Clashing Visions: Tech Feudalism and the Fight for the Future

Without many noticing, tech giants, billionaires, and investment firms are quietly buying up land, patenting crops, and pouring money into climate-smart agricultural technologies. Are we moving toward a new global order where a handful of powerful entities control both data and land - and if so, how can we resist?

We’re living in chaotic times, marked by conflicts over democracy, the environment, resources, and worldviews. We’re questioning which familiar ideas to hold onto and what new perspectives to adopt. One of the most critical questions is: Can capitalism really help solve our problems, or do we need entirely new economic systems?

One of the first to challenge our current economic model was Kate Raworth with her book Doughnut Economics. Her approach highlights how capitalism often ignores the environmental costs of its actions. This idea has significantly influenced today’s sustainability efforts, pushing organizations to find ways to measure the impact of their actions and take responsibility throughout their value chains.

But while parts of the sustainability movement are embracing these new ways of thinking - valuing natural rhythms, traditional knowledge, our connection to the earth, origins, and spirituality - tech oligarchs are moving in the opposite direction. What Kate Raworth argued should be respected and protected - planetary boundaries, nature, and human well-being - is instead showing up on balance sheets as assets. What was supposed to be a wake-up call, recognizing that nature's costs are real, has become just another opportunity for capital. Not as an invisible partner to protect, but as yet another resource to own and control.

This is a deeply concerning trend, happening almost unnoticed: The relentless pursuit of power, control, and profit is devouring the last remnants of what we have. We are witnessing the rise of tech feudalism - a modern twist on a medieval system where power is concentrated in the hands of a few, but this time through digital and physical dominance.

Tech Feudalism and Green Colonialism: When Rescue Becomes Exploitation

Tech feudalism is a concept that describes a world where big tech companies don’t just dominate our digital lives - they’re also taking control of our physical realities. This shift isn’t just about controlling data, platforms, cloud infrastructure, and AI, it’s also about physically owning and managing land, food supplies, and natural resources. A prime example is Bill Gates, who has become the largest private farmland owner in the United States while also investing in artificial meat, climate-smart farming technologies, and patented crops. This isn’t just a financial move - it’s about vertically integrating the future of food and climate. Those who control the land, the technology, and the story ultimately control the future.

Meanwhile, there’s growing criticism of similar investments happening worldwide, especially through what’s called green colonialism. When global players like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation finance climate-smart solutions in Africa, it often comes at the cost of local farmers' autonomy. Activists like Vandana Shiva warn that this green colonialism centralizes control and pushes out traditional farming practices, making farmers dependent on patented seeds and industrial tech. Organizations like A Growing Culture criticize Gates’ initiatives as acts of white saviorism, where an industrial agriculture model is imposed on local communities, ultimately benefiting big corporations instead of the people living there.

Tech feudalism and green colonialism are two sides of the same coin - a process where nature itself is being absorbed into capitalism. When nature is treated as an asset, just another commodity to invest in, we stop seeing it as something worth protecting and start treating it like any other factor of production. What should be a thoughtful, careful approach becomes just another market opportunity. Much like in traditional feudalism, this creates new dependencies where local communities and small-scale farmers lose control over their own resources.

When billionaires like Gates purchase massive amounts of farmland, it raises fundamental questions:

• Who really holds power over food?

• Which knowledge takes precedence - traditional farming methods or ag-tech innovations?

• Which systems are being promoted - small-scale, circular practices or large-scale, patented solutions?

Companies like Nestlé are also contributing to this trend through how they manage natural resources. Back in 2005, Nestlé’s former CEO, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, made a controversial statement suggesting that water should not be seen as a fundamental human right but rather as a commodity. This sparked widespread outrage and became a clear example of how multinational corporations often put commercial interests ahead of public access to essential resources - a mindset that has led to legal disputes and local protests around the world.

This issue is not just about who controls resources, but also whose knowledge and perspective are valued. It’s not just land and crops at stake here, but also the right to self-determination and the possibility of creating a genuinely sustainable way of living.

Blockchain: A Counterweight or a New Tool of Control?

One intriguing angle in this debate is how blockchain technology is starting to make its way into agriculture, potentially serving as a counterbalance to the centralization that tech feudalism brings. Blockchain is being used to enhance transparency and efficiency in supply chains, track the origin of crops, and ensure fair trade practices. In theory, this could empower small-scale farmers by giving more people access to trustworthy, unchangeable data. However, there’s also a risk that dominant players might hijack this technology, further solidifying their control.

