Neoliberal capitalism is being replaced by a new world order

Neoliberal capitalism failed in 2008, but politicians kept it alive with vast bailouts only for it to be consumed by techno-feudalism, and dominated by Trump's gangsterism.

The writing has long been on the wall for neoliberal capitalism, especially after the frenzy of deregulation and privatisation that started under Thatcher and Reagan delivered the 2008 global financial sector meltdown.

Instead of fundamentally reforming the broken and blatantly unstable system, politicians and central bankers colluded to keep the failed system alive with the biggest public bailouts in human history.

Capitalism seems to work as long as its got room for expansion. Over preceding decades neoliberal capitalism has spread its tentacles into the global south, China, and the former Soviet Union, as well as eating away at the public domain through privatisation and outsourcing.

But what happens when there’s nowhere else besides North Korea and Cuba left to expand into, and almost all of the public realm has already been converted to private profiteering?

People have argued, with good reason, that after the global financial sector meltdown, neoliberal capitalism has been morphing into techno-feudalism. This is the theory that traditional capitalist markets are being dominated and exploited by a new breed of digital overlords.

The primary source of profit is no longer the productive activity of selling goods and actual services, it’s monopolising digital spaces for rent-extraction and data-harvesting.

Digital platforms have inserted themselves into all corners of the increasingly online economy. You want to order products online, then platforms like Amazon demand a cut. You want to book a holiday, then platforms like AirBnB demand a cut. You want to order takeaway, then platforms like Glovo demand a cut. You need to get a taxi somewhere, then platforms like Uber demand a cut. You want to advertise your products or services online, then platforms like Facebook demand a cut. You want to donate to a small independent blog, then platforms like PayPal demand a cut.

The techno-feudalists have become so powerful that it’s becoming vastly more profitable to simply extract rent as an online intermediary, than it is to engage in the conventional capitalists activities of designing, producing, advertising, and selling products and actual services.

The techno-feudalists have rapidly amassed extraordinary amounts of wealth and power. We’ve watched as platforms like Facebook and Google have helped to rig elections by repressing the reach of government critics, and deliberately spreading misinformation, and we’ve all seen how Elon Musk used his vast wealth to buy his way into the heart of the US government and start smashing things up with no regards for the consequences, or the constitution.

Governments of the past used to seek the approval of industrialists and media moguls, at Trump’s second inauguration it was telling that he was flanked by the techno-feudalist overlords Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg.

However the cracks in Trump’s alliance with the techno-feudalists are already appearing, after Trump’s decision to carpet bomb the global economy with trade tariffs that were generated using utterly insane and economically illiterate calculations.

Elon Musk spoke out against Trump’s tariff policies, and it’s obvious that Trump’s threatened 200% tariffs on Chinese products are going to interfere with the rent-seeking activity of companies like Amazon, which have generated vast profits by inserting themselves as intermediaries between cheap Chinese production and wealthy American consumers.

In the week following the announcement of his bizarrely calculated tariff rates, Trump has helpfully said and done several things to illustrate what’s really going on.

He bragged at a Republican Party black tie event that world leaders are "kissing my ass" and begging him for lower tariff rates; he openly speculated that certain US companies could be exempted from his ludicrously calculated tariff rates at his discretion; and he’s been accused of insider trading by causing the biggest ever one-day bounce in the value of billionaires’ stock values ($304 billion) by temporarily pausing his tariff rates at 10% for most of the world, rather than fully implementing his absurdly calculated charges.

Trump is creating a situation in which world leaders, techno-feudalists, and industrialists all have to come to him to plead for favourable tariff rates and insider information on his next chaotic moves, all against a backdrop of the shattered public realm having to beg him into saving them from Elon Musk’s DOGE vandals.

It’s gangsterism, with Donald Trump as the Godfather-like figure who offers protection and insider information to those who do him favours, and economic punishment beatings for those who won’t agree to offer up tributes and cravenly serve his interests.

This view of Trump as "Gangster in Chief" is reinforced by his open admiration of powerful tyrants and brutes like Vlad Putin and the genocidal maniac Netanyahu, while he openly mocks and ridicules less-violent world leaders as a bunch of pathetic arse-kissers.

Over the preceding five decades, neoliberal capitalists have feasted on the public realm through privatisation, and outsourcing, and cried for public cash to bail them out whenever they gamble themselves into insolvency.

Now this kind of unproductive rent-seeking behaviour is spreading into the consumption of conventional capitalism too, through techno-feudalism.

And above that, everyone, including the techno-feudalists, is subject to the gangsterist whims of the United States’ "Gangster in Chief", who is demonstrably willing to unleash absolute chaos within the US government, and destabilise the entire world economy, in order to batter everyone into submission to his will.

Of course the US has spent decades using a brutal combination of economic destabilisation, political interference, terrorism, and military violence to shape the world economy to their own advantage, but much of this was done clandestinely, and direct interventions were always justified with propaganda barrages about "fighting the spread of communism" and more recently, absurd fairy stories about promoting "freedom and democracy".

There’s nothing clandestine about what Trump is doing, to such an extent that he publicly brags about world leaders kissing his arse, and offers up the incentive of favourable market conditions for the countries, US industrialists, and techno-feudalists who are willing to serve his gangsterist agenda.

There are no fairy stories about "fighting communism" or "spreading freedom and democracy" anymore. Trump simply wants to annex Canada and seize Greenland from Denmark out of greed, and he’s intent on helping the Israelis with their genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza because Netanyahu is a fellow Muslim-hating, white supremacist, gangster.

There’s no economic logic to Trump’s tariffs, because they’re not intended to do anything beyond establish him as the world’s "Gangster in Chief", who brazenly rigs global trade to advantage those who do him the biggest favours, and disadvantage those who refuse to kiss his arse.

The pre-existing order is collapsing:

The globalist neoliberal ideals of open trade and free markets are collapsing into a gangsterist protectionism racket.

Economically unproductive rent-seeking is rapidly replacing capitalist production as the most profitable means of doing business and buying influence.

The (always absurd) fantasy of the US as benevolent distributors of freedom and democracy is stone dead to all but the terminally hard-of-thinking.

The rule of law, so beloved of liberal capitalists, is being shredded on multiple fronts from Trump’s disregard for the US Constitution; through his defiance of World Trade Organisation rules and destruction of US free trade agreements with dozens of other economies; to his utter disdain for international law in regards to his designs on Greenland and his complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Neoliberal capitalism was never sustainable, and when the politicians and central bankers decided to keep it alive on the life support of unimaginably vast public bailouts, instead of enacting real reforms, they allowed it to morph into something even worse. Particularly for anyone who believes that actually productive work should be rewarded more highly than speculation and rent-seeking, and especially for anyone who isn’t keen to accede to the demands of the "Gangster in Chief".