Technofeudalism

Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism has been replaced by something older and harsher. Big tech, in his account, no longer depends on markets and profit. Its platforms collect rents, and every click and scroll from ordinary users adds to the power of the companies that own them.

The book sets out how this happened. The pandemic, repeated financial crises and the rise of TikTok drew attention elsewhere while the shift took hold. The money meant to revive economies after the crash of 2008 went to big tech firms instead, and they used it to build private cloud fiefdoms and to privatize the internet.

Varoufakis names technofeudalism as a threat to the liberal individual, to efforts to head off climate catastrophe and to democracy itself. He also ties it to the New Cold War between the United States and China.

This is non-fiction that mixes economic and technological history with intellectual memoir. Varoufakis draws on Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, to explain how the system shapes minds and rewrites the rules of global power. He closes on what it would take to overthrow it. It suits readers who want an economist's argument about the digital economy, told in an accessible voice.