this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Not really. Capitalism was born from feudalism, but is entirely different in character.
Outside of small city states, capitalism came from merchantislism.
Specifically, at the intersection where merchantislism and mass dispossession/theft of people's land meet.
The only meaningful change is that the assets are now, mostly, intangible and you're allowed to move to a different parish.
Some people still think billionaires are just like us. They aren't. Their mentality is 100% different than the average person. Even basic things like their concept of money is extremely different and almost alien to ours. We think of money as the thing that we need to survive, the thing that keeps food on the table and a roof over our heads. Having a good deal of money for the average person is a source of comfort. It allows us to know we don't have to go hungry and we can afford medical care when we are sick.
For billionaires money is an abstract concept. They operate on such massive sums every day that the idea that a few thousand dollars can make or break someone is inconceivable to them. When Elon Musk bought twitter he was originally kidding, but when the owners forced him to, raising the 44 billion dollars did nothing to harm him. In fact, his net worth increased greatly not too long after he shelled out amounts of money that would literally have ended world hunger several times over. Money is a source of leveraging power for them and they aren't afraid to 'lose' a lot of it because they know they can get it all back with remarkable rapidity.
Borders also don't exist to them. If Zuckerberg or Bezos wanted to go to India, or Zambia, or China, or Germany, or Finland, or the UAE, or wherever, they doesn't have to concern themself with things like visas or residencies or whatever. They could go and set up shop wherever and not need to concern themselves with that.
They legit do think of themselves as being gods and are vastly superior to us. Their view of the poor being leeches on society while they are the providers when basically everything shows the opposite is not something they find contradictory. In their minds the population at large exists to serve them, not the other way around. This is why tech bro start ups that have created enclaves in some third world countries and they steal massive public resources for their projects all while imposing their own extra-legal or illegal restrictions on the poor is not seen as a problem because they really do view black and brown people as perpetual slaves that must be shown their place time and time again least they forget.
It is definitely leading us directly to a type of feudalism though. Where power is held by billionaires and corporations instead of local warlords.
Capitalism is changing, yes, but towards Monopoly Capitalism, aka Imperialism, not feudalism. Centralization of Capitalism isn't the same as feudalism.
that's just capitalism, capitalism creates monopoly