I’ve recently seen a random Youtube video (about the Unity pricing changes) that was talking about capitalism and what it was meant to be, and one key point that has stuck with me is that capitalism should absolutely hate rent, and the early capitalism was against it.

IIRC the reasoning was that rent was mainly a feudalism thing, and also because it doesn’t really provide much value, since you aren’t necessarily using it to invest and offer a better service to the one who’s paying it, you’re just extorting money from them.

The video was also mentioning a term, which may be totally made-up but I really like, which was technofeudalism - which describes the recent trend of every company trying to switch to subscription models, so they can also extort rent from you for using the internet, without providing a better service. Paying monthly for seat warmers in a car? Paying monthly for a guitar tuner app? Paying monthly for X? That’s not capitalism, that’s just plain feudalism - there’s no added value or improved service, they are just slapping on unreasonable costs because they can.

I just woke up, and seen the video a few weeks back, so my summary of the main ideas of the video may be totally wrong. I also have no idea what sources, if any, was the video based on, so it may be total bullshit. But I like the term, technofeudalism sounds cool, and the idea is pretty intuitive to quickly share, while sounding like something that makes sense. But that one video is my only source I have about it, II don’t even know whether that term exists or is made up. I’ll try to find the video later.

EDIT: It was this one.