The signs and indicators have been around for a long time. The rise of the Oligarchs and their unbridled wealth. The Tech Billionaires and their Trillion dollar corporations. Mass poverty across nation states in the face of this extraordinary global wealth. Cultural wars, book banning, reversing the rights of minorities, abandoning equality, diversity and inclusion across societies, pursuing and prosecuting, students, academics and universities over free speech and individual rights to hold an opinion; classifying comedians as a threat to political order, religious and secular ultra-right and left wing groups and organizations promoting their own kinds of xenophobia; and the use of the military to quell civil protests.

In his erudite stories of ordinary life in Ancient Rome, Philip Matyszak tells us about the property magnate, Licinius Crassus. He owned the only fire brigade in Rome, and would turn up at a house fire, along with firemen at the ready, but would not allow them to put the fire out until the property was sold to him. Plutarch tells us that the owners of houses on fire and those adjoining them would sell to this scoundrel for peanuts, and that’s how he became so wealthy, and owned a large part of Rome[i].

It would be several hundred years before the collapse of the Roman Empire and its emergence into a feudal like system; but, the lessons from its collapse are worth noting. Political instability and corruption, extreme wealth in the hands of a few, tensions between foreigners and Roman citizens, the rise of an aristocratic form of Christianity, and the forced change from free farmers to farmers tied to their land in servitude for life.

Some 2000 years later, making money and accumulating wealth remains a prescriptive preoccupation with everyone. From early childhood, we teach our kids about the value of money, although not always successfully, especially if they grow up through transgenerational poverty. We teach Business Studies and Economics throughout our school curricula, yet somehow the economic system each generation inherits does not change. And while the ways and means of making money and accumulating wealth are not as immoral and as unethical as Crassus’s generations, the system seems to have created an environment, where wealth accumulation whether by legitimate or illegitimate means has bypassed Kant’s moral imperative for the highest good of all; to the greatest wealth to the few. When global wealth is held by the richest 1% of the global population and this 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 95% of the world’s population combined; then we are losing our way as free, independent, and open democratic societies.

Who can stop this decline?  Since its inception, ninety three Economists have be awarded the Nobel Prize in the Economic Sciences, and they haven’t been able to change anything.  God hasn’t changed anything either, and never will as he’s proclaimed that the poor are blessed and will inherit the kingdom of heaven, so they’ve just to wait until they die to have their share of the cake. He has tried to dissuade the new feudal lords from avarice and greed by telling them that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than a rich feudal lord to enter heaven. Oxfam constantly complain about neo-feudalism; yet, they can’t change anything. Climate Activists, knowing full well, how unequal wealth distribution contributes to environment degradation and climate change, are busy blocking roads and highways, super gluing themselves to anything that doesn’t move, and throwing paint on sculptures and art museum paintings. Their behavior is just not helpful at all.

Recently, an inequality expert, Chuck Collins, who makes a lot of money from neo-feudalism; claimed that global inequality and the economic system which perpetuates it can be fixed. But his solutions are not about changing the system; rather he argues that the solutions are about political change. For example, changing the taxation systems, increasing the minimum wage and strengthening unions[ii]. Nothing new here at all. He’s simply recycling the great hope of Marx’s ideological economic system which didn’t help in anyway.  In fact it just perpetuated further brutal social and economic injustices, and laid the foundations for global neo-feudalism.

A glimmer of hope emerged in Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal after the great depression, as the welfare state became a central tenet of Western democracies. But, Thatcher, Regan, and their loyal lords and vassals, privatized their States, sold off their country’s assets and basically abandoned their populations to market forces through the sinister concept of financial deregulation. They knew full well what that would mean in a Darwinian sense;-the survival of the rich and powerful over the poor and disenfranchised. They are largely responsible for the gross financial inequalities we’ve inherited today, along with the social injustices which emanate from them. Their economic policies further developed today’s neo-feudalistic global economic system.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; two Neo-feudal leviathans, have no vested interest in creating a more just and fair world, because they benefit from it. Their high interest financial bail outs to poor countries, allow them to hold a country’s assets through “fief or fee” and the debtor nations must meet legal obligations or risk the continued mortgages of their national assets.

