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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 4/12/14

The New Feudalism and the Common Good

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The recent revelation that 85 individuals have the combined net worth of 3.5 billion people confirms that we're now living in a new Feudal age.

 

Just as in the old Feudal system a millennium ago where power was based on ownership of real property (land), so in the New Feudalism power is based on ownership of Intellectual Property (IP).

Feudal Lord Mark Zuckerberg
Feudal Lord Mark Zuckerberg
(Image by M.I.C Gadget image from flickr, photo-edited by rob kall)
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A case in point is Mark Zuckerberg's achieving a net worth of $80+ billion in less than a decade by getting people to expose themselves to a universe of marketers and surveillance agencies.

 

When Steve Jobs died, Apple had $100 billion in cash on hand but was using slave labor in China.

 

A co-founder of Google fuels his private jet at taxpayer expense.

 

And nothing speaks to the extravagance of the digital elite more than their desire to embed themselves into silicon systems in a   'Singularity,' hoping to achieve immortality by 2040.  

 

Tbe "Information Age" now seems largely controlled by those who know the price of everything, but see no value in what can't be monetized.

 

And so it goes" too few with too much, and too many with too little. "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold."

 

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Tom Mahon has written about technology for 40 years as publicist, journalist, novelist, dramatist, and activist. Since the early 1990s, he has spoken and written widely on the need to reconnect technical capability with social responsibility. (more...)
 

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