despite being located in the wealthiest region of the US.
“… Wikipedia is a worthy candidate to be seized from its leftist administrators and put under the control of the Library of Congress.”
I like your above ideas, but we keep running into the problem of the people who will be in positions of authority, such as our vibrant first black Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden:
“Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden to moderate a conversation with former First Lady Michelle Obama at the ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition”
http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2018/06/librarian-congress-dr-carla-hayden-moderate-conversation-former-first-lady
As TeaPartyDoc said recently, evil f*ckers running things everywhere.
Government is subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, and members of Congress have investigative power even when in the minority. By contrast Mark Zuckerberg has supervoting shares that ensure him complete operational control. We can also ensure civil service protections for employees voicing right-wing opinions off the clock.
Just use Infogalactic instead. Its a fork with the same data where useful and the Leftist bias removed.
“The solution, in time, is the people in these oligopolies will have to fear the peasantry in real space.”
Quite correct.
They already do fear us, that explains their behavior.
Welcome to The Real Space Force, cadets. We need cool shirts.
“Will no one rid us of these meddlesome priests?”
In doing this French Revolution project I’ve read a few books on feudalism and the feudal economics. One thing about feudalism is that it was never exactly the same everywhere and differed greatly, even in manses that were near to each other. Some lords actually owned very little of the land that they protected. They supported themselves by farming the manse land adjacent to their home or castle (or sometimes land at a distance from it, again if there is one mark of feudalism it is inconsistency) and had certain laborers attached to their farm permanently, but got help from their serfs according to whatever contract they had with them for days of labor.
A good example of how the lords didn’t actually own the land is the fact that when kings appeared, they held an overlordship of the nobility, yet had, for the most part, to support themselves off of their own manse.
The key to the feudal economy was the exchange of goods and services in-kind, mostly without money. Goods and services were exchanged according to the feudal contract, which involved fealty in exchange for protection. One thing that I think most historians would agree on is, like you imply, that the reintroduction of a money economy was the ultimate doom of feudalism. Once people could absolve themselves of obligations by money payments, their obligations diminished, and what obligations remained began to be resented, especially when the martial obligations of the nobility disappeared, which is what happened in France.
So what we seem to be developing today is a feudalism where all of the land is in fact owned by the lords, a situation that would have been unusual, even in the Middle Ages, and the only obligation they seem to have is to own and oversee that land. You may cultivate it, but only at their pleasure. They are under no obligation whatsoever to guarantee your position on that land or protect you from outsiders. In fact, they may go in with the outsiders which attack you. This is a situation in which a medieval lord would ultimately not survive.
It remains to be seen if the modern lord of the manor can survive when he is randomly beheading his fief holders.
My sense of things is that a new kind of entrepreneur will arise out of this that will offer increased protection to the large fief holders who are currently being persecuted by their lords. The analogy is that of a knight changing his allegiance. If some other lord is able to offer that knight a situation where his fief is smaller, but more secure, he might take it. What seems to be happening right now is an undue attachment of these knights, like Molyneaux, for the particular fief he now occupies, and the fear that previously unplowed ground might not be as productive.
Andrew Torba has to be aware of this situation, and at this time has his own problems with a lord who is sorely tempted to cut off his head (Microsoft Azure). I would bet that he, and others like him, are looking around for the opportunity to set up alternatives as we speak.
Unless and until such activity yeilds results, or we get some break up and regulation of the provider companies, the only thing to hope for is a cessation of these oligarchs saying, “You are no longer under my protection.”
The law appears to currently prohibit the ISP from discriminating against you, on the basis that it is a telephone public utility. Everything else is up for grabs. Any dissident site will need to either host its own servers, or find a host in a foreign country that can’t be bullied by Big Tech, which is difficult as those countries are under US sanctions. I don’t know anything about having to set up your own domain registrar, but that suggestion has been made as well. The Darknet appears to be the most secure ground, as the Deep State would hesitate to surrender this tool of subversion.
“Well if you don’t like it you can just go build your own platform”-
Gab did, so the lords are trying to take Torba down. They’re making examples of people right and… er, right, killing the chicken to scare the monkey.
