Way back in the grimey fog of history (2001, I think), a lecturer of mine mentioned new feudalism. It's an idea reflected in the neon-drenched sci-fi of Gibson and cyberpunk before that. It meshed well with dystopic futures (and presents) like those described in Monbiot's Captive State, as well as my old discipline's natural focus on the nature of the state and sovereignty.

An anecdote in this piece by David Simon reminded me of those arguments, and of the occasional old flicker of dystopic visions I get (or possibly utopian, depending on one's particular view of corporations). He's talking about how US health care politics plays out in people's minds:

"The argument comes down to: `Goddamn this socialist president. Does he think I'm going to pay to keep other people healthy? It's socialism, motherfucker.' What do you think group health insurance is? // The treatment comes because you have enough people in your law firm so you're able to get health insurance enough for them to stay healthy. So the actuarial tables work and all of you, when you do get sick, are able to have the resources there to get better because you're relying on the idea of the group.

"When you say, OK, we're going to do what we're doing for your law firm but we're going to do it for 300 million Americans and we're going to make it affordable for everybody that way. And yes, it means that you're going to be paying for the other guys in the society, the same way you pay for the other guys in the law firm... Their eyes glaze. You know they don't want to hear it. It's too much. Too much to contemplate the idea that the whole country might be actually connected."

But maybe it's not about anyone's view of a whole country being connected. It might well just be what people view as acceptable collectives. Here in the UK, the European Union abjectly fails to garner that kind of sense of collective purpose, but we are generally more favourable to viewing the country as connected (and, generally, value the NHS as a reflection of that connection).

Perhaps the idea that healthcare and other life benefits should be provided by the firms we work for is simply more politically acceptable to many than expecting the US government to do it. One might speculate on reasons. What makes a certain kind of collective sovereignty, felt rather than theorised, more-or-less function in the UK, in a bimbling fashion? (Or, England, or... um.) Would an EU-wide health insurance scheme face the same problems Obama has? On the face of it, America clearly has a massively more developed collective sense of itself than Europe does - so what's going on?

At any rate, any new feudalism of corporate fiefdoms would miss most: the majority of businesses are still SMEs, much less able to provide large-scale cover. That still looks a fair bit like both David Simon's vision of two Americas, as well as Gibson's worlds of towering corporate castles hugged at ground level by an excluded underclass.