"The thesis exaggerates the break between capitalism and the alleged techno-feudal successor... and illegitimately downplays the role rent extraction has always played in capitalism. In fact, there is a great deal of commonality between leftist critiques of surplus extraction under classic industrial capitalism, and the ways in which digital platforms extract economic rents today."
Freeholders living off ‘rentier structure’ with ‘exorbitant’ ground rent, MPs say
For a country (and a newspaper - in this case the Gruaniad) apparently desperate to hold on to Scotland (resources, grouse moors and whisky exports) they seem desperate to ignore the lessons from Scotland- positive and negative.
But then Europe was always a problem as well. Forriners doin better makes them bitter.
Lets face it #PrivateEquity is not a group of charities, if they're investing in #children focussed #socialcare, its because they see a market opportunity.
The thing is, any feed or search result is "algorithmic." "Just show me the things posted by people I follow in reverse-chronological order" is an algorithm. "Just show me products that have this SKU" is an algorithm. "Alphabetical sort" is an algorithm. "Random sort" is an algorithm.
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Rents are not "profits." Profit is income you get from making or doing something. Rent is income you get from owning something needed to make profits. People who earn income from rents are called #rentiers. If you make your income from profits, you're a "capitalist."
Capitalists and rentiers are in irreconcilable combat. A capitalist wants access to their factors of production at the lowest possible price, whereas rentiers want those prices to be as high as possible.
@pluralistic
> People who earn income from rents are called #rentiers. If you make your income from profits, you're a "capitalist."
Anyone who makes money from having (financial) capital, rather than from doing something useful, is a capitalist.
People who make income from profits are entrepreneurs. In contrast to those who make income from wages/salaries (employees), and those who make it from dividends and from selling their shares for more than they paid for them (investors).
Socialists have been hotly anticipating the end of capitalism since at least 1848, when Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto - but the Manifesto also reminds us that capitalism is only too happy to reinvent itself during its crises, coming back in new forms, over and over again:
But rents, Varoufakis writes, "survived only parasitically on, and in the shadows of, profit." That is, #rentiers (people whose wealth comes from rents) were a small rump of the economy, slightly suspect and on the periphery of any consideration of how to organize our society.