The bakers are another ‘example’. I always go cake shopping with a camera man and my lawyer in tow, don’t you?
Big Tech was told in no uncertain terms that if the Right isn’t throttled/banned then there will be major penalties. The EU fined Google 5 billion dollars, and France/Germany threatened to outright ban Facebook if “hate speech” couldn’t be banned within country. Nationalization isn’t just my Quixotic hobby horse, it is not far away from EU policy. This is not to minimize the disgusting role that the ADL is playing in this gambit.
Also important to note the makeup of the Big Tech workforce. Very left-wing, and any remaining Alt-Righters are in hiding after even mild centrists like James Damore got the axe. It would not surprise me if the preponderance of Christianity was higher among Asian techies than white techies. This workforce is enraged at its leadership for being “soft on the Notzees”. Enraged workers might start thinking the dirtiest word: unionization.
We are going back to the future, where you own nothing.
Not for nothing – but the sovereign citizen crowd and people in the patriot and liberty movement have been pointing this out about REAL things (like land and your home) – long before Fecesbook and Google ever even existed. I read Vin Suprynowicz something like 15 years ago and he talked about these issues. The guys out at the Bundy Ranch standoff and the Malheur Refuge takeover weren’t bitching about being deplatformed off of Youtube – they had real issues in meatspace.
When people will give up their ability to own a REAL thing – why wouldn’t they just also give up ephemeral things like comments on the internet and videos posted on Youtube – all of which pretty much disappear as soon as the power goes out?
You want to bitch about “owning nothing” – then let’s talk about the 16th amendment.
@calsdad
I think people just want to bitch and that’s about it…If it’s not handed to them on a silver platter they aren’t going to do much about their Liberty…
While we’re on the topic of feudalism. Maybe everyone has seen this already, but in case you haven’t, this interview is worth reading in its entirety:
“Your generation, the readers of New York Magazine, you’re nothing but 18th-century Russian serfs. You’re better fed, and you’re better dressed, and you’re better educated. But you don’t own anything. And you’re not going to own anything.
The state capitalism of the big technology companies has taken away your digital, your data sovereignty. They’ve totally taken it away. You generate intellectual property all day long, and they don’t pay you for it. They take it for free, they monetize at huge margins.”
-Steve Bannon
source:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/steve-bannon-on-how-2008-planted-the-seed-for-the-trump-presidency.html
Agreed about the nasty turn this corporatist tyranny is taking but why are some of these major players like Molyneux so short sighted? He is now pushing for funds to move all his content but surely he knew it was only a matter of time.
This shit is only going to end really bad for liberty sakes. The subscription model is just a small aspect for the masses who use the content. I rebelled for a long time about going to Adobe’s cloud subscription but relented for business sake. Quickbooks keeps pushing for online subscription where all my data is ultimately controlled by them and being vulnerable. I won’t go that far as it appears that a reassessment is in order for other ways in which they want to control us.
I really believe they have us by the short hairs on this.
Mastercard has reportedly forced Patreon to shut down the account of conservative author and “Jihad Watch” owner Robert Spencer according to Breitbart.
Moly wasn’t necessarily short sighted. He is just a money grubber (albeit one who occasionally puts out entertaining and informative content). This seems to be a way for him to raise funds. The writing has been on the wall for a good long while now. Milquetoasts such as him are just the appetizer for the eventual banishment of all manner of dissident thought from this panopticon we call the ‘net.
He is not a money-grubber. If he was, he’d find a deep-pocketed benefactor for whom to be a mouthpiece, like Reason and the Koch brothers. Instead he is trying to fund solely by providing value to his listeners. That is a damn hard row to hoe and deserves some respect.
I agree. I like a great deal of Moly’s content.
Milquetoast? Since race and intelligence is the biggest taboo and the most likely subject to get you banned, you’d think Milquetoast Moly would stay away from that subject, wouldn’t he?
In the past two years or so, he’s had long discussions with crime-thinkers like Helmuth Nyborg, Linda Gottfredson, Jared Taylor, Jason Richwine and Charles Murray. He’s also appeared on other shows, making the hosts uncomfortable by declaring the truth about racial differences, such as Dave Rubin’s show and the recent New Zealand interviewer, who wouldn’t let him finish his point.
