Traditional capitalists have become vassals to cloud capital’s feudal overlords

Evidence

As a result, real power today resides not with the owners of traditional capital, such as machinery, buildings, railway and phone networks, industrial robots. They continue to extract profits from workers, from waged labour, but they are not in charge as they once were. As we shall see, they have become vassals in relation to a new class of feudal overlord, the owners of cloud capital. As for the rest of us, we have returned to our former status as serfs, contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labour – in addition to the waged labour we perform, when we get the chance. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 17

Categorization

• XREF: Reverse of the reader’s platform-capitalism framing — here the platform class subordinates rather than merely displaces industrial capital. — connects to: Capital itself, mutated into cloud capital, has killed capitalism — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 12; Cloud capital is capital’s mutation into feudal wealth extraction, not capital’s death — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 906; Technofeudalism displaces capitalism by substituting cloud capital for terrestrial capital. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 849 (+5 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 17

Broader Connections

• Conventional manufacturers are reduced to fee-paying vassals of cloudalists #corroborates (0.92) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 362
• Cloud capital is capital’s mutation into feudal wealth extraction, not capital’s death #expands (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 906
• Technofeudalism displaces capitalism by substituting cloud capital for terrestrial capital. #expands (0.88) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 849
• A new form of capital called cloud capital has emerged with unprecedented commanding power. #corroborates (0.85)
• Digital networks that capitalism spawned are replacing capitalism with a new feudalism. #expands (0.82)
• Capitalism extended feudal relations rather than negating them #expands (0.78)