Moon Struck

 “Techno-Capitalism – the Rise of the New Robber Barons and the Fight for the Common Good” by Loretta Napoleoni, 2024

This book covers recent developments in technology and finance that have already been covered by others, with a new addition – outer space, especially the issue of low Earth orbits (LEO). Napoleoni's target here are the 5 capitalist horsemen dominating technology – Amazon, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Google/Alphabet and Microsoft. She calls them the Techtitans who operate in the Present Future. These firms are part of a tech oligopoly, buying up every asset they can similar to what Google did with mapping software to create Google Maps and Google Earth. 

They were preceded by a group of Silicon Valley anarchist visionaries, the Cypherpunks, Julian Assange being one. They specialized in cryptography for privacy's sake, which subsequently became the key to internet commerce. Who'd have guessed? Napoleoni's been on CNN and the BBC, along with working for the World Bank. She's no anti-capitalist but that increasingly familiar breed – left-liberals panicking at the multi-faceted deterioration of world society – her 'pandemic of anxiety.'

Napoleoni gives a detailed description of how Bitcoin and crypto currencies are structured and how blockchains and ridiculous non-fungible tokens (NFT) work. She sometimes seems to think Bitcoin is not fiat money and claims criminals have abandoned crypto because of it's digital chain of ownership - a chain that can become incredibly convoluted. She looks at the Robinhood financial 'rebellion' against Wall Street hedge funds over Game Stop and how high-speed trading has put algorithms in charge of that self-same Wall Street. She takes a tour of the 2008 financial meltdown from a modern monetary theory (MMT) perspective, illuminating the essential trust and fiat nature of trillions in U.S. government cash that rescued the banks and economy. She lambastes the concept of infinite economic growth and the falsity of the GDP as an economic gauge. She exposes the mythology of carbon credits and carbon sequestration, along with the false image of 'low carbon' EV transport. According to her the batteries in electric cars like Teslas are more carbon intensive to make than gasoline vehicles. How the later lack of an exhaust pipe spewing carbon compensates for this initial upbump is unknown. She shows how some startups like AirBnB and Uber make use of lags and gaps in legal structures to institute exploitative software management of private renters and homeowners or thousands of misnamed 'sharing' drivers.

Napoleoni's somewhat grandiose writing style, hobby-horse terminology and 'futurist' pose is a bit of an impediment, along with an ambivalent tone and vague solutions. Her recommendations are public / private recycling ventures for a 'circular economy' to save the environment. This includes the essential recycling of large and small batteries to recover valuable minerals, batteries which are the carbon glutton of ubiquitous electric and electronic power sources. She supports the use of blockchain technology to automate many administrative tasks, something that could be useful even to socialists. She claims that crypto uses less carbon than the regular monetary system, though their sizes are not comparable. She sees crypto as an ultimate replacement for 'state issued' money, though many governments are adding it to their monetary arsenal.  And if their website exchange goes down, as it has done in the past, what happens then? She thinks human data is the most desired raw material on earth – quite a starry position. Who needs food?! She leans towards universal basic income, but has no other solution to job losses due to AI or blockchain technology. The bourgeois cliche that 'new jobs will be created' by AI is true – but there won't be near as many. Anyone working with tech knows it usually increases productivity at the expense of headcount. Even Napoleoni realizes the goal is to replace labor.

Napoleoni ventures into politics and thinks the nation-state is outdated, being overwhelmed by the internet and technology, which certainly is perceptive. In this context, she does not connect 'the State' or 'the nation' with any class or economic system, similar to most anarchists and liberals. She believes Wall Street needs 'proper regulation' – as if that has worked. She praises the sociobiology of E.O. Wilson, who said human biology is the root of production systems. This ignores class, specifically the question of 'whose' biology we are talking about. She mentions 'anti-trust' actions, but concludes they are impossible. She calls for “a new political and economic paradigm” which means almost nothing. There's not really much 'fight' here when all is said and done, which is typical of these kind of middle-class writers.

SPACE is the Place!

Space is the Place, as the great jazzman Sun Ra says. Like leftie tech podcaster Adam Something, though in more words, Napoleoni shows how long space travel is biologically and technically impossible, along with things like terraforming Mars. But she does yearn for feasible low Earth orbit (LEO) projects. Some of these are already in place by the 'Space Barons' like Musk's Space X and various governments for military, satellite and science purposes. The amount of space debris is proof! She dwells on China's ambitious plans under Xi to create a Chinese space station staffed with a new Xuntian space telescope, establish a lunar settlement, set up a space solar array to beam power back to earth and initiate more voyages to Mars and the rest of the Milky Way galaxy. She herself has no suggestions as to what LEO projects would improve 'the common good' while ignoring their costs and carbon emissions. She claims that “the industrialization of LEO is within our reach” which sounds absolutely terrible. Definitely mining for minerals on the moon is a target of many of these corporations and governments in this virtually uncontrolled area. Do we have to raise the slogan of socializing the moon now, like the 'right to the moon'? Attention David Harvey!

The issue of tone is odd because Napoleoni sounds upbeat about nearly every one of these technologies, then rains on her own parade – “on the other hand” - and points out that the Techtitans are only in it for profit and consumption, not for the good of society. For instance she's excited about a gimmicky 'metaverse' that has already tanked. She can never bring herself to realize that what she is talking about all the time, in her elliptical way, is how capitalism functions. She likes to moralistically substitute 'greed' for profiteering, commodity production and exploitation. “Techno-capitalism” isn't separate from any other kind, it's just the latest fast-changing leap. It's Big ROI, baby!

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Cypherpunks” (Assange); “Modern Monetary Theory” (Kelton); “Bit Tyrants,” “Big Short” (Lewis); “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” “The Loop,” “New Dark Age,” “The Global Police State,” “R.U.R. and the Insect Play” (Capek); “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” (Bastani); “Cyber-Proletariat.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / June 25, 2024

Celebrate the release of Julian Assange from prison!