If Molyneux is “just a money-grubber,” why would he bring that forbidden subject into the spotlight?
I found his conversion from Atheism to some nebulous belief in Christianity dubious. Equally so his jump from Libertarianism to the Alt Right Or his shady “Defooing” practice (way to keep those family structures together)…I don’t know the guy has seemed like an attention whore at times. See that recent debacle with the blonde thot who shall not be named.
I don’t debate his intellect, just his sincerity
Lauren Southern does more for our cause before breakfast than you or I do all year. Why don’t you go produce a documentary about the persecution of Whites in South Africa?
As for Moly, your behavior is typical gamma: make one spurious accusation, then when that falls flat, throw out a few more unrelated, unfounded accusations. Sideline snark against people who are actually IN the fight isn’t a good look.
Gamma??? Nigga please. White Knighting fo’ some ho’ you don’t know? Now that my friend is gamma. That mudshark needs to get back in the kitchen.
There is no doubt in my mind they will come after the conservative sites and alt-right as well.
After that is done, as Z states they shut off the economic side for us. No more Patreon, Go Fundme’s. Later your CC stops working, you are forced to close your bank account. Getting a loan? Forget about it. You are now a serious credit risk because of your political and sexual orientation.
It’s not hard to do this. Facebook and youtube has collected a vast amount of data on it’s users.And it isn’t too hard to connect it to real people. Remember Facebook also wants your bank account information as well. Detailed information.
Same Amazon. Say you order lots of alt-right/conservative books from Amazon – you then go on a secret ‘shit list’ for later use or be sold to companies like BofA and MasterCard.
The alt-right were the first on the chopping block. Now that they’ve gone after the alt-lite as well . . .
Looks like it, WordPress already shut down a mild site called Fellowship of the Minds.
I don’t expect other sites to remain on-line through the end of the year You either host the site yourself on your hardware or eventually find your site dead and gone.
@Rod
What do you think the Mark of the Beast is where you can’t buy or sell without it…Thats is where we are headed…
I disagree with “shortsighted.” Alex Jones has been promoting his thing for a long time. Only recently when he turned his attention from fluoride in the water supply to mass immigration was he de-platformed. By multiple providers on the same day (coincidence!) Then all of a sudden they go after Moly. It may have been long-planned, but from the outside looking in it was sudden.
A little overly dramatic.
If Fecesbook is going to be censored to the tastes of sexual degenerates, Marxists and cat ladies – those will be the only people that post on it. Those people can’t stand each other and will turn on themselves in short order.
There’s nothing to fear here. When the mainstream media got pozzed and collapsed, people tuned out and ignored them. The same will happen with Bookface and Twatter. People don’t want to be serfs, slaves or vassals. Fact is I could shove my cell phone up the arse of the nearest prog and get along just fine without it.
I joined Bookface for about a week 10 years ago and walked away. It struck me as a great way to get in stupid fights with people you don’t know and don’t want to know, and with people you know and love too.
The mass media collapsed because of The Narrative. The democrats are imploding now because of it. If the elites want to push it, the social media platforms will crash too. How can I have a problem with that?
Faster, please.
It isn’t solely about losing access to social media, corporations are ready and willing to cut off access to basic services including the ability to conduct financial transactions and even operate your own tech devices. Windows 10 is going to switch to a model where you have to pay a license fee in order to get updates. Eventually, badthinkers won’t even have the option to pay the fee, Microsoft will cut them off because they don’t want them using their software to promote “hate.” You won’t have any recourse but to accept their terms if you want access to basic services.
The rebellion would be massive and swift. Don’t want to deal with Remington, Winchester, of Filthie’s gun shop? Fine – I will put my finances through Barnard Financial or Z Inc. And no, those guys WILL NOT share financial info if their bread and butter is on it. Twitter is already getting forked by Gab. Bit Chute and others are vying to knock OyTube off. Conservatives are just now beginning to realize that Lefty is out to get them and will fight dirty to do so. They don’t realize it yet, but in this culture war there will be a rifle behind every blade of grass when it goes hot, and the military will not be taking their side. Like it or not, they will be living in more interesting times than we will.
