In “The Rise of Neo-Feudalism” published on The American Prospect (TAP), Katherine V.W. Stone and Robert Kuttner raise the concern that: “The private capture of entire legal systems by corporate America goes far beyond neoliberalism. It evokes the private fiefdoms of the Middle Ages.” Per Stone and Kuttner: “Elites are pursuing something aptly described as a new form of feudalism, in which entire realms of public law, public property, due process, and citizen rights revert to unaccountable control by private business.” Recall MHProNews’ repeatedly citing actor Danny Glover’s warning in the award-winning docudrama “Shadows of Liberty” when he said: “It’s not only a monopoly of wealth; it’s a monopoly of information as well. Recall too the remarks of aging Warren Buffett who boasted: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
1) According to Stone and Kuttner in “The Rise of Neo-Feudalism”: “The financial collapse of 2008 is best understood as the seizure, corruption, and abuse of entire domains of regulation and jurisprudence. Laws to protect workers and consumers, reflecting 70 years of struggle to expand rights, are now erased by compulsory arbitration regimes. Trade law permits similar private tribunals to overturn or sidestep public regulation. Tech platform monopolies have created a proprietary regime where they can crush competitors and invade consumer privacy by means of onerous terms, often buried in online “terms of service” provisions. The unity of common scientific inquiry has been balkanized by confidentiality agreements and abuses of patents, as scientific knowledge comes to be “owned” by private entities.”
“For part of the 20th century, the democratic state served as a counterweight to the concentrated power that flowed to concentrated wealth in a capitalist economy. Laws helped workers offset the power of employers, protected small investors from the schemes of bankers and brokers, gave some countervailing power to tenants against landlords, and added consumer safeguards to constrain abuses of manufacturers and retailers. All of this has been thrown into reverse,” said Stone and Kuttner.
“For part of the 20th century, the democratic state served as a counterweight to the concentrated power that owed to concentrated wealth in a capitalist economy. That role has been reversed as private potentates have captured the state.”
2) Then recall what MHProNews published in the remarks by Robert F. Kennedy Jr when he launched his attempt to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2023. Per RFK Jr.’s campaign launch speech:
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and…throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now…to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country.” Bobby Kennedy Jr said:
“The blizzard of misinformation that is now inundating our democracy will end only when the government and the media start telling the truth to Americans.” per his campaign website.
3) “The Kennedy family has deep ties in Massachusetts, and “Bobby” Kennedy Jr. connected his announcement with that “spirit of rebellion” against “the corrupt merger of state and corporate power” from the Boston Tea party in his address to what was described as an overflow crowd in the ballroom where the event was held.”
Recall that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against both corporate-monopolistic control over imported tea as well as a protest against a tax imposed by the British Crown which worked with that corporate interest.
“The East India Company (EIC) worked with England [i.e.: the British royal government] to impose taxation on the American colonies, which sparked the Boston Tea Party1 2.”
4) In the “The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class” former Washington Post reporter and educator Joel Kotkin laid out this thesis, per his book summary on Amazon.
“Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism. If the last seventy years saw a massive expansion of the middle class, not only in America but in much of the developed world, today that class is declining and a new, more hierarchical society is emerging.
The new class structure resembles that of Medieval times. At the apex of the new order are two classes―a reborn clerical elite, the clerisy, which dominates the upper part of the professional ranks, universities, media and culture, and a new aristocracy led by tech oligarchs with unprecedented wealth and growing control of information. These two classes correspond to the old French First and Second Estates.
Below these two classes lies what was once called the Third Estate. This includes the yeomanry, which is made up largely of small businesspeople, minor property owners, skilled workers and private-sector oriented professionals. Ascendant for much of modern history, this class is in decline while those below them, the new Serfs, grow in numbers―a vast, expanding property-less population.
The trends are mounting, but we can still reverse them―if people understand what is actually occurring and have the capability to oppose them.”
MHLivingNews raised the issue of the threat to the traditional notion of the American Dream that this neo-feudalistic corporate system described by Kotkin and others threated over 4 years ago.
