Ahhh... he's trying to sell a book. Now the headline makes sense.
Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
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Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
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He makes a mistake equating Hamas with the broader concept of Gazan freedom. That is embarrassing. However, I agree with what I think his point is, that you put a pressure cooker on the stove long enough and it will pop. Likud and the Israeli hard right are second in line for responsibility of Oct 7 behind Hamas.
All that aside, he is a thoughtful economist and I look forward to reading the article.
Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
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It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of JavaScript
Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
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Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
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he could be pro Nazi, but that is not an argument against his reasoning around capitalism. That's an interesting sidenote, but doesn't mean he's wrong. I think its better if we just discuss why he's wrong or right on this topic.
Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
#26He's indicting the Chicago school and rightly so because the academic priesthood condoning vampiric, unrestrained, hyperindividualist capitalism sleepwalking civilization into existential threats of collapse is broken. Strong regulation, collective bargaining, employee ownership, and more nonprofit social ventures in lieu of for-profit so-called "public private partnerships" are some of the paths that must replace un…
Don't forget that those who sit at the top of what capitalism has provided are also able to thoroughly define the narrative that's applied to the rest of society.
For example, many of the paths you've rightfully pointed out are, have been, and will be tarred with the socialism brush which, in (too) many corners of the US, is a synonym for communism.
and maybe I just don't have a good enough imagination, but I can't see anything other than extreme violence being able to solve the concentration of power. I'm not promoting it at all, but my knowledge of humanity and history is such that that's where I think the percentages point towards. Those with power seem to be increasingly doubling-down on positions that my logic would deem untenable, and their calling to account by those aspects of society responsible for calling power to account seem to be increasingly failing.
Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
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Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
#28There's a couple lawsuits going around aimed at hotels and apartment rental companies using centralized software to effectively engage in legalized price fixing.
Probably happening in many industries and we don't know about it at all. Would generally agree that antithetical to free market capitalism and an example of how capitalism is not really capitalism.
Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
#29The Amazon case in this article seems to fall flat in the same way the Apple as Monopoly argument does. It works only if you ignore the fact of categorical choice (Android in the case of Apple). No seller is forced to sell on Amazon, as demonstrated by the thousands of Shopify and Etsy-hosted sellers out there. Yes, within the world of Amazon, Amazon sets the rules, but if the users leave, so will the sellers. Shopif…
Walmart.com is another seller marketplace that does big volumes and works similarly to Amazon.
Still, I think Amazon is doing some pretty anticompetitive things, and the FTC lawsuit against them seems like it has merit in my layperson’s eyes.
Nobody else besides Amazon can get a random product to my door in under 12 hours for any reasonable cost. If I buy the product direct from the manufacturer I often get charged shipping. That situation could be easily argued to be a monopoly.
Apple vs. Google isn’t that much of a choice, either. There used to be so many smartphone options: BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian all existed at the same time as the iPhone and Android.
Now it’s just two, and most governments don’t seem all that interested in curtailing some of their most anticompetitive practices.
You don’t have to be a pure monopoly be in a small group of “lords” with a position of power that cannot possibly be overturned.
Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it
#30This whole dichotomy stops us from having productive conversations. Organic price setting is better and more effective than central price setting, monetary coercion is the lesser of two evils compared to coercion by force, which as long as there are shit dangerous jobs like mining and being an electrical lineman to do will there WILL be some kind of coercion. These are good things about "capitalism". But capitalism i…
capitalism is private ownership of property and the exchange of labor for wage to produce commodities with said capital.
capitalism is not just "free market economy," where the natural opposite as you supoose being "centrally planned economies"
this is essential to understand what varoufakis presents as a new relation to production: technofeudalism.