Superhighway to serfdom: The political economy of the metaverse

We provide a political economy perspective on the metaverse and the governance challenges it poses, taking seriously the insight that "the effective governance of this universe requires an understanding of the nature of the power-relationships among [the actors involved]" (special issue call for papers).We start from Ball's (2022) definition of the metaverse and focus in particular on the implications of interoperability for (in)equality.Our core argument is that the metaverse stimulates a shift away from the current order of "digital capitalism" and its proprietary markets (Staab, 2020) towards an order of technofeudalism (e.g., Varoufakis, 2023), in which interoperability allows leading corporations to turn proprietary markets into immersive proprietary lifeworlds.Linking a historiographical account of feudalism with our analysis of the intended functioning of the metaverse, we diagnose the emerging technofeudal order as fragmenting state sovereignty, increasing inequality based on the algorithmic exploitation of a cybertariat and "produsers" (Bruns, 2007) by a micro-elite, and combining an increase of freedom of movement of people, information and capital within the semi-virtual space of the metaverse with threats to the freedom of physical movement in the real world.We go on to show that this shift is deeply problematic from a liberal perspective by summarizing its implications for freedom in consumption, in employment and in investment (Irving, 2020) as well as for the second-order freedom of choice of participation in the metaverse itself.In sum, we are able to show how interoperability in the metaverse alongside its domain scope and level of intrusiveness threaten liberal strategies of competition and regulation, such as those of the European Commission.This suggests that our governance models might have to be more fundamentally re-thought in order to protect citizens' fundamental rights alongside state regulatory capacity.