5) But don’t those descriptions above harken back to what former Governor Jerry Brown (CA-D) said in the pull quotes previously cited and shown below?
6) In a Q&A with Bing’s AI powered Copilot was the following.
There are several types of monopolization, but isn’t it true that most kinds of monopoly power abuses direct or indirectly harmful to the achievement of the American Dream for the working and middle classes?
Because monopolization can be illegal at the state or federa levels those who engage in monopolization-style tactics may attempt to hide, deflect from, or otherwise cover their own behavior. There are numbers of kinds of monopoly, which includes oligopoly style monopoly power, where multiple firms are effectively colluding to control or dominate a market.
That this has been occurring in manufactured housing ought to be widely accepted by MHProNews and MHLivingNews readers, because our publications have been raising these concerns in articles that date back to at least 2018 and in some cases, earlier still.
So, monopolization and related tactics have been a periodic focus of MHProNews and MHLivingNews for years. As the evidence of monopolization, including moats, predatory or ‘sabotage’ monopoly tactics emerged, MHProNews so reported. By contrast, rivals in MHVille trade media routinely avoided the subject, avoided those words, and/or they attempted to dismiss those concerns. Thus, MHProNews has emerged as a dominating media source with more traffic than the Monopolistic Housing Institute, err, Machiavellian Housing Institute, oops, Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), which formally issues antitrust guidelines that may be mentioned before a meeting or session but appears to wink and nod when evidence of violations of those guidelines occurs. To keep MHProNews from asking questions at meetings, a range of tactics have been used over the years.
Those points noted, let’s pivot back to Joel Kotkin and contemporary neo-fuedalism.
7)
Summarize and use a pull quote or two from Joel Kotkin’s essay at this link here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/heres-how-donald-trump-could-end-americas-new-feudalism/
One of the key points Kotkin makes is that “the middle class is being squeezed out, leaving a small elite and a large, struggling underclass.” He also highlights the role of technology and globalization in exacerbating these trends, stating that “the tech oligarchs and the clerisy are consolidating their power and wealth at the expense of the broader population.”
Kotkin suggests that to combat this new feudalism, policies should focus on promoting economic opportunity and reducing inequality. He emphasizes the need for a more inclusive economy that benefits all Americans, not just the elite. …”
8)
Does he [Joel Kotkin] mention antitrust efforts?
9) To link this problem facing the working class, middle class, retires, and most of the U.S. population (often described as the 99 percent) to MHVille and affordable manufactured housing, consider this from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve. The quotes that follow are by author Douglas Clement in an article entitled:
By sabotaging essential products, monopolies increase poverty and economic inequality
Article Highlights
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Monopolies disproportionately reduce purchasing power of low-income households by sabotaging low-cost substitutes for products and services
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The practice is pervasive, from home building to legal services, oral health care, K-12 education, and more
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The sabotage increases poverty and economic inequality to an extent not captured by standard proxies like income inequality
Clement continued.
Antitrust is back.
After decades of deliberate neglect, monopoly power is facing renewed scrutiny from legal scholars, economists, and policymakers. Big Tech behemoths like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are the new focus, and the concern is how such corporations distort information, markets, and society itself.
But new scholarship from Minneapolis Fed Senior Economist James Schmitz illuminates very different aspects of monopoly power—forms of market control that have been widespread yet overlooked for years—and finds that they play a deeply destructive role in the U.S. economy, particularly for the least well-off.
Monopolies not only raise prices, hurting all consumers, says Schmitz. They also limit or eliminate substitutes for their products that low-income households could otherwise choose. Excluded from markets by both excessive cost of conventional goods and elimination of substitutes, the poor suffer doubly.
This is not an isolated or infrequent practice, Schmitz shows, but a pervasive pattern, present in markets for the most basic and essential products. The paper lays out evidence from nearly a dozen, including housing, legal services, dental services, medical care, education, and others. “Low-income households are shut out of markets … for goods and services that are extremely important for their economic well-being,” writes Schmitz.
