The New Feudalism Is No Accident

Australia is told unemployment is “structural,” inflation is “transitory,” and the cost-of-living crisis is an unfortunate by-product of global events beyond anyone’s control.

Rubbish.

When job security collapses at the same time as living costs explode, you are not watching bad luck. You are watching design.

Automation hollowing out employment. Monopolies strangling competition. Asset giants swallowing homes. Wages frozen while debt balloons. These trends did not collide by chance. They were engineered by people who never worry about grocery bills or rent.

So we should ask the obvious question. What is the endgame?

Because the pattern is clear. And it is ugly.

What is emerging is not a brave new world. It is a very old one.

Feudalism did not disappear. It went into hibernation.

In the medieval model, peasants owned nothing, produced everything, and survived at the mercy of a ruling class. Power was not earned. It was inherited. Obedience was not optional. It was enforced.

Sound familiar?

Today’s lords do not wear crowns. They wear ESG badges, sit on panels, and lecture you about “equity” from private jets. Their castles are data centres. Their knights are algorithms. Their serfs are heavily indebted citizens renting back their own lives.

And yes, this new feudalism comes with digital shackles.

The most dangerous shift is not economic. It is philosophical.

Ownership is being quietly abolished.

You do not own your software. You license it.
You do not own your entertainment. You stream it.
You do not fully own your car. Features can be switched off remotely.
You do not control your data. It lives on someone else’s server.
You do not even fully own your home when zoning rules, energy mandates, or financial pressure force you to comply.

This is what “You will own nothing and be happy” really meant. An admission, not a slogan. And it came straight from the mouths of the global managerial class gathered at places like the World Economic Forum.

In the digital economy, access replaces ownership. And access can be revoked. No appeal. No explanation. No human being on the other end of the line.

We have already accepted the unthinkable.

People lose years of work when accounts are deleted by opaque moderation systems. Software you paid for stops working when subscriptions lapse. Devices you bought are rendered useless by updates you did not request.

Even physical assets are no longer safe. Smart technology does not just serve you. It watches you. Increasingly, it controls you.

Miss a payment. Break a rule. Fail to comply. Access denied. That is not convenience. That is coercion.

This system could not function without debt. And Australia has plenty of it.

Sky-high property prices force people into lifetime mortgages. Stagnant wages push families onto credit cards. Buy Now Pay Later schemes normalise permanent obligation. Rising interest rates tighten the screws.

Debt is no longer just financial. It is behavioural. When survival depends on uninterrupted access to systems you do not control, dissent becomes dangerous.

And that is the point. A heavily indebted population is a compliant population.

While this economic noose tightens, political power quietly migrates away from voters. Unelected regulators make sweeping decisions. Bureaucrats govern by decree. Corporate and government partnerships blur accountability. Surveillance expands. Dissent is managed, not debated.

You are told it is for safety. Or efficiency. Or the greater good. It never is.

This is how liberty dies. Not with tanks in the street, but with terms and conditions no one reads and institutions no one elected.

Here is what the architects of this system do not want you to remember.

Their power is fragile.

Systems built on exploitation always rot. Centralised control breeds incompetence. Technocracy suffocates innovation. History is merciless to elites who forget they need the consent, or at least the compliance, of the people.

They fear strong families because families create independence.
They fear faith because faith answers to a higher authority.
They fear ownership because owners are hard to control.
They fear local communities because decentralisation breaks monopolies.

Most of all, they fear people who refuse to accept this as inevitable.

This future is not locked in.

It can be resisted by rebuilding local resilience, defending real ownership, supporting the right to repair, rejecting endless subscriptions, and strengthening families and communities outside the permission economy.

Above all, it requires courage.

David did not defeat Goliath by playing by the giant’s rules. He won by refusing to accept the terms of his own submission.

So should we.

“The future course of history is never inevitable if we retain the will to shape it.”
– Joel Kotkin