Doha: Former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis stated that capitalism as traditionally understood has reached its end, arguing that its conventional dynamics no longer govern global economies. He asserted that a new system, what he calls “Technofeudalism”, has replaced it, referring to the growing dominance of major tech corporations that control consumer behavior and extract value without producing tangible goods.
According to Qatar News Agency, speaking at one of the sessions at the Qatar Economic Forum 2025, Varoufakis cautioned that over 30% of GDP in advanced economies, and potentially soon in developing economies, is now absorbed as rent, rather than being reinvested in productive sectors. He warned against the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few through non-productive tools that merely extract and control.
Varoufakis elaborated on this perspective in his newly released book, “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?”, which challenges the prevailing understanding of the global economic system.
Connecting his current views to his tenure as Greece’s finance minister during the severe debt crisis of 2015, Varoufakis argued that the crisis was not purely Greek but rather a broader European banking crisis, stemming from the long-term repercussions of the 2008 global financial meltdown.
He said that everything starts on Wall Street, as it always does, just as the 1929 crash began on Wall Street, the 2008 U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was the generation’s financial disaster. He pointed out that European banks, particularly in Germany and France, discovered massive financial shortfalls in their balance sheets following the U.S. mortgage collapse.
Varoufakis criticized the post-2008 economic recovery measures, particularly quantitative easing and the injection of trillions of dollars into the financial sector without coordinated fiscal policies, arguing that this approach created severe market imbalances.
He contended that saving financial institutions without addressing core structural issues or coordinating fiscal policies effectively paved the way for “Technofeudalism”.
In this new system, traditional markets and profit-driven capitalist mechanisms are no longer the primary drivers of the economy. Instead, major tech platforms and data-controlling corporations have taken over, asserting dominance through digital infrastructure rather than market competition.
Varoufakis noted that since 2010, the world has experienced an unprecedented transformation in the nature of “capital” itself.
He stated that capital no longer simply means factories and machinery, it now includes what I call “Cloud Capital,” encompassing algorithms, fiber optic cables, data centers, and AI-powered devices like Amazon’s Alexa.
He cited Amazon as an example, noting that while the company does not manufacture the electric bikes sold on its platform, it controls 40% of their price, an economic extraction model based on rent rather than productive profit.
Varoufakis concluded that any economic system built on rent rather than profit is a direct threat to free markets.