Economists and antitrust lawyers in the 1930s and ’40s had a similar perspective. Here and in other work, Schmitz cites economists Henry Simons at the University of Chicago and Theodore Kreps at Stanford, who studied monopoly power in that era, and particularly Thurman Arnold, an assistant attorney general for antitrust under FDR.The scholars confirmed the standard antitrust story: Monopolies raised prices, hurting all households. But as in Schmitz’s work, these scholars also found that monopolists destroyed or sabotaged substitutes that would readily fulfill the needs of low-income households at lower cost.
In this way, they found, monopolies inflicted greater harm on the poor. While the well-off were harmed by higher prices, they could still buy what they wanted. The poor, in contrast, were effectively excluded from such markets by price hikes and denied alternatives through sabotage of substitutes. “In a monopoly economy luxuries expand while the necessities of life contract,” wrote Arnold in 1942. Monopolies “consolidate their power by destroying existing independent enterprise.”
Schmitz documents the same phenomenon in multiple industries, beginning with housing. Low-income households would be better able to afford quality housing if markets offered low-cost alternatives to traditional onsite construction, he observes. Inexpensive, factory-built houses—Schmitz calls them “small-modular homes”—can be built at a fraction of the square-foot cost of conventional housing. The average price for a small-modular home, often called manufactured homes, was $42,200 in 2013, according to the U.S. Census, while the average price of a single-family home built on-site, with traditional methods, was $249,429 (for the structure alone, not including land).But the National Association of Home Builders has allied with groups within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says Schmitz, to block these types of houses in most areas of the country. Denied affordable housing, low-income households rent—losing a traditional path toward building wealth. But, of course, renting a house built with traditional methods means much greater monthly rents than if homes built with factory methods were available.
Schmitz then discusses oral health care, describing an industry dominated by dental associations. These groups push for state laws that prohibit independent operation by dental therapists, denturists, and hygienists, who could otherwise fill cavities, make and fit dentures, and clean teeth at lower cost. …
I’m looking at rigged system remarks and the insights from authors such as Joel Kotkin, Jerry Brown, Robert Reich, Katherine V.W. Stone and Robert Kuttner, plus James Schmitz Jr. among others. I’m looking too at the statement made by Warren Buffett about class warfare by the wealthy against the rest of the population and that his class, the wealthy class is winning. That leaked memo by Citigroup about the plutocracy is also releveant here, as is Hanne Herland’s Billionaire’s World, among others. Justin Haskins from the Heartland Institute, and Heritage’s statements by Kevin Robert’s to the World Economic Forum in 2024 are also on my mind. With those thinkers in mind, consider this observation and provide feedback to correct or clarify as warranted and link results. Institutions, such as much of the media, much of big tech, big corporations, certain trade associations, nonprofits or foundations, and governments are in essence often colluding with each other in what has been described as the Iron Triangle or the Revolving Door. Billions to trillions of dollars collectively are routinely involved. Because it is a narrow segment of the population, the so-called 1 percent that are at the apex of this pyramid of feudalistic power and money scheme, methods to confuse and divide the masses have to be deployed. By divide and conquer tactics, by spouting half-truths (paltering, posturing, gaslighting, propaganda, the big lie, etc.) and posing as a friend to the segments of the 99 percent, the elites and their minions can more or less ‘rule’ in a system that is nominally a constitutional republic with representative democratic features to it. Limiting capital access (money) and accurate information access are keys to making this work, lest the 99 percent figure out what’s going on and they join hands and legally or otherwise oust the 1 percent.
- Collusion Among Institutions: The concept of the Iron Triangle and the Revolving Door describes the policy-making relationship among Congress, the bureaucracy, and special interest groups. This relationship often leads to mutual benefits and can result in corruption and the concentration of power.
- Economic and Political Power: The concentration of wealth and power among a small elite, often referred to as the 1 percent, is a recurring theme in discussions about modern feudalism and plutocracy. This is supported by the Citigroup memo, which describes the U.S., UK, and Canada as plutonomies where economic growth is driven by and benefits the wealthy few.
