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Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

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Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#71

Post by spacecowboy_lon »

potatolicious wrote: post #61
d23 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, from what I understand, the hierarchy is basically entirely political / tribal. It clearly works for them, but let's not idealize it as a utopian dream without the typical petty human inter-office struggles.

Indeed, and this is something common in startups/tech companies. When someone tells you there's no hierarchy in their company, there is, you're just not high up on it and no one's bothered writing the hierarchy down for a number of reasons - most commonly for Cool Startup Culture Points or because if the hierarchy was drawn out on paper it would scare the bejeezus out of anyone watching. Unspoken or undefined hierarc…

Quite I know one large tecnology company where when they had a major disaster ( a divison that may or may not have had "sevices" and "Global" in its title ) a lot of problms where sorted out in the Pub on friday afternoons.

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#72

Post by gadders »

functional_test wrote: post #38
gadders wrote: post #6

Smart. Does this mean I can have a vote and decide to not pay for any games from Steam now?

This sort of snark isn't constructive. The situation is obviously much more nuanced than this, and while this sort of reduction is cognitively convenient, it's not accurate nor useful. For example, when the money was obviously not going to be repaid, but the Troika continued to lend them more -- at what point does the lender become at least partially responsible? Obviously I don't advocate irresponsible borrowing, bu…

>>For example, when the money was obviously not going to be repaid, but the Troika continued to lend them more -- at what point does the lender become at least partially responsible? Obviously I don't advocate irresponsible borrowing, but certainly irresponsible lending is also bad.

But that isn't the cause of their issues, that is just the latest symptom. The cause is electing a series of governments that promised benefits that they couldn't afford. EG [1] letting trombonists retire at 50 because their work is "hazardous".

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-to-cal...

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#73

Post by CodeCube »

potatolicious wrote: post #61
d23 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, from what I understand, the hierarchy is basically entirely political / tribal. It clearly works for them, but let's not idealize it as a utopian dream without the typical petty human inter-office struggles.

Indeed, and this is something common in startups/tech companies. When someone tells you there's no hierarchy in their company, there is, you're just not high up on it and no one's bothered writing the hierarchy down for a number of reasons - most commonly for Cool Startup Culture Points or because if the hierarchy was drawn out on paper it would scare the bejeezus out of anyone watching. Unspoken or undefined hierarc…

When I was at EA, there was an explicit mandate to not create org charts. I mean, there definitely was an org structure ... they just didn't want it visible. I never really understood why, I mean all the data was sitting there from the HR systems (I was in IT). So one day I made an org chart visualization based on said data ... just out of curiosity. My manager quickly asked me to make sure no one saw that project to avoid raising someone's ire :P

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#74

Post by jameshart »

xkarga00 wrote: post #30

Varoufakis is a great economist and his placement as the Finance Minister is a smart move from the new government. At this point I would like to suggest reading To Future And Back by I. Pitsouli[1]. Somewhere in it, there is suggested (or prophecized if you wish) that in years to come scientists will replace politicians in governments. Well, that has already started happening and is right IMO because science is close…

"in years to come scientists will replace politicians in governments"

Not an especially new idea, especially in a Greek context. Plato, in Republic:

"The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands."

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#75

Post by kaonashi »

davidgerard wrote: post #28
digi_owl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he can be nailed down to Marxism or any other -ism. He seems to be part of a eclectic gang of economists that find insight and inspiration everywhere, by simply putting reality ahead of thought models.

I figured that from Marx plus Hayek :-)

Much more Godley/Minsky/Lerner.

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#76

Post by spacecowboy_lon »

Shivetya wrote: post #35

It will be interesting to see if they can pare down some of Greece's military expenditures, they have over a hundred thousand in their military, nearly ninety thousand soldiers. Granted the politicians can always point to Turkey as a threat but I would be very curious how the new administration handles this. Side effects of closing some of the nearly 500 military and releasing troops is not having jobs for them.

with a hard right colation partner I doubt that Greece spends more per head than teh USA does - Acoring to Charlie Stoss its to keep the Gernerals happy so they don't stage another Coup

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#77

Post by galfarragem »

saiya-jin wrote: post #52
kalkin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians from parties who now get 3-4% of the vote lied years ago (to the Greek public as well as EU bankers), so let's take Greek workers' pensions, crush their unions, slash their social services, and offer no jobs or future to 60% of Greek young people. The bankers may not get their money anyway, since the debt is still increasing, but at least the Greeks* will get what they deserve! *may not apply to the elite…

This is vastly mentality problem and consequences that comes with it. Simple fact is, southern european countries have laid back attitude which is nice to enjoy and so on, but doesn't perform well and has more drawbacks in long term, as we can see. The s t had to hit the fan hard, and it did for people to wake up. What do you expect - full pardon on all mistakes? It won't happen next time, we promise? You know, one o…

I am from South Europe but I agree with most of stuff you say. Nobody complained when we were receiving more than we were giving back. And worse, we got used to it.

Everybody is guilt here. Man up.

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#78

Post by mikeash »

gadders wrote: post #6

Smart. Does this mean I can have a vote and decide to not pay for any games from Steam now?

You have been able to for a long time. Buy Steam games with a credit card, then don't pay it back. There may be consequences, but you can do it.

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#79

Post by tomp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Varoufakis wrote a blog post two years ago on the history of political economic thought on the firm. It also delves into Valve's unique management culture [1]. "There is one last bastion of economic activity that proved remarkably resistant to the triumph of the market: firms, companies and, later, corporations. Think about it: market-societies, or capitalism, are synonymous with firms, companies, corporations. And y…

Ironically, Valve also operates "by the means of some non-price [...] mechanism".

I wonder how an even more radically free-market organization would look like - where people are literally trading services for money within a company. I think that several industries already operate in a similar manner, where you have "rain-makers" who bring in the money, and "support staff" (everybody else). For example, traders/portfolio managers in hedge funds, and partners (who bring in new clients) in law and private equity firms. But there still is a lot of hierarchy and no transparent market within the company.

Re: Valve Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Finance Minister of Greece

#80

Post by photex »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #66
WhitneyLand wrote: post #59

Tangentially, what is the main reason for all the protest against the EU? I understand that people in Greece are suffering and that's a terrible thing. However from a lay perspective it seems Germany et al are just trying to help.

Germany has asked Greece's government to raise taxes to pay bonds, and spend less than they earn in taxes. This is a problem for a country like Greece, because the economy is stagnant and government services were an unhealthy amount of their economy to begin with. Before the crash, the economy was mostly growing because the government was borrowing money (unsustainably) and spending it, producing most of their recent…

This has been what I've been worried about during all of this. I'm not entirely sure why Germany has to be "damned if they do and damned if they don't". It's as if people forget that the country has had to learn how to recover from total catastrophe and might be offering realistic and practical solutions to the problem.
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