At least there was honesty & transparency in old feudalism. A peasant knew he was a peasant – he owned nothing, was at the bottom of pecking order, and he knew it. Under modern feudalism, peasants “own” their homes & feel wealthy as long as the plastic card in their wallet is working. As for home “ownership,” check on the derivation of the word “mortgage” … it means death-pledge, from the age of French feudalism. Z-man appropriately addresses Big Tech. But then there’s Big Pharma, Big Ag, and a host of other “Lords.” Yet you can ask the average American peasant about his situation and he’ll insist he’s a middle-class nobleman.
At least today peasants have options. Spurn the Lords, buy land in the country, build your own house, homeschool your kids, grow and preserve food, start a sole proprietorship, and given the state of deteriorating culture … learn to shoot & reload.
Feudalism was based on tradition, which allocated both rights and responsibilities.
The French Revolution unleashed the idea of arbitrary rule, which means that rulers are able to trample over ever tradition in order to impose their justice. Essentially every government becomes a conqueror and tyrant able to destroy society at will.
In our time this has become acute because even the partial restraints based on tradition – such as Britain’s “unwritten constitution” – lingered on into the modern world until post WWII Europe and America decided they were too virtuous to let any tradition restrain their madness.
No one seems to mention in the history classes the Magna Carta King John signed in 1215, he reneged on with the church blessing a month later. Ya just can’t trust the bastards.
Being at the bottom and having nothing to lose made peasant revolts particularly dangerous and bloody.
the two most dangerous people in the world:
somebody with nothing to lose,
somebody with everything to lose.
good times ahead, eh?
But the German peasants still lost, and Franconian prince-bishops became even more powerful.
” As for home “ownership,” ”
As for home ownership, check on property taxes.
The King still owns all the land, it’s just called the FedGov these days.
Local governments collect property taxes, not the Feds.
So timely. The Colorado baker case points up the problem that libertarians can’t solve. On the one hand, we have free association. On the other hand we have deplatforming. If I don’t have to bake a cake for a gay wedding, the bank can refuse to do business with me.
As you suggest, the answer may be that the Colorado Civil Rights commission members’ Priuses mysteriously explode. In Minecraft of course.
There are other peripheral issues – which people never seem to factor in.
One of them is currency. The effort seems to have died down a little – or maybe people just aren’t paying attention any more, but a year or two ago there was quite a bit of news about efforts to get rid of actual cash. If I remember correctly India was actually implementing an effort to do this.
I remember thinking : India? WTF – what are the people in the slums of Calcutta now going to all have to get credit cards?
Currency is important because once the baker is “deplatformed” off of using currency – then he REALLY is subject to the whims of the anarcho globohomo idiots who seem to be running things.
If you’re not willing to address some core fundamentals here – like leaving people some medium of economic exchange thru which to do their business – then all we’re going to be left with is bitching and whining as we try to outrun the globohomo’s latest stunts to screw everybody over.
Seems like I’m getting old enough that I remember when things like Google and Facebook didn’t even exist – and we got along just fine. As I remember there was an entire country living their lives before we could look shit up on the internet using a search engine or sharing our recent bowel movements on Facebook.
It should also be remembered that if all of this deplatforming is such an issue – then it also ceases to be an issue as soon as the power goes out. It’s going to be hard to “oppress” me thru blocking from access to the internet – when I can’t turn the computer on anyway.
Which is just another way of pointing out that – there are more important things in the world than Google and Facebook. Like land for one thing. I can live without electricity. I can live without Google & Facebook. But I cannot live without the products that come from REAL land (not Farmville). And blocking me from posting on Twitter isn’t going to block a bullet.
Go ahead – keep posting on Twitter – see if it stops your Prius from blowing up or the bullets from flying.
Meatspace wins in the end. Seems like an awful lot of people have forgotten that.
“Anarcho globohomo idiots”. I like that.
“Makin’ a list, Checkin’ it twice..”
“Semper Meatspace” agrees the carnifex, as he sharpens his knives.
See in my post how a money economy doomed feudalism. The lords want all exchanges to be on their terms.
Exactly.
