‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech
‘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
[P]erhaps traditional distinctions between left and right don’t make sense any more. The right, Varoufakis says, “thinks of capitalism as like a natural system, a bit like the atmosphere”. Whereas the left “think of themselves as people created by the universe in order to bring socialism over capitalism. I am telling you: you know what, you missed it. You missed it. Somebody killed capitalism. We have something worse.”
The early internet, he says, has given way to a privatised digital landscape in which gatekeepers “charge rent… The people we think of as capitalists are just a vassal class now. If you’re producing stuff now, you’re done. You’re finished. You cannot become the ruler of the world any more.”
just skimmed the article, it's really babbling and trying to tell a story and it never gets to the point of actually explaining the differences between capitalism and dead capitalism (technofeudalism), and how in detail one became the other.
I didn't read the article but I saw a video where he talked about it a while ago.
Iirc basically he was saying things like: as things consolidate and not mesh with other things we're going to see the return of company towns. And if you want to switch from one thing or another then you have a lot of inertia to overcome. So you essentially have a CEO that gets to control your life in a way that only kings used to be able to do.
And Apple customers were doing this a decade or more ago. They bought into an entire ecosystem, and became APPLE_PEOPLE, for better or worse. And the companies that sell stuff on e.g. itunes are the rent-paying serfs, paying Apple to be vassals and do business. The people with Apple products are maybe a bit more like farm animals...they just get fleeced over and over. They don't have much input into anything, unless they make a serious break and quit using Apple stuff.
Thanks, that summary gave me that vibe already, you saved me 20 minutes of my time!
But what a title!
But perhaps traditional distinctions between left and right don’t make sense any more.
Sigh.
Got to take this in context.
In the United States, the "traditional distinction between left and right" is between neoliberals who like abortion and neoliberals who hate abortion, and people who talk about overcoming that "traditional distinction" are typically arguing for some new form of right wing cryptofascism, so it's fair to be suspicious.
But what they're talking about here is the traditional distinction between left and right in Europe - a distinction based on support for capitalism versus opposition to capitalism - and how that might not be an effective way to understand society if the economic policies supported by the right are no longer capitalist.
That's a fair point, I was definitely thinking about it from the American Cryptofash angle. However, that would still ultimately be a left-right divide, it just means the divide is better seen through a different distinction, whatever that ends up being.
Only context I need is left good right bad lmao
[P]erhaps traditional distinctions between left and right don’t make sense any more. The right, Varoufakis says, “thinks of capitalism as like a natural system, a bit like the atmosphere”. Whereas the left “think of themselves as people created by the universe in order to bring socialism over capitalism. I am telling you: you know what, you missed it. You missed it. Somebody killed capitalism. We have something worse.”
The early internet, he says, has given way to a privatised digital landscape in which gatekeepers “charge rent… The people we think of as capitalists are just a vassal class now. If you’re producing stuff now, you’re done. You’re finished. You cannot become the ruler of the world any more.”
If you put a > on the empty lines you make a continuous quote.
I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know this until now
Well reddit didn't require that, it just made a continuous quote across paragraphs until you stopped quoting. But I think this way is better, because it lets you separate different quotes without having to put something in between.
Not sure which way is the official Markdown way.
Lemmy could really do with a cheat sheet/FAQ page or something to list all the little commands. Like instance agnostic links -
/c/community@instance,!community@instanceand/u/user@instancewill all link to your own instance, rather than the user's or the community's. For example, /u/tweak@lemm.ee will be my user page on your instance.
It's just capitalism again. Conveniently forgetting about company towns, stores, and scrip, all of which existed under unfettered capitalism.
thanks for reposting your favorite two paragraphs as a summary! <3
Yeah I gave up reading the article pretty early on when I saw it was just going to waffle on, this was the perfect summary for the headline.
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!
There were off ramps along the way where people could have chosen highly democratic transparent techno communism, but instead we've allowed technology to just further aggregate, divide and keep score.
Despite mutterings of discontent around the edges as we slide into hyper capitalism, it really seems like the better part of humans are content with the worst possible outcomes in all things.
I've done better than my parents, they saw the writing on the wall and chose to procreate anyway. I've refused. Now, I'm tired and would simply like to go as soon as possible.
I don't have faith in the human species any longer. I'm ashamed at this point that I ever did.