Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

As explained in Chapter 3 (see pp. 85–88, ‘Wither markets, hello cloud fiefs’), ecommerce platforms like Amazon.com or alibaba.com are not markets . The reason they cannot be thought of as markets is that the cloudalists’ algorithms succeed in isolating every buyer from every other buyer, and every seller from every other seller. As a result, the cloudalist’s algorithm concentrates in itself the power to match buyers and sellers – which is the exact opposite of what a market is meant to be: decentralised. Such power vested in the cloudalist’s algorithm grants its owner the capacity to charge sellers (i.e. conventional capitalists) large amounts of rent (cloud rent) for access to customers.

Monopoly Rent obtains due to low or non-existent competition (oligopoly or monopoly) which allows a seller to extract from consumers payment in excess of the commodity’s exchange value. In common parlance, the monetary equivalent of monopoly rent is known as a ‘mark-up’ (or ‘price-cost margin’) that the seller can charge the customer over and above a commodity’s exchange value.6
Brand Rent is a form of monopoly rent which the seller can extract from consumers who are motivated to pay for a branded item or service more than its exchange value, e.g. in pursuit of status signalling or ownership of positional goods (i.e. goods desired not so much for themselves but, rather, for the fact that others cannot own them, e.g. a limited-run print or an antique vase).