What would Cyber-Feudalism would be like?

The UN being a state or not is pretty much irrelevant to my argument. That it doesn't have state capacity even though many (but not all) of its states & participating organizations do does illustrate that you can't assume that all organizations (or rather, levels of organization) have the same capacity.

Fair enough—it would seem that you and I categorise in very different ways, then, hence the disagreement between our takes on this. To you it's one thing, to me it's another. Which, again, is fair.

I don't know—the suggestion that I made previously did make an express point of having the "central power" be unable to exert a great deal of control, instead working through "soft power".

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Feb 20th 2023 at 9:21:41 PM

I don't know, propping up a local tyrant is pretty hard power, even if very decentalized.

But said tyrant is being propped up not by direct force of arms (on the part of the central power; the tyrant as their own force of arms), nor even by direct monetary contribution.

And I mean, is that not sort-of what a feudal king did? That is, propped up the local nobility at a distance?

So, is the objection then that the "knight" is a tyrant? Would it help if they practised more duty towards those that serve them?

>I don't know, propping up a local tyrant is pretty hard power, even if very decentalized.

But that's a major element of Feudalism? there was little central power and little state capacity. That doesn't mean there was *no* power. in particular, a king could give some newly conquered territory to a friend, family, or trusted one who enters a vassalage relationship. As a vassal, they give taxes and support to their liege. Their liege in turn gives support to their vassal (e.g. if attacked by another king). The vassal can give out land in turn to friends and family to administer, creating another layer of vassalage. This can go down all the way to individual towns and castles. Thus, at each level there is fairly limited power (but still power) and the ties between each level are deeply personal, traditional and ritualistic, rather than formal and legal. Power is fragmented and overall weak, but that's still power, and far more than the peasantry could ever hope to oppose.

Plus the vast distance in power and wealth between the average peasant and the nobility meant that it wouldn't take much to prop up the local lord, and the support (although this also existed in tension) of the clergy meant that spiritually people were also less inclined to resist.

Plus manoralism and serfdom deeply tied the success of the peasant to their overlord while strengthening their overlords, so economically they were also propped up.

All of this is a lot of words to say that a feudal system is the complete opposite of what a megacorp (or even for that matter, a regular corporation) is like.

Edited by devak on Feb 24th 2023 at 9:56:51 PM

I dunno, the feudal arrangement is very much like a subsidiary arrangement while Manorialism and serfdom sound like the end goal of company towns.

Trappings aside, a story covering the themes of cyber-feudalism would actually be very relevant to modern American society:

• Power accumulating under lords and kings (CEOs)
• Ruthless power grabs that bend a lot of rules (mergers & acquisitions)
• Commoners have to rent everything ("subscriptions") and are subject to the whims of their lord

There are honest-to-god real-world sociologists and philosophers who say our world is entering a stage of "techno-feudalism." So cyberpunk amped up on feudal structures really isn't that out-there of a concept.

Food for thought.

"And I mean, is that not sort-of what a feudal king did? That is, propped up the local nobility at a distance?"

More the other way around, with the highest lords collectively projecting more power than the king ever could.

"All of this is a lot of words to say that a feudal system is the complete opposite of what a megacorp (or even for that matter, a regular corporation) is like."

You seem to be presuming strong central power within all corporate structures. That isn't true for a conglomerate. They can exhibit highly decentralized control.

I want to throw my two scents here. Because i really do think we can make the two themes fit each other.

Now the major problem is how can we truly passe not only aesthethic but the core aspects of both genres.

But there have been many moments in history where civilizations where similar to feudalism in "the wrong time period" with ancient greece as it' was in iliad being a great example.

And there have been phenomena that we can take as being "similar" to both: cities being formed around industries because they need the worforce. Just imagine a much weaker government in place and we have almost all we need.

Make the castes around that, few taxes upon hireritance and both the criticism of the capitalism and feudalism is mostly in place

" but in turn become the new state. To go with the Cyberpunk Edgerunners example, corpos control law enforcement and act as the de facto government. But as a company they *need* state capacity, and we see plenty of that. The rules are enforced, citizens are part of a census, there's a functioning money system etc. There's a lot of state power on display, even if that is enacted by a megacorp."

De facto is not as De jure and we see how shaky is when high ranking people can get their head blow up and nobody is really that safe, also corpos very often made the rules lose follow so they can have plausable deniability in order to pull dirty tricky on each others. You dont get a hight rate of murder in night city with a strong central authority like that.

...I'm genuinely surprised nobody in this topic brought up the Dark Enlightenment, which is basically a real attempt to make cyber-feudalism into A Thing, and it's every bit as stupid, awful and scary as you would imagine.

Like, Peter "Christian Dracula" Thiel is into it and one of its key philosophers calls themself "Mencius Moldbug" because these people can't not act like cartoon villains for five goddamn seconds.

So, if you want to see what cyber-feudalism might look like, it'd probably make the most sense to look into these bozos. And also point and laugh at them, that is very important too.

Honestly, this is the first time I'm hearing about this. I guess they're so stupid they haven't gotten any popularity. The current economic state of Russia, however, shows how dystopian a cyberpunk neo-feudal state can be.