Silicon Valley might have the world’s biggest reserves of chutzpah and arrogance, but could it also be laying the foundations of the new economic order? This seems to be the growing consensus among both its critics and cheerleaders; the disagreement is over what kind of order this will prove to be.

Paul Mason’s new book about “post-capitalism” straddles both ends of this debate. It’s the latest contribution to the always-green genre pioneered by Daniel Bell and Peter Drucker decades ago. As everything becomes networked and digital, argues Mason, even our new corporate overlords will be having a hard time containing the radical potential – for new forms of dissent and social organisation – that lies within.

But what if Mason is only half-right? While it’s perfectly possible that, with Silicon Valley at the helm, we will be moving towards one of those “post-” eras, why assume that it would be capitalism and not, say, the idea of social democracy that would be left behind? Today such a scenario seems far more likely. From its inception, social democracy was a compromise affair. Different countries saw it arrive at different historical moments, but its essence remained the same: big business and big government eventually came to a mutually beneficial arrangement, whereby governments would not challenge the primacy of the market as the main vehicle of economic development, while companies would acquiesce to considerable regulatory oversight.

This was the famous social democratic compromise that made Europe such a comfortable place to live. It gave grounds for moderate optimism, at least to the burgeoning social democratic parties, that progress was ubiquitous and eternal: the economies were growing; workers were well protected and enjoyed superb health benefits; consumers could be confident that their rights wouldn’t be abused by the firms they transacted with. This system seemed to work splendidly, at least for a while, but its fragile inner workings were not obvious to everybody. First, it presupposed that the economies would be growing almost indefinitely, allowing the state to pick up the bill for generous welfare transfers.

Second, ensuring the dignity of work presupposed occasional tactical interventions by the state into particular industries and sectors; however, those of them that were privatised, liberalised, or never properly regulated – the technology sector, in its most expansive definition, is a combination of all three – left governments little space for manoeuvre. Third, the spirit of social democracy dictated that citizens themselves prize lofty values like solidarity and justice – an attitude that was also encoded into specific regulations.

All three of these foundations are now crumbling – under the ferocious assault of both neoliberalism and Silicon Valley, the latter being all too happy to exploit the numerous inconsistencies, ambiguities and rhetorical weaknesses of the social democratic ideal.

Uber’s approach is particularly telling. So what if some cities require taxi drivers to take training courses on, for example, how to handle blind or disabled passengers? For Uber, all its passengers are created equal and there’s no point in incurring such extra expenses: its balance sheets recognise no disability.

A few decades ago, when the rash of consumerism hadn’t yet degraded our ability to reason collectively, we might have found such an attitude abhorrent. Today, however, things are not so clear-cut: why, some might reason, should my taxi ride subsidise the rides of blind and disabled people?

Uber the company, likewise, wants to be left alone, claiming that this will yield more satisfaction to its customers – and of course it will, as long as the only yardstick for measuring satisfaction is the price paid by the consumer. Ironically, it’s precisely by touting the uniqueness of information and digital technology – the hallmarks of “post-capitalism” as Mason sees it – that Uber justifies its draconian employment practices, far more typical of capitalism before the onset of social democracy. They are merely a “technology company”, they claim. It doesn’t matter that Uber drivers are extensively monitored and aggressively nudged – for example, to keep their ratings or ride acceptance ratio high enough – much more so than workers in a typical Taylorist factory of the 1920s.

Despite the immense control that Uber exercises over them, these drivers are not even formally employed, a point on which the company is being challenged even in US courts, with their patchy record of employment protection. One might take solace in the employment flexibility offered by Uber, but even that is just a function of the overall precarity of the working population: with so many people out of work and struggling to get by, Uber can be assured that there will always be somebody, somewhere, willing to drive, if only for a few hours. Work in the future doesn’t have to be truly nasty, brutish, and short – unless you happen to drive for Uber.

A quick survey of other dimensions of what used to pass for “social democracy” looks as grim; its foundations are crumbling. There are few health systems in Europe, for example, that would survive the growing challenges of ageing, obesity and ever-shrinking budgets to tackle such problems. This explains why there’s so much irrational exuberance about the potential of wearable devices, smart sensors and their various combinations that promise to shift the current model to preventive care. The days when it was possible not to think too much or too often about our health are gone. The health apps are unending sources of anxiety – and it was precisely in reducing the latter that the social democratic project actually worked.

A similar assault is taking place on another bulwark of social democracy: the idea of consumer protection. It’s simply being undone by the digital market itself. As advertising and data collection take on more prominent roles in the digital economy, we end up with algorithmically determined prices that are highly personalised and often set to make us pay the highest price we are prepared to pay. Uber’s surge-pricing mechanism is just one of many examples; likewise, most of us already have a hard time explaining why our plane ticket bought online costs exactly what it does. For all the apps telling us about calorie counts and the countries of origins of the products we buy, consumers are also entering the new dark ages: we have no idea why we are paying what we are paying for the products we have been subliminally nudged to buy.

Silicon Valley is mounting an attack on the very philosophy behind social democracy – that market-bending rules and regulations can be set by governments and city councils. Silicon Valley believes otherwise: the only proper constraint on the excesses of the market is the market itself. Thus, it’s up to consumers to punish – through bad ratings, for example – bad drivers or unreliable hosts; governments should stay out. Does any of this add up to “post-capitalism”? Well, maybe – but only if we are prepared to acknowledge that capitalism, for the past century at least, has been made stable by the social democratic compromise, which is now being made obsolete. Inasmuch as “post-capitalism” emerges out of weakened social protections and industry regulations, we might as well be precise in our definitions: if Silicon Valley represents a shift to anything, it’s probably to “pre-capitalism”.