The Corporatization Of Everything (Serfdom In Our Time)

Yes, I’m quite serious about the serfdom part. Please read on.

If you want to get millions of dollars thrown at your new company, the way to do it is in “tech,” which usually means a new Internet service, and especially one that follows the model set by Facebook. If you can find a way to suck a new part of people’s lives from the world of atoms to the world of data, your odds are good… far greater than trying to launch a landscaping company.

For bricks and mortar operation you’ll have to beg for loans. For a clever new Internet service, Venture Capitalists (VCs) with huge wallets will happily listen to your pitch.

There are many reasons why this new financing model developed, and why it’s the way it is, but I’ll highlight just a few central points:

• • The VCs know that most of the things they fund will fail, but the ones that work (the “unicorns”), can make them fortunes.

• • The VCs make fortunes because they end up owning most of the equity in the companies they finance. The people who start and operate the company bleed more equity with each new round of financing.

• • The VCs cash in when they take companies public. Once listed on the big stock exchanges and promoted, people will pay enormous multiples of what those companies are actually making. Lots of unicorns have sold billions of dollars worth of shares without ever turning a dollar of profit. The investing psychology of the age is such that people are eager to buy these stocks.

• • For the past generation, this model has worked, and has indeed generated fortunes. And so it continues without any serious examination.

This model works by corporatizing activities which were previously personal and private.

Consider these cases:

• Facebook corporatized friendship.
• Google corporatized finding information.
• Visa corporatized paying for things.

And so on, some for the better in ways, but always at the expense of the private sphere. By this model, the corporation gets a cut, where previously there was no cut to be taken.

At this point, corporations are trying to rent you everything. Private ownership, after all, can’t really be corporatized. If a corporation is to make money this way, they need you to rent from them. And so they portray their systems as having some sort of added value, get you to believe that all the cool kids are doing it, and convince you to rent from them, for life.

Most people no longer buy DVDs or CDs, for example. Rather they “stream” music and video, never owning anything and forever dependent upon operations like Netflix.

There’s a reason Klaus Schwab blathered on about “You will own nothing and be happy.” That’s what this model produces. And, to be blunt about it, this was also the model of serfdom. The Schwabbian model breaks down the populace into owners (“stakeholders”) and renters (you).

The old words for the same relationship were lord and serf.

This is why hedge funds have been buying up the houses of America, then renting them back to the old owner’s relatives. The hedge funds get massively better financing that Joe Shmoe could get, and Joe’s kids aren’t doing terribly well these days anyway.

And if the corporatization requires some regulations to be made or altered, the corporations can purchase them easily enough… while Joe’s kids can’t.

Where This Goes

Klaus Schwab may have been evil, but he was not entirely stupid. He saw where this would go, and he ran with it.

The trajectory of this trend is for you to own nothing… for you to rent everything from stakeholders, leaving you beholden to them for almost everything.

Now, while the Schwab types get off on enserfing you, the corporate types usually don’t: they’re just following a model that works. They’re eager to get rich and turn a blind eye to their roles in enserfing the masses. (“Hey, I’m not holding a gun to their heads.”) They get caught up in the unicorn fetish and become sociopathic in that area of their minds. (See The Mystery of Iniquity for an explanation.)

If you don’t like where this is heading, the fix is simple: Just drop out of the game.

The price of the fix is to let people call you names… just as they did to those who ditched serfdom back in the day.

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Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com

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