‘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
… is where he lost me. He can call back when he has to choose between electricity and rent.
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.
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.
Sure you can. It’s just that it comes across a whole lot less hypocritical coming from someone who hasn’t first exploited that system themselves.
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Isn’t this the former finance minister of Greece? Not just some guy.
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.
Please educate yourself before talking about other people’s countries
Care to elaborate? I didn’t say anything about other countries, just about Yanis and some of the claims he made.
Here’s the perspective from one European country: Greece needed a bailout, our country loaned them 14 billion euros, and pretty much directly after accepting the money, Mr. Varoufakis told the creditors he didn’t want to pay it back.
If you have a different perspective, please elaborate, because “educating oneself” is too broad a directive.
Man, people like you would have dismissed Engels for the same reason.
Google “how many islands in Greece” and bathe in light of knowledge .
Maybe make your point yourself, instead of asking people to Google it for you?
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
Fair enough. I’ll admit I didn’t try very hard in trying to figure out what point they were trying to make and only went with the first result. Judging by their refusal to elaborate, I think I made the right call by not trying harder.
You’re doing a great job of making yourself look very silly.
I suppose that’s one way of not answering the question.
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.
Remind me, was Marx a part of the struggling proletariat?
The answer is no, he was a human being that cared about others besides him and his own.