‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech::In his new book, the maverick Greek economist says we are witnessing an epochal shift. At his island home, he argues it’s now the ‘fiefdoms’ of tech firms that shape us
This is the best summary I could come up with:
What could be more delightful than a trip to Greece to meet Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic leftwing firebrand who tried to stick it to the man, AKA the IMF, EU and entire global financial order?
The house is where Varoufakis and his wife, landscape artist Danae Stratou, live, year round since the pandemic, but in August 2023 at the end of a summer of heatwaves and extreme weather conditions across the world, it feels more than a little apocalyptic.
Stratou and Varoufakis are a striking couple, as glamorous as their house, a cool, luminous space featuring poured concrete and big glass windows overlooking a perfect rectangle of blue pool.
“I have no issues with luxury,” he says at one point, which is just as well because the entire scene would give the Daily Mail a conniption, especially since Aegina seems to be Greece’s equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, home to a highly networked artistic and political elite.
I’d messaged a bunch of people to ask them what they would ask Varoufakis, including McNamee, and precised the book to him – that two pivotal events have transformed the global economy: 1) the privatisation of the internet by America and China’s big tech companies; and 2) western governments’ and central banks’ responses to the 2008 great financial crisis, when they unleashed a tidal wave of cash.
This encouraged business models that promised world-changing outcomes, even if they were completely unrealistic and/or hostile to the public interest (eg the gig economy, self-driving cars, crypto, metaverse, AI).
The original article contains 2,683 words, the summary contains 252 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So the bot thinks this story is about his house and his wife, which isn’t surprising. The article is unbelievably florid, I couldn’t get through it.
Like seriously shut the fuck up about the setting in which you had the interview. Are these people paid by the word? And why does every phrase need to be couched three layers deep in entendre and negatives? Just say what you mean, ffs. Every time I felt like it was starting to get to the meat of the issue they got distracted talking about some completely unrelated bullshit.
EDIT: Don’t downvote the bot, people. It’s doing its best, it just doesn’t know how to deal with neoliberal slop. As a thinking person, I can barely deal with it.
He’s not wrong. We’re only a few years away from the big five in the US owning all of our land in one way or another. It’s like a corporate showdown at this point. The government did nothing to stop this conglomeration of assets and wealth.
He’s referring not to a land grab but cloud capital charging rent to the capitalist class. Essentially creating a class as far above the capitalist as the capitalist is above the worker.
Listened to a good interview with him on a podcast last night after trying to read this shit article.
While it is far more advanced and ubiquitous, I don’t see how paying to social media companies is fundamentally distinct from having to pay for ads in newspapers and TV that they did in “good old capitalism”. Maybe I should look up how he puts it, but it still sounds like capitalism.
I think it’s a matter of degree.
And his prime example, no pun intended, is Amazon not social media. In his view, Bezos has more in common with a feudal lord than a capitalist. And the power difference between Jeff and the capitalist is as large as the difference between the capitalist and the worker.
So, essentially, we’re watching feudalism come back into power. Which itself still had commerce, markets on the King’s land for example. Which, to me, does sound a lot like Amazon.
At his island home
… is where he lost me. He can call back when he has to choose between electricity and rent.
Yup. He’s the guy who told the rest of Europe that Greece shouldn’t have to pay back their bailout loans. You know, the ones other countries have paid with their own taxes. That’s a great way to get very popular in your own country, and being hated by the rest of the continent.
The island home might be a result of his time at Valve (the company that has the biggest share of pc game distribution, Steam - which takes a 30% cut on all sales). I don’t think it was funded by people’s tax money.
Pretty sure he argued that Greece shouldn’t have to use the bailout loans from other countries to pay back banks, but instead can use it to invest them in public infrastructure to rebuild their economy. Instead the EU forced them to use those loans (said taxes) to pay back rich companies, and to cut their investments in social programs to put the country into an even deeper mess.
I googled “how much does a Greek island home cost?” instead, it told me they are as cheap as 3 million euros, and I don’t think that includes the house or other facilities.
I’m not sure I get your point.
I Google better and find a detached house for 250k euro on a Greek island. It’s the 4th results on a Greek real estate website for the region I didn’t have to look far
Maybe make your point yourself, instead of asking people to Google it for you?
This is a weird take. Just because someone is (or has been) successful he can’t speak about or for socialism?
You can’t be successful and a socialist? Is that it? That’s a very narrow and simply wrong view which has resulted in a lot of damage in societies which adopted it.
Socialism needs succes stories. Otherwise, what’s the point? Mediocrity for all? That will never fly or become popular.
He was also the financial advisor of sorts at Valve, the company that takes a 30% of all their pc game sales.
20% after the initial $50 million. The same company that has used that revenue to revolutionize Linux as a gaming platform. Same company that helped fix graphics api integrations. Same company that actually cares about their consumers and the gaming ecosystem?
The problem is he doesn’t walk the walk. His success comes from capitalism. He’s very well off because of capitalism.
So you can only critique capitalism if you’re unsuccessful? That doesn’t make any sense.
To be fair, rich (and effectively retired) people have more time to think about larger issues, whilst the rest of us are trying to make enough for rent and food. So while one can make the argument that he is out of touch, one can also argue that if it were up to the single parent working two jobs to think about global issues and write books about them, it probably wouldn’t happen.
That’s just capitalism. But I guess when you benefit so greatly from the system, you can’t risk rocking the boat by talking about it openly. So you have to invent scary new names to smokescreen the root of the matter. “Technofeudalism”, “Neo feudalism”, “corporatism”, “crony capitalism” etc, is such crap. It’s still just capitalism.
Ignoring the ridiculous manner in which the article is written, look at the clownish arguments being made.
He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism.
I know you have an island home dickhead, but the rest of us have been paying plenty of rent under capitalism.
Greece has 6000 islands.
His lives in a house on one the 227 inhabited ones.
He pays his rent writing books and giving talks against capitalism., sharing what he learned in his time as Greek finance minister, when the EU and Germany were crushing Greece with debt and forcing neoliberal policies on them the detriment of its citizens and for the benefit of the banks.
What are your plans for today ?
…and if Germany had paid the war reparations they owed, perhaps the Greeks wouldn’t need a loan , because marching your tanks uninvited into another countries territory is “a real dick move “ as you put it .
I wonder if I’m making a mistake here by not reading this article. I know one must always be open to other ideas but fucking hell there are not enough hours in the day. So when this guy’s first claim is that capitalism is dead, I can’t take the rest of it seriously nor read it properly. I can’t let myself afford the time to touch this link. Maybe my view was colored by thus comment here but meh, can’t be bothered.
When you consider the definition of fascism is (as defined by the comintern) “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”, it’s hard not to feel we are sliding into an insidious, new and distinct, technological form of it.
Capitalism has a definition. He’s saying that the markers that define Capitalism (as opposed to Mercentilism, Feudalism, etc.) are no longer there.
Specifically he’s saying that you can now no longer be on the top rung by privately owning the means of production, which is probably the biggest hallmark of Capitalism.
The article really doesn’t engage much with what YV actually wrote; she says that she disagrees with him sometimes or that other people disagree, but with very little substance.
Like others have already commented, she’s also excessively obsessed with describing his house and wife. I can’t believe The Observer paid for her to fly out there to write such drivel.