Fundamental issues like this should be instantly recognizable to “conservatives” . But in my experience they’re just as likely to say stupid shit like ” why do I care about cash – I just use my credit card” – just like the SJW who lives door to them will.
When you can’t get so-called conservatives to recognize that an issue like the elimination of cash is fundamental tipping point – you’ve really got to wonder what kind of hope there is to fight any of the other leftist insanity descending down upon us.
Meatspace wins in the end. Seems like an awful lot of people have forgotten that.
Exactly right Brother which is why I keep saying if your not in an area that is conducive to meatspace with your neighbors you need to find a new home…
Appearing in court, the famous Prius Bomber was heard saying “when do I get my full professorship?” When pressed by reporters about what he meant he replied: “well, Bill Ayers got it.”
Once again, this is the fault of squishy Republicans. Republicans in the Colorado Legislature had the opportunity to kill the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC) during the 2018 legislative session. Instead, they actively compromised with Democrats for the sake of comity. As the Zman always says, the first thing that has to happen is for Conservative Inc. to die.
In any event, I view the new case against the baker as a good thing. The Supreme Court dodged the issue in the previous ruling (written by Squish Kennedy), hoping it would go away. Less than one month after the Supreme Court decision the CCRC extended their middle finger directly to the Supremes and held against the baker for refusing to bake a cake to celebrate the gender transition of a left-wing, activist attorney. (This was a red pill moment for thousands of people).
The correct holding in the Masterpiece Bakery case was that the coercive power of government cannot be used to compel a person to undertake an action or engage in speech that violates his or her closely held religious beliefs. I believe there will be 5 votes on the court for this holding now.
The Colorado issue isn’t about punishing the guy. They know they’ll lose that case. The process and the attendant costs are the punishment
This is a standard Left Wing tactic, process as punishment
As Guest noted though Conservative Inc must be removed in order to prevent this.
Well there are two other options, it can go hot and we can end the union in a hail of 2A love or we could fight fire with fire and start using process as punishment on Leftists.
I’m actually somewhat opposed to that as a tactic, it works after a fashion but in order to prevent court collusion with the Left its NDAA all the way down . This is fine with someone like Trump but if the Left or a weakling Right gets power its right back to 2A anyway
I had a friend that came into some substantial amounts of money, up until that time, he was a pretty rough character, running with bikers etc. To the best of my knowledge he wasn’t a criminal in any sense, just liked the lifestyle.
After he came up with the gravy, his lawyer warned him about all the potential for civil actions based on his past life, including dubious paternity suits, etc.
He tells me that the look on the lawyers face was priceless when he informed the fellow, ‘Why would I spend a $100,000 on lawyers, to defend myself in court, when I can hire a crack head to break every bone in the bastards body for $1,000 or burn their houses down with the family inside for a Fiver,,…
Apparently the word got out, and he so far has an aura of ‘Leave him to hell alone’ and hasn’t been bothered.
I can see this applied to many other situations..
What I say is don’t mess with an old guy. For us the words “life sentence” don’t carry the same weight they used to….
“(This was a red pill moment for thousands of people).”
Concur.
“Do you still think this is about acceptance and not domination?”
This is a situation where size matters.
If a toddler hits me as hard as he can, does that mean it’s OK for me to hit the toddler as hard as I can?
In real, or in Minecraft? (Shrugger made me LOL.)
Yes.
Otherwise the turdler grows up thinking he can just go around hitting people and getting away with it.
A smack hard enough to make him cry – at least gives him a life lesson that will stick with him for a while – so that maybe he’ll think twice before just going around hitting people again.
The removal of violence from the realm of civil discourse is yet another effort of the left that is making society come apart at the seams.
Dude, it was a metaphor. Don’t sperg out on me. We’re not talking about child-rearing here. But while we’re on it, “hard enough to make him cry” is different than “as hard as I can.” I could kill a toddler if I hit him as hard as I could, which would make me a monster.
So your comment has literally nothing to do with the point of the metaphor — imbalance of power — and the metaphorical example I give.
In the Eurozone, feudalism has reached its apex. There is no private money: all money is owned by the banking system. Banks are legally entitled to delete your account balance if they face a capital shortfall. In Cyprus, €8 billion was deleted from bank deposits in one night.