🌶️Capitalism is dead! Long live feudalism?

A musing on the new seaconomy

If you’re reading this, you’ve prbably heard the phrase “late stage capitalism” and if you haven’t taken an economics class in a while, you assume that means capitalism would eventually lead to such staggering wealth inequality that the rest of us are turning into little Oliver Twists and Orphan Annies.

This is worse.

Let’s start with some economic definitions. Contrary to popular rants on screens, they may not be what you think.

• Economics is the study of choice.

• Capitalism basically means you can own property.

• Socialism means the government owns all the property and lets you use their stuff.

• Communism is a philosophy whereby there is no property ownership and everyone shares everything from a sense of communal good.

While bullets two and three are economic systems, the fourth is an ideology. So, for this particular musing, I’ll leave out Mr. Marx.

Don’t get mad at me yet Democrats, there’s more… The real meat is the final definition.

Feudalism (/ˈfyo͞odəˌlizəm/) noun. The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.

And in my words:

• Feudalism means a group of powerful mofos own everything and allow you to exist if you do their bidding.

For all you Republicans frolicking in the new regime change, this is what you ordered.

Regardless of what side of the isle your butt cheeks rest on, they’re gonna be sore. The 2024 election was not pivotal because of Donald Trump or Wokeness or the downfall of democracy. It was profound because of debt.

Our inability as a nation to make effective financial and administrative decisions allowed us to implement a bureaucracy whose loopholes created a perverse incentive for merchants to build companies with business models designed to exploit vague or unenforceable laws (i.e. Uber, AirBnB, Amazon, Disney). To understand all of this, we must take a historical view of things…

• 1940s: by winning World War II, we put Germany and Japan in technological time out

• 1980s: the US is a technological powerhouse producing more patents than the next 10 nations combined, driving our wealth through the roof, so China can reverse engineer everything we make and sell it back to us for cheap

• 2000s: the cell phone becomes an indispensable tool for virtually (pun intended) every facet of our lives from news to products to social connection and the US becomes delusional about our invincibility right up until the mortgage crisis nearly bankrupts the entire nation

• 2010s: phones have become pocket casinos and mechanisms of social engineering to perform the same predatory practices that caused the bank bailouts, only now it’s both the merchants and the bureaucrats, using social media to extract dollars and votes

• 2020s: citizens of developed nations have reverted to Victorian era gossip mongering because information is as vast as it is unverifiable, relying on peer pressure to conform to tribal ingroup standards while our institutions launch marketing campaigns that feel more like the bloodsport of gladiator games in Ancient Rome than any type of democratic process, all while printing trillions of dollars in stimulus which further diluted the value of everyone’s paycheck

So what were we voting for in 2024?

Socialism or feudalism

Warren Buffet is taking his money out of the stock market in anticipation of a crash. Elon Musk is gutting the US government. Bill Gates is buying farmland. What do these billionaire behaviors all have in common? Preparation for collecting rents.

In the wake of the pandemic and an increasingly remote workforce, the major industries have moved to acquire digital real estate like manifest destiny. Major creative studios like Disney, Blizzard, Warner Bros, and BioWare are like whales being eaten by schools of solopreneurs like ocean dwelling piranha with metal teeth. So rather than compete, the big boys and private equity firms are becoming hubs, space stations in the digital ether to provide all the services you need for a modest subscription fee.

The labor market has become so competitive that you will need AI to compete, so companies are all but abandoning the slow moving academic institution as an intake pool, preferring consultants who will build systems for a premium, but provide services and maintenance for a discount. The future, therefore, is not a landbased economy, rather that of naval colonization. And like any uncharted waters, there be pirates.

But fear not, there is a way forward. So, strap on your floaties boys and girls, we’re going swimming!

Build a boat

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin'

And you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'

-Bob Dylan 1964

Like a solid becomes a liquid when molecules are accelerated, solvency becomes liquidity. Business is full of physics and chemistry metaphors. This is why taxing the rich into oblivion doesn’t work. They either defer the taxes to the product market or they flee the country. The goal is economic freedom and the method is private equity.

Private equity (PE) has become something of a scapegoat for all the ills of capitalism, but I’m advocating everyone become their own PE firm. If assets are things you own, then it behoves you to build or buy as many revenue generators as possible. The game is to level up from craftsman to merchant to landlord.

Craftsman

You either work in blue collar trades or for a landlord on a highly functional AI augmented product team

Merchant

You are an independent service provider or producer who sells to locals via reputation & referral and globals via the major landlords’ platforms

Landlord

You own physical and digital real estate and have constructed your own port ecosystem where civilians work for you and merchants give you a cut to trade with each other

Solopreneurship and indie mergers and acquisitions are the end game, but first you have to develop a skill. Colleges are the baseline, but the return on investment (ROI) is low and the value of the degree is in perpetual decline. Certifications have a higher ROI, but their value is subject to the landlord’s perception. Portfolios trump all others because they are tangible proof of your abilities. Secondly, you’ll likely have to augment that skill with AI to compete as an employee.

To advance to the next two levels, you’ll need to master the trade game.

To be continued…