Platforms replace markets with fiefdoms and profit with cloud rent

Evidence

In a world where marginal costs (i.e. the cost of providing one more unit of something, e.g. another minute of broadband, another video to stream, another ebook) are tending to zero, prices vanish and serious money can only be made by charging cloud rents (e.g. money to promote one’s post on Facebook or the 35 per cent of revenues sellers are charged by Amazon to sell their stuff). — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 999 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

While they look like markets, their perfect centralisation (achieved by the algorithm’s power to match and to determine the full information set of each buyer and each seller) renders them a form of cloud fief belonging to whoever owns the algorithm or cloud capital which (a) built the platform and (b) attracts cloud serfs to play the role of buyers (as well as contributors to its cloud capital) and vassal capitalists in the role of sellers. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 868 (#expands, via linked claim)

Figure 1 illustrated the distribution of exchange value under capitalism. Under technofeudalism, the capitalist sector continues (as it did under capitalism) to produce all of the economy’s exchange value. However, the capitalist sector is now embedded into, and is subjugated within, the broader realm of cloud fiefs built on cloud capital. As cloud capital accumulates, due to the unpaid labour of cloud serfs and the cloud rents of the vassal capitalists, more and more of the surplus value generated in the capitalist sector is syphoned off in the form of more cloud rent to the cloudalists. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 872 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Platforms extract value from each transaction without absorbing employment obligations — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 220; Streaming norms exist because cloud ownership reduces users to data renters. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 184; Renting cloud infrastructure yields data extraction alongside rental income — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 60 (+17 more)

Related

• Digital platforms have displaced markets and profit with feudal rent extraction (similarity 0.92)
• Zero marginal costs force platforms to extract rent rather than earn profit (similarity 0.91)
• Platforms extract surplus value produced elsewhere without producing any themselves (similarity 0.89)
• Platforms look like markets but are centralized fiefs owned by algorithms (similarity 0.87)
• Cloud capital has displaced markets and profit from the center of the economy (similarity 0.86)
• Apple and Google’s wealth comes from cloud rent, not profit. (similarity 0.86)
• Renting cloud infrastructure yields data extraction alongside rental income (similarity 0.85)
• Cloud platforms exploit nearly everyone rather than only their employees (similarity 0.84)
• By 2020 cloud rents dominated the developed world’s aggregate net income (similarity 0.84)
• Amazon’s platform extended cloud rent into the physical goods economy. (similarity 0.82)
• The shift to platforms concentrates ownership rather than ending it (similarity 0.81)
• Cloud platforms operate like utilities centralizing essential infrastructure (similarity 0.81)
• Platform algorithms automated capital’s command over all people, not just workers (similarity 0.81)
• Platforms’ real novelty is making users unpaid laborers reproducing their own capital (similarity 0.80)
• Platforms extract value from each transaction without absorbing employment obligations (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Zero marginal costs force platforms to extract rent rather than earn profit #corroborates (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 999
• Platforms look like markets but are centralized fiefs owned by algorithms #expands (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 868
• Platforms extract surplus value produced elsewhere without producing any themselves #expands (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 872