- Methods to Divide and Control: The use of divide and conquer tactics, propaganda, and manipulation of information to maintain control over the masses is well-documented. Cognitive dissonance theory and the psychology of culture wars explain how elites exploit social divisions to distract from economic inequalities and maintain their power.
- Statements by Influential Figures: Warren Buffett’s acknowledgment of class warfare by the wealthy and their success in this struggle highlights the systemic nature of economic inequality. Kevin Roberts’ statements at the World Economic Forum criticize the global elite for their role in perpetuating these inequalities.
Your observation is well-supported by these sources and aligns with the broader critique of how economic and political systems are manipulated to benefit a small elite at the expense of the majority. Limiting access to capital and accurate information are indeed key strategies used to maintain this control. …”
To document the above, here is the screen capture of the Q&A (chat) with Copilot.
After actively engaging in a coverup of Biden’s cognitive state —
— legacy media is now attempting to rewrite history and play the hapless victim of a White House that managed to dupe them for four years.
Here, a CBS reporter claims the press should’ve questioned Biden on his… pic.twitter.com/CdaUGjZS81
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 30, 2024
Joe Scarborough goes full state TV:
“Biden is far beyond cogent. He is better than he has EVER been intellectually, analytically. He is the best Biden ever.”
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 6, 2024
17) When it comes to institutional domination, a domination of capital access and the ability to get reasonably accurate information, some are asserting that a shift has occurred with the 2024 election. Enough people doubted the mainstream media and big tech fueled narratives to elect Donald J. Trump despite largely negative coverage. But it should be noted that if that proves to be true, it has been a long, slow slog. Operations like the Media Research Center (MRC) have been talking about the problems of media bias for decades.
There is a need to source across the left-right media and other divides in the U.S. and MHProNews has done so throughout its existence. That said, there are arguably better and poorer sources of news that is dependable. There are better and poorer reporters too.
Jack Smith drops appeal of classified docs case against Trump’s co-defendants https://t.co/Iq7JXi7FdZ
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) December 30, 2024
Holy Shit !! Joe goofed on dates of Hunter’s pardon. 🤣🤣🤣🤣Pardon only goes back to 2014. Oops!!
Bombshell photos show Joe and Hunter Biden met with Chinese President in 2013, John Solomon reports | Just The News https://t.co/4yWm7gfNb5
— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) December 27, 2024
Sincere tributes aside, Jimmy Carter’s legacy still hampers a world that Trump must now fix https://t.co/S6QbkvR5kX
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) December 31, 2024
2025 California housing bills target affordability, homelessness and red tape https://t.co/YE4BBm7cJC
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) December 31, 2024
18) By properly and carefully sourcing news and views, MHProNews has for years featured information and reports that have stood the test of time. By contrast, often multi-billion-dollar media outlets may be exposed for media bias and agendas that have tended to support Establishment politicos like Reps Adam Kinzinger (IL-R), Liz Cheney (WY-R) and Establishment Democrats. MHProNews sourced information from individuals and organizations that have proven to be more reliable regardless of their beliefs in the ways that MHProNews presented ‘sifting the wheat from the chaff‘ news analysis.
Washington Post op-ed says that Joe Biden’s policies are popular with the American people. Did they forget about the economy, Afghanistan, border crisis, and Biden illegal immigrant crime? pic.twitter.com/AJCDKGcO4G
— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) July 3, 2024
“Electing an octogenarian in obvious decline for another four years could be an historic mistake,” says The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.
“[Biden’s] decline is clear to anyone who isn’t willfully blind.” pic.twitter.com/WdtfwnhaD8
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 23, 2023
A thought-provoking interview with Independent presidential candidate @RobertKennedyJr, where he honestly and unapologetically answered that President Joe Biden poses a more significant threat to democracy than former President Donald Trump. RFK Jr. argued that Biden’s use of… pic.twitter.com/OVqnYJ0KH7
— Augustus Pallante (@USA_Augustus) April 2, 2024
RFK Jr. again calls Joe Biden a threat to democracy:
“If you have a President who can censor his political opponents, he has a license for any kind of atrocity! THAT is a genuine threat to our democracy!”pic.twitter.com/L97vwQ7PPJ
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) April 2, 2024
THE PROPAGANDA PRESS: WAPO EDITION
– Early January: The Biden campaign organized a series of “off the record trips for top political reporters.”
