Post-war capitalism discovered attention as a new market.

Evidence

In both aspects of his behaviour, Draper captures the essence of capitalism’s post-war transformation: the discovery of a new market, namely the market for our attention, grafted onto a shiny new industrial structure, but all within a system that remains fully reliant on labour’s dual nature. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 126

Watching Mad Men, the audience wonder why the firm pays Draper a mint to do what he does. Mostly horizontal on a comfortable couch in his office, he consumes impressive quantities of bourbon, has a series of breakdowns, behaves erratically and unprofessionally, and when he does deign to share what he’s thinking, usually offers only cryptic and disjointed thoughts. But just when you expect him to self-destruct or get fired, he comes up with magical ways of reimagining anything from mediocre chocolate and humdrum steel products to second-rate hamburger restaurant chains in ways that make them emotionally resonant and intensely desirable. In both aspects of his behaviour, Draper captures the essence of capitalism’s post-war transformation: the discovery of a new market, namely the market for our attention, grafted onto a shiny new industrial structure, but all within a system that remains fully reliant on labour’s dual nature. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 126

Categorization

• XREF: Directly on-point for the reader’s stated attention/platform focus; connects to Wu and Zuboff’s surveillance-capitalism literatures. — connects to: Scarcity has shifted from production of goods to consumption of attention. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 41; Post-war advertising shifted from selling products to manufacturing and commodifying desire. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 119; Market rhetoric shifted attention from production to consumption (+3 more)
• DEFINE: The attention market is the pivot the chapter needs to build toward platform feudalism.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 126

Broader Connections

• Post-war advertising shifted from selling products to manufacturing and commodifying desire. #expands (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 119
• Market rhetoric shifted attention from production to consumption #qualifies (0.75)
• Capitalism absorbed the 1960s counterculture as a marketing resource #exemplifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 593