At the same time, it’s important to recognize how farmland itself has become a tradable commodity. Instead of being seen as a fundamental life resource, land is increasingly treated as an investment asset - something to be bought, sold, and traded on the open market. This shift only tightens the grip of tech feudalism, transforming land ownership into economic speculation rather than an opportunity for local and sustainable development.

From Data to Dirt: How Tech Feudalism Takes Over

Historically, feudalism was all about controlling land, labor, and resources - deciding what got produced, how it was done, and who benefited. The modern tech-feudal system follows a similar pattern, but with updated tools: land ownership, platform dominance, patents on biological life, and investments in large-scale climate solutions.

Take Bill Gates as an example. By purchasing vast amounts of farmland while also investing in artificial meat, geoengineering, and patented crops, he’s establishing vertical control over the future of food and climate.

In this system, it’s not just the land that’s being controlled - it's also:

• The seeds (through biotechnology and patents)

• Climate solutions (via agri-tech and geoengineering)

• The narrative (using media platforms and philanthropic PR)

The question isn’t whether resources are being controlled - it’s about who holds that control and on whose terms.

Reclaiming the Magic - in Every Moment

Capitalism has always been a master at absorbing resistance and alternative perspectives - turning every new approach into just another part of its own logic. But in this relentless expansion, something vital gets lost. The magic. What was once wild, vibrant, and mysterious becomes something to quantify, optimize, and own. When forests turn into carbon credits, when relationships become networks, and when knowledge becomes algorithms, we lose touch with the magical fabric that makes the world feel whole and meaningful. Capitalism’s power lies in its ability to absorb counter-movements and turn them into new markets. But in doing so, it also consumes what can’t be measured - the very essence that makes life more than just a calculation.

Resisting this logic isn’t about coming up with a grand new idea. It’s about reconnecting with something we already have but have lost touch with. Magic isn’t necessarily an abstract concept; it’s a practice - a choice made in every moment. It’s when we choose to listen without judging, gather around a meal without worrying about efficiency, or give without expecting something in return. It’s letting a place stay wild, allowing a conversation to be unhurried, and letting a relationship remain open and vulnerable. It’s also daring to embrace the unexplainable - to sometimes not know what’s right or wrong, but still stay in the conversation.

Wonder can’t be planned or structured, it only emerges when we let go of the need to always be in control, always be productive, always have answers. Our strongest resistance against a Hunger Games-like world might just start in those small moments: feeling the grass under our feet, looking up from our phones, talking to a stranger on the bus, and sharing our fears without hiding them. In every such moment, we weave magic back into the world, and maybe, together, we start building a reality where life no longer has to fit into capitalism’s rigid logic.

Regenerative Movements: Reclaiming the Living

Maybe resistance lies in daring to be naive enough to believe in magic - not as something spectacular or fantastical, but as a deeply rooted force of caring for relationships, collaborating with nature, and holding onto a worldview where all living things are interconnected. This kind of magic is already a reality within regenerative movements around the world. They don’t just envision a different world - they build it through their practices.

Projects that promote small-scale farming and biodiversity, movements that reclaim control over local resources, and initiatives that foster local food resilience - all these examples show how we can reweave the fabric of life rather than tear it apart. These movements prove that resistance is not just saying no to exploitation - it’s saying yes to the living, the wild, and the uncertain.

Embracing Naivety - A Necessity in Resistance

Talking about wonder, care, and magic as a counterforce to tech feudalism might seem naive. But maybe it’s exactly this kind of naivety we need to protect and embrace? Claiming that small, everyday acts of care and slowness can stand up against a system determined to own every aspect of life might feel uncomfortable. Yet, dismissing these actions as insignificant means giving up the fight before it even begins.

Naivety, in this context, doesn’t mean ignoring the scale or complexity of the problem. It means daring to believe that what makes us human - our ability to connect, empathize, and experience wonder - actually matters. And maybe that’s where resistance begins: insisting that life is more than just an economic calculation.

We must be brave enough to be naive, to believe that something different is possible. Because if we lose that belief, we’ve already lost the battle for our minds.

All photos are by photographer Janos Stekovics, who, with this series of portraits called 'The Twins', captures the lives of identical twins János and István Lukács, who spent their entire lives working together along the Hungarian countryside.