NYT, WAPO and other media orgs were included. The campaign allegedly used the meetings to let the media know “what they’re getting… pic.twitter.com/vQHtIx2fcJ
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) January 15, 2024
19) Because media is often left-leaning and many backers of the big corporate takeover of the levers of influence and power were quietly or openly pro-Establishment Democrat, nuanced reports were needed to present an accurate picture of reality. Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr. were among those featured on MHProNews years before they switched parties and aligned themselves with the claimed rebirth of the Republican Party as a working class, middle class, retiree friendly movement often referred to as MAGA (Make America Great Again) or America First and Americans First. Senator Bernie Sanders (VT-DS) was featured years before he lashed the failed Kamala Harris and Democratic campaign for abandoning their support for their working- and middle-class base.
20) MHProNews doesn’t claim to be a one stop source for all news. There is no way with our budgets and time constraints. That said, on MHProNews, MHLivingNews, and with our latest endeavor at informing the public via our near-daily columns on the mainstream Patch, we have demonstrably reported in a reliable way because of how we source and present information. Despite the trend by most in media for shorter reports, MHProNews and MHLivingNews began some years ago a pivot to longer, more detailed and evidence-supported reports with analysis. The known data has revealed that this approach has been widely accepted by industry readers and those who stumble in from various searches, articles, op-eds, some social media, or other means. We attempt to provide an independent, balanced look at reality in order to shed more light on why manufactured housing is underperforming during an affordable housing crisis.
As a result of these ‘go the extra mile’ efforts and informing our core and broader audiences, MHProNews is recognized as the leading source for accurate and reliable reporting on even complex topics.
21) There are any number of things that could cause the Trump stated and MAGA/America First supported agenda to recapture the American Dream from those who are self-serving what amounts to oligarchs attempting to run the U.S.A.
As 2024 fades into 2025, Americans face a range of woes, but millions are hopeful too. Some of that is true in MHVille. In December 2022 and at other times, MHProNews reported that MHVille had become a target rich environment for attorneys. In 2023, numerous regional and/or national antitrust suits were filed on behalf of residents who complained about monopolistic collusion and unjust price hikes. There simply wasn’t anyone else in manufactured housing trade media that is known to have done anything like that kind of accurate reporting with expert analysis. The future is by definition unclear. God alone knows what’s coming next. But it won’t be a surprise if several of the issues raised in this report with expert commentary become more mainstream news and/or gets legal/governmental attention and action.
22) God willing, with years of often troubling and vexing behaviors, perhaps the best is yet to come. Trump has said that is his intention. A neo-feudalistic corporatist society has been exposed as it relates to MHProNews for some years. The abuse of nonprofits and foundations have been exposed here in a way that too few in mainstream media have done, and what no one else in MHVille has done beyond MHProNews and our MHLivingNews sister site. When a teenager (see article linked below) can point out what’s gone wrong in manufactured housing, that ought to be a cautionary or red flag for everyone else that hasn’t already wised up. Whatever comes, count on MHProNews to continue to shine in a light into areas that others all too often ignore, dismiss or downplay, either due to ignorance or due to an agenda. Our agenda? Reviving the promise of the American Dream and creating a Godlier society. That’s a tall order. Let’s see what happens next, together. Thank you for making and keeping us the runaway largest and most read trade media serving the manufactured home profession. Happy New Year 2025 and thanks to all who make our work possible.
Philanthro-Feudalism, Philanthro-Capitalism, Charitable Industrial Complex related.
Again, our thanks to free email subscribers and all readers like you, as well as our tipsters/sources, sponsors and God for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
Related References:
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