The current US President, is the first of the Neo-feudal lords in the West. 21^st century neo-feudalism has reach its zenith with Trumpanomics; a highly spurious combination of so-called free market economics and feudal like tariffs slapped on the vulnerable economies of weaker countries. Its aim is to bolster an outdated US free market neo liberal economic system, and replace it with 21st century neo-feudalism, whereby homage to its leaders, loyalty, military support and protection, will guarantee political, social and economic stability and order.

But why can’t anyone change this outcome? If the power of political propaganda can muster hundreds of thousand onto the streets to protest the war between the terrorist organization Hamas, and the independent State of Israel, why can’t hundreds of thousands of people be on the streets protesting the abhorrent social injustices in their own countries perpetrated through an unjust and unequal economic system? Perhaps the main stream and social media play a significant role here? After all how much outrage does Keeping up with the Kardashian’s or game shows promoting instant wealth acquisition cause; when compared to the nightly TV news horrors of the Hamas vs Israel conflict?

And to what extent do global giant tech corporations exploit us through their recruitment of mainly young influencers, who may earn extraordinary sums of money through their antics on YouTube and Instagram? And what hope is there when we are up against the multi-billion dollar Neo-Freudian advertising industry, manipulating the masses through their desires over their needs? And what about the Hedge Funds and their elite managers who gobble up the global populations’ hard earned savings, and then promise high interest returns in old age; yet gamble away the money entrusted to them, in a high risk casino like financial free market environment? They helped make it, and to them it isn’t broken. It is exactly what they want it to be: an economic Neo-feudal system, whereby the political and upper social classes are dominated by 21^st century super rich lords and their subordinates, in exchange for more wealth, power and protection

A recent brutal example of how the power of neo feudal economics is played out is in New Zealand. The country is a debtor nation and is an example of neo-feudalism at work. It is a vassal state to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the rich countries which lend it money. It has had 40 years of Neo-liberal financial market deregulation, which has been a dismal failure. Major industries and State holdings were sold off under a labor government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And despite several years of successive labor governments, nothing has changed. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

It is a small country, with a population around the size of the Republic of Ireland. But unlike how the neo-feudal economic system is played out in Ireland; New Zealand doesn’t have the benefit of collecting billions of dollars in taxation from the giant global tech corporations. It is a relatively poor country with a significant national debt of around $175.5 billion (42.7% of GDP) as at the end of the 2024 financial year. This is projected to reach $185.6 billion (45% of GDP) this year, and increase further in the coming years. This includes the government’s outstanding financial obligations, which are a significant concern because, the interest payments on this debt have risen substantially[iii]  But, rather than admit its financial deregulation system is a failure,  successive governments blame each other, and turn the other way as unemployment rises, the health system collapses in on itself, and the cost of living increases exponentially every year, making life extremely difficult for the majority of ordinary New Zealanders.

Recently, despite an unemployment rate for the 15-19 age group of 23.8%, the government announced a cut in the supported living payment for 18-19 year olds who still live with their parents, and if their parents earn over NZ$65,000 per year. The fact that there is no work for them, apart from seasonal farm or orchard work away from their families. For every job advertised in their age bracket over 200 people apply. The NZ Prime Minster announced this as a ‘tough love ‘policy. It is he said, echoing the ideological position of the late Margaret Thatcher, “the responsibility of the family to care for their children”. Well, the current NZ Prime Minister, like many of his political confreres around the world, is a multi-millionaire, so why wouldn’t he not say that?  It is the same kind of response one would find a Feudal Lord in medieval times making to his serfs and vassals.

Will it ever change?  I’m afraid not. A new kind of neo-feudalism has been born out of the rapacious global economic system of the last 40 years. Unlike its historical antecedent, it will last longer than 600 years; because, unlike the military alliances of ancient feudalism, which bought protection for the workers of the land; the neo-feudalism of the 21^st century, along with the military industrial complex, is only concerned in protecting its own interests: mega wealth, super power, ongoing global armed conflict, and domination of the world’s population at any cost.  “The future”, to quote the American science fiction writer Paolo Bacigalupi, “looks a little bleak to me”.

[i] Matyszak, Philip, 24 Hours in Ancient Rome: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There, p11

[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/oct/06/billionaire-class-us-inequality

[iii] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/new-zealand/national-government-debt