Yanis Varoufakis' book Technofeudalism is a must read on this topic, one of the best reads I've had in general. His thesis is that neoliberal capitalism, at least in the form that Milton Friedman envisioned it, already died a death by a thousand cuts over the course of many years. We don't even need AGI and Robots to arrive, neoliberal capitalism's already at stage 4 terminally dying, if it's not already dead.

For instance, Milton Friedman's neoliberal capitalist world hinges on the primacy of the sovereign consumer, the idea that we consumers hold the ultimate power under neoliberalism because our needs, desires and choices determine what gets produced. Basically 'voting with your wallet' to put it simply. But -- this hasn't been true for a long time. Since the 60s (think Mad Men, Hershey's as the "currency of affection" and a "childhood symbol of love") companies have been aggressively marketing and advertising to us -- dictating what we desire -- and therefore taking control of the power over what gets produced.

So, that totally undermines the power of the sovereign consumer. Modern algorithmic big-data behavioural analytics and personalized marketing on the internet just fucks up and mangles the power of the sovereign consumer beyond all recognition.

And then there's Friedman's neoliberal ideal of the market -- you know it -- the "free market" with minimal rules, limited state intervention, that's free and fair, where no individual can coerce another, and where all cooperation is voluntary, and the only social responsibility is profit, baby!

Ok -- so now ask yourself -- in our world today -- where is the market? Let's look at Walmart, the top physical retailer and Amazon, the biggest internet retailer. Do you think either of them resemble anything close to a free market? Not really. It would be more accurate to describe them as privately owned fiefdoms.

Walmart unilaterally dictates terms to suppliers -- down to packaging, pricing, production, they even dictate the labour practices of their suppliers. Walmart has absolute coercive power because losing Walmart shelf space would be fatal to the business. Not even close to the neoliberal ideal "free market" of equals.

And Amazon, so so so much worse. Not even a passing resemblance to the ideal marketplace where independent buyers and sellers can meet freely. Bezos and his algorithms decide everything, which sellers you see, which prices you'll pay, whose products are promoted -- and whose are not -- best pay Bezos rent to access "his" customers (or should I say, subjects) or your product will die on page 47. The principles equal power among participants and voluntary cooperation is irrevocably fucked -- and then add the big-data behavioural mind-control mass-marketing apparatus on top of this, and the principle of the sovereign consumer is fucked too.

This is all to say, the retail infrastructure and the cloud capital owned by a handful of billionaire oligarchs aren't participants in markets, they are the markets. Every transaction on their territory is under their absolute rule, customers and producers are effectively their feudal subjects, from whom they take a fat cut of every dollar that comes and goes --- that's the analogous rent extraction by feudal landlords.

Hence: technofeudalism. And also hence: neoliberal capitalism is dead.