![]() Samuel Coleridge coined the term in the 1830s to define a class of people whose job it was to instruct and direct the masses, as traditional clerics were joined by university professors, scientists, public intellectuals and foundation heads. Just as the tech oligarchs, having conquered and consolidated the digital economy, have assumed the predominant role of the old feudal aristocracy, the Clerisy reprises the role once played by the Catholic clergy. Their share of the labor market has grown while those of the traditional middle class - small business owners, workers in basic industries and construction - have shrunk. But the class that may benefit most may be the Clerisy, encompassing professions such as teachers, consultants, lawyers, top level government officials and medical specialists. ![]() Yet not all will be losers-the tech oligarchs, whose net worths have surged during the pandemic, are now positioned to pick up the pieces of a devastated analog economy. In the neo-Feudal world, as in the original, the middle class loses its primacy, as small businesses fail and even affluent families face the prospect of joining the ranks of ever expanding class of property-less serfs. Neo-feudalism is reprising the kind of society that existed in Medieval times, characterized by declining social mobility and greater concentrations of power. alone, the ranks of the poor are projected to increase by as much as 50 percent, to levels not seen in at least a half century. With the middle-class economy largely shut down and, in the best-case scenario, in for a long and painful recovery, the population that is barely hanging on is expanding rapidly in America and around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the global shift already underway towards a neo-feudal society. Adapted from The Coming of Neo-Feudalism (Encounter Books).
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