I’ve been thinking a lot about a concept I discovered recently called Neo-Feudalism. The first time I heard about it, I was reading about the way companies like Apple and Amazon charge for access to the people who use their platforms. That means they take a cut of every sale whether it’s toilet paper or apps on Apple’s App Store.
The concept felt true, but I realized I had some big gaps in my understanding of Feudalism. I think I learned about it in Jr. High and it felt very distant, boring, and unrelated to our current world. At that time I actually somewhat romanticized the medieval world, probably influenced by stories like Lord of the Rings that emphasized a type of community and connection I didn’t see too often in our modern world. It made it feel warm and fuzzy, like sitting in front of a fire around people you love and trust.
But that’s a fantasy view of the past. So I learned more about Feudalism and this is what I found:
Broadly defined, [Feudalism] was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. 1
Basically, a system of power dynamics sprung up based on land ownership. There were obligations Warriors and land workers had to the people who owned the land they lived and worked on. And obligations landowners had to churches. And obligations churches had to landowners. And obligations landowners had to more powerful landowners, such as Kings.
The key being that peasants didn’t have much, if any power or many, if any, rights in a feudal society. Owning land was the source of power, and peasants didn’t own any land. They had to serve a lord (a landowner) and do what he wanted. They also had to pay taxes and give a portion of their crops to the lord merely because the lord owned the land.
In today’s world, feudalism would probably look something like living in a company town, having your health coverage controlled by your employer, or only being able to sell your wares if you pay a company for access to their platform of buyers. It’s mostly about owning digital space, like a shop on the Internet, and then charging people for using that space. Or in the case of sites like Youtube, making ad revenue on the content people post on that space and then sometimes giving a percentage of that ad revenue to the people who make the content.
This amounts to a tax on people’s earnings because the company created the platform, but the users are the ones creating the value because no one would go to Amazon if there was nothing to sell and no one would go to YouTube if users didn’t post any videos.
Some of those examples are already present in our society, and that’s why people are so concerned about it. Specifically:
- Workers forced to live in company housing (China)
- Health coverage controlled by employers (America)
- Paying companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon for access to their platform users
What’s Wrong With Neo Feudalism?
So why is Neo Feudalism a problem? Because it creates a form of control where only very powerful people have the ability to make their own choices and everyone else has to deal with/accept those choices or face economic hardship. In today’s world it could look like employers refusing to cover certain medications in their corporate health insurance plans, leaving people without any alternative way to get the medications that are unaffordable for their salaries. It could look like companies refusing to hire people of specific religions or ways of life. It could also look like homelessness for people who can’t or don’t look the way an employer wants them to look, which could mean their clothes, their religious garments, their hairstyle, their tattoos, or even the color of their skin. It’s easy to assume this means what it has meant in the past: that “professional” appearance would be accepted and “unprofessional” appearance would not. But that ignores the reality that “professional” can mean anything. It’s simply a way of looking “normal” defined by the powerful.
That means there could be a world where you’d be required to have tattoos or cut your hair in a “dramatic” haircut just as easily as we currently live in a world where tattoos are sometimes considered “inappropriate” at work and certain haircuts are defined as “too much”. Either way, it could be called professional.
In the Middle Ages, there were laws that prohibited certain groups of people from wearing certain clothes. The goal was to keep people in their place. This type of thing can happen in any situation where a small group of people have outsized power over the others. The only factor is who has the power to make the rules and exclude people from daily life if they don’t follow them. Even if the rules are unfair, unreasonable, or nonsensical, if someone has the power to enforce that rule, it will stand.
Looking at possibilities that would only happen in a futuristic sci-fi world like the one we live in, what if a company decides they want their employees to be implanted with specific chips so they can track their work hours? It’s only reasonable that an employer would want to know exactly when their employees are working, right? Or a company sets up employee housing and only allows employees to shop online in the company store? It’s our internet, we should be able to say where they shop when they use it, right?
That’s where this gets complicated. Whose freedom are we protecting? We could say Apple’s freedom is infringed upon if we require them to allow developers to sell apps without Apple’s App Store, which would require users to be able to side load apps, or use alternative App Stores. This law was passed in Europe in 2024 and Apple fought it, hard, claiming that their freedoms were infringed and their users safety was compromised by installing unapproved apps. 2 They also argued that because they built the foundation for iPhones and App stores, they should have the right to charge developers for access if they want to. “It’s only fair” was the argument.
That sounds reasonable, but we’ve been focusing on Apple’s freedom while ignoring the freedom of developers and users who don’t have as much power as Apple because Apple is one of the biggest companies on the planet. Don’t customers and developers have the right to make choices that aren’t controlled by Apple?
It’s easy to argue that a developer or user could use a different platform if they don’t like Apple’s rules, but that ignores the many ways Apple makes it hard to change platforms. That’s called lock-in and it’s considered a basic fact of reality that companies will try to keep their users on their platforms. We can’t build laws based on ignoring basic facts of reality
A person shouldn’t have to change their entire platform to get access to apps Apple refuses to allow. An example is Apple refused to allow emulators while Google’s Android allowed them (and also allowed side-loading of any application). Apple only changed the rules to allow emulators after the EU made the law to require alternative app stores, where emulators were one of the most anticipated categories. Requiring more flexibility benefits users. Even the users who would never go outside the App Store benefit because the increased competition keeps Apple focused on meeting their users’ needs.
Developers shouldn’t have to give up Apple’s massive audience because Apple doesn’t want to publish their applications, no matter what the reason is. Sure, the types of apps Apple bans today are relatively reasonable, but what if their next CEO decides to go a different way and ban Bible apps or LGBT dating apps? What if they decide anything even slightly controversial should be removed? Alternative installation methods would be a way to circumvent that and keep Apple from giving up the audience to their competition.
The key issue here is: whose freedom do we protect? We can’t do both. I think, in a situation like this, the more important freedom to protect is the freedom of the people with less power. Especially when concentrating power creates situations where people’s lives will be worse.
Apple has plenty of power and they have plenty of money. They certainly don’t need the revenue from the App Store to pay their employees’ salaries. They also don’t need full control over app installation to make massive profits from the App Store. But a small developer or company does need that money. And they need access to Apple’s platform to have a viable business.
And this applies to every other Neo Feudalist situation. Amazon can still rake in tons of profits, even if they aren’t allowed to charge and compete with the people who sell their products on Amazon’s digital shelves.
With great power comes great responsibility. Apple, Amazon, etc have massive power, which changes the dynamics of what they should be allowed to do. Because of all the power these companies have, they can no longer make decisions without affecting others around them. This is the price of success.
The good news is, most Americans agree! In 2021 it was about 80%3. That means we have the numbers to prevent Neo Feudalism from taking hold. We just have to gain the political power to make it into law. That’s easier said than done, but that’s where we begin.
Sources:
- Wikipedia on Feudalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
- “Apple becomes first target of EU’s new digital competition rules aimed at big tech” https://apnews.com/article/apple-european-union-digital-regulation-rules-app-store-07c34a80a5c98d0014e1c669a86af6a4
- “Public Support for Regulation of Big Tech: Analysis of Survey Findings,” Lake Research Partners, Feb. 2021.
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