Technocracy, Techno-Authoritarianism, and the Rise of Technofeudalism

Ryan Haylett

We used to fear losing our freedoms to governments.

Ryan Haylett

Now we give them away, one cookie consent at a time, to tech monopolies in hoodies.

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Your rights?

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Those are now privileges decided by a Terms of Service you didn’t read and can’t negotiate. Sound like a Netflix dystopia? Well… it's looking more like our Tuesday.

Ryan Haylett

And don’t get it twisted—we’re not talking about some hypothetical “what if.” This is happening. Slowly, quietly, like spyware.

Ryan Haylett

Politicians are outsourcing everything to tech bros. And those same bros?

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They're building systems that don’t answer to anyone—especially not you.

Ryan Haylett

This is what happens when democracy takes a backseat and technocracy gets behind the wheel…

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and it's drunk on venture capital.

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So let's define it, since they don't exactly teach this in civics anymore.

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A technocracy is what happens when you stop voting for leaders and start letting engineers and corporate nerds run everything,

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All on the assumption that “hey, they’re the smartest guys in the room.”

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Yeah?

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So were the guys behind FTX.

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Originally, this idea wasn’t evil. Back in the early 1900s, technocracy meant: “Let’s run society based on data and expertise instead of dumb politics.” Sounds alright... until you realize that data doesn’t have empathy and algorithms don't understand nuance.

Ryan Haylett

Then came the Technocracy Movement in the 1930s. These guys wanted to abolish money and run the economy using energy certificates.

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I’m serious. They basically wanted scientists to hand out adult juice box coupons for everything you do.

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And if that sounds like a system where people get steamrolled in the name of efficiency—you’re catching on.

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Now let's talk about the modern face of this mess: Peter Thiel.

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You may know him as a billionaire investor.

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But this guy is more than PayPal Mafia royalty—he’s a hardcore techno-authoritarian.

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This is someone who has publicly said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” That’s not a red flag—that’s a flashing nuclear sign that says “danger to the republic.”

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And if you think he’s just another Silicon Valley philosopher king, think again.

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Thiel is behind Palantir—the surveillance company that is building a massive database on every US citizen.

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That’s right. The dude questioning democracy has access to your data... and your city council probably helped sign the deal.

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Let’s also not forget “Project 2025.” It's not sci-fi, it's the current plan in motion by the executive branch to overhaul the federal government.

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Thiel-adjacent fingerprints are all over it.

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It’s about shrinking democratic processes and handing power to unelected “experts.”

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And if you think “expert” means someone with a PhD in social welfare, nah, it’s more like “tech bro with a defense contract.”

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So let’s take it up a notch.

Ryan Haylett

Technocracy on its own is scary, but pair it with monopoly power, and what you get is technofeudalism. Think feudalism, but your landlord is Jeff Bezos, your courthouse is a machine learning model, and your local town square is moderated by Meta’s trust & safety algorithm.

Ryan Haylett

You don’t own land. You don’t own platforms. You’re basically a serf clicking “accept” every time you want to exist online.

Ryan Haylett

Yanis Varoufakis calls it like it is: we’re no longer living in capitalism—we’re living under a new regime where a handful of platform owners control the infrastructure of daily life. Amazon owns the roads. Google owns the signs. And you’re paying rent in data just to breathe.

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The fix? Collective ownership of cloud infrastructure, algorithmic transparency, and digital democracy that doesn’t rely on the benevolence of billionaires. But let’s be honest—that’s not gonna happen unless people wake up and start demanding it.

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So here we are—drifting from democracy into digital monarchy. No vote. No recourse. Just an ever-tightening grip by a handful of dudes who think they know what’s best for 8 billion people because their startup scaled fast.

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But here’s the thing: this isn’t inevitable. You can challenge it. We must challenge it. Because the second we stop pushing back is the moment the future stops belonging to us.

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And if we’re gonna be ruled by algorithms, at least make sure they don’t treat us like background processes.