Tech Bros Threaten to Make Serfs of Us All
By: James Marriott
On: The Times
In this piece on the tech oligarchy and modern “serfdom” Joel Kotkin is cited by the author, excerpted below:
In the past few years, a number of writers have wondered whether the rise of powerful tech companies heralds not unlimited social progress but the return of our species to its default social organisation.
The most electrifyingly gloomy of them is Joel Kotkin, whose 2020 book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism provocatively suggested that society was already beginning to slip back towards the feudalism of the Middle Ages. Where the power of medieval elites rested on the control of land on which serfs toiled, Kotkin argues modern tech oligarchs monopolise the “digital territory” on which modern workers depend for their survival. Rather than rotating crops on fields owned by the lord of the manor, “digital serfs” labour on tech platforms, selling goods on Amazon, taking delivery instructions from apps such as Uber or serving up content for Google or YouTube.
Kotkin, ever-cheerful, notes that these workers are increasingly barred from social advancement. Prohibitive housing costs, stagnating wages and student debt (especially in America) are eroding social mobility. Increasingly, he argues, our society will begin to mimic the stratified and static social order of the Middle Ages, with a few tech barons presiding over armies of benighted “digital serfs” toiling in the gig economy with little hope of ever bettering their lot.
The few years that have passed since the publication of Kotkin’s book have added piquancy to his case. If you were to extend Kotkin’s argument in the same pessimistic spirit, you might point out that a major factor in the destruction of feudalism in Europe was the rise of a literate middle class. As the development of capitalism opened up new economic opportunities, the old hereditary aristocracy found itself challenged by a new class of men who owed their positions not to land but to their talents: crafty merchants, wily lawyers, sceptical journalists.
Related:
Buy Joel’s book on The Coming of Neo-Feudalism
AI is Killing Jobs and Fueling Campus Radicalism
The Changing Politics of Oligarchy
The Battle of the Oligarchs
Today’s Tech Oligarchs are Worse than the Robber Barons
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