And it's what Apple and Google do:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion

Why compete with one another when you can collude, like feudal lords with adjacent estates who trust one another to return any serf they catch trying to sneak away in the dead of night?

23/

Because of course, it's not just "free markets" that have been captured by rents ("Competition is for losers" -P. Thiel) - it's also "free labor." For years, the largest tech *and* entertainment companies in America illegally colluded on a "no poach" agreement not to hire one-anothers' employees:

https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/03/apple-google-other-silicon-valley-tech-giants-ordered-to-pay-415m-in-no-poaching-suit/

24/

These companies were bitter competitors - as were these *sectors*. Even as Big Content was lobbying for farcical copyright law expansions and vowing to capture Big Tech, all these companies on both sides were able to set aside their differences and collude to bind their free workers to their estates and end the "wasteful competition" to secure their labor.

25/

Of course, this is even more pronounced at the bottom of the labor market, where noncompete "agreements" are the norm. The median American worker bound by a noncompete is a fast-food worker whose employer can wield the power of the state to prevent that worker from leaving behind the Wendy's cash-register to make $0.25/hour more at the McDonald's fry trap across the street:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal

26/

Employers defend this as necessary to secure their investment in training their workers and to ensure the integrity of their trade secrets. But why should their investments be protected? Capitalism is about risk, and the fear that accompanies risk - fear that drives capitalists to innovate, which creates the public benefit that is the moral justification for capitalism.

27/

Capitalists hate capitalism. They don't want free labor - they want labor bound to the land. Capitalists benefit from free labor: if you have a better company, you can tempt away the best workers and cause your inferior rival to fail. But feudalists benefit from un-free labor, from tricks like "bondage fees" that force workers to *pay* in order to quit their jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bondage-fees/#doorman-building

28/

Companies like Petsmart use "training repayment agreement provisions" (TRAPs) to keep low-waged workers from leaving for better employers. Petsmart says it costs $5,500 to train a pet-groomer, and if that worker is fired, laid off, or quits less than two years, they have to pay that amount to Petsmart:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

29/

Now, Petsmart is full of shit here. The "four-week training course" Petsmart claims is worth $5,500 actually only lasts for *three* weeks. What's more, the "training" consists of sweeping the floor and doing other low-level chores for three weeks, without pay.

But *even if* Petsmart were to give $5,500 worth of training to every pet-groomer, this would *still* be bullshit. Why should the worker bear the risk of Petsmart making a bad investment in their training?

30/

Under capitalism, risks justify rewards. Petsmart's argument for charging $50 to groom your dog and paying the groomer $15 for the job is that they took $35 worth of risk. But some of that risk is being borne by the worker - they're the ones footing the bill for the training.

31/

For Petsmart - as for all feudalists - a worker (with all the attendant risks) can be turned into an asset, something that isn't subject to competition. Petsmart doesn't have to retain workers through superior pay and conditions - they can use the state's contract-enforcement mechanism instead.

32/

Capitalists hate capitalism, but they *love* feudalism. Sure, they dress this up by claiming that governmental de-risking spurs investment: "Who would pay to train a pet-groomer if that worker could walk out the next day and shave dogs for some competing shop?"

But this is obvious nonsense. Think of Silicon Valley: high tech is the most "IP-intensive" of all industries, the sector that has had to compete most fiercely for skilled labor.

33/

And yet, Silicon Valley is in *California*, where noncompetes are illegal. *Every single successful Silicon Valley company* has thrived in an environment in which their skilled workers can walk out the door at any time and take a job with a rival company.

34/

There's no indication that the risk of free labor prevents investment. Think of AI, the biggest investment bubble in human history. *All* the major AI companies are in jurisdictions where noncompetes are illegal. Anthropic - OpenAI's most serious competitor - was founded by a sister/brother team who quit senior roles at OpenAI and founded a direct competitor. No one can claim with a straight face that OpenAI is now unable to raise capital on favorable terms.

35/

What's more, when OpenAI founder Sam Altman was forced out by his board, Microsoft offered to hire him - and 700 other OpenAI personnel - to found an OpenAI competitor. When Altman returned to the company, Microsoft *invested more money* in OpenAI, despite their intimate understanding that *anyone* could hire away the company's founder and all of its top technical staff at any time.

36/

The idea that the departure of the Burger King trade secrets locked up in its workers' heads constitute more of a risk to the ability to operate a hamburger restaurant than the departure of the entire technical staff of OpenAI is obvious nonsense. Noncompetes aren't a way to make it *possible* to run a business - they're a way to make it *easy* to run a business, by eliminating competition and pushing the risk onto employees.

37/

Because capitalists *hate* capitalism. And who can blame them? Who wouldn't prefer a life with less risk to one where you have to constantly look over your shoulder for competitors who've found a way to make a superior offer to your customers and workers?

This is why businesses are so excited about securing "IP" - that is, a government-backed right to control your workers, customers, competitors or critics:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

38/

The argument for every IP right expansion is the same: "Who would invest in creating something new without the assurance that some­one else wouldn’t copy and improve on it and put them out of business?"

That was the argument raised five years ago, during the (mercifully brief) mania for genre writers seeking trademarks on common tropes. There was the romance writer who got a trademark on the word "cocky" in book titles:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17566276/cockygate-amazon-kindle-unlimited-algorithm-self-published-romance-novel-cabal

39/

And the fantasy writer who wanted a trademark on "dragon slayer" in fantasy novel titles:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/14/son-of-cocky-a-writer-is-trying-to-trademark-dragon-slayer-for-fantasy-novels/

Who subsequently sought a trademark on any book cover featuring a person holding a weapon:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/07/19/trademark-troll-who-claims-to-own-dragon-slayer-now-wants-exclusive-rights-to-book-covers-where-someone-is-holding-a-weapon/

For these would-be rentiers, the logic was the same: "Why would I write a book about a dragon-slayer if I could lose readers to someone else who writes a book about dragon-slayers?"

40/

In these cases, the USPTO denied or rescinded its trademarks. Profits triumphed over rents. But increasingly, rents are triumphing over profits, and rent-extraction is celebrated as "smart business," while profits are for suckers, only slightly preferable to "wages" (the worst way to get paid under both capitalism *and* feudalism).

41/

That's what's behind all the talk about "passive income" - that's just a euphemism for "rent." It's what @Rushkoff is referring to in *Survival of the Richest* when he talks about the wealthy wanting to "go meta":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

42/

Don't drive a cab - go meta and buy a medallion. Don't buy a medallion, go meta and found Uber. Don't found Uber, go meta and invest in Uber. Don't invest in Uber, go meta and buy options on Uber stock. Don't buy Uber stock options, go meta and buy derivatives of options on Uber stock.

"Going meta" means distancing yourself from capitalism - from income derived from profits, from competition, from risk - and cozying up to feudalism.

43/

Capitalists have *always* hated capitalism. The owners of the dark Satanic mills wanted peasants turned off the land and converted into "free labor" - but they also kidnapped Napoleonic war-orphans and indentured them to ten-year terms of service, which was all you could get out of a child's body before it was ruined for further work:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

44/

When Varoufakis says we've entered a new feudal age, he doesn't mean that we've abolished capitalism. He means that - for the first time in centuries - when rents go to war against profits - the rents almost always emerge victorious.

45/

Here's the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2024/04/14/capitalists-hate-capitalism/

Here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the @internetarchive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_465/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_465_-_Capitalists_Hate_Capitalism.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

46/

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel *The Bezzle*! Catch me in Torino (Apr 21), Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour

eof/