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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

#31

Post by yterdy »

cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #12

He'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…

An important addendum is that the government/finance revolving door must end, because what is sitting at the confluence of the rent-seeking you describe and the regulatory capture I just alluded to is our current paradigm, where the public is constantly forced to bail out "wealthy" entities in the wake of their bad bets blowing up and taking out an institutional pillar of our economy or two. It has happened multiple times just this year, almost silently (on top of the high likelihood of a few additional instances happening completely out of view of the public, both here and abroad).

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#32

Post by darthrupert »

Leftist thinks (=wishes) capitalism is dead. Here's Jeff with the weather.

Nothing new: this has been a thing since socialism was invented.

Perhaps they should try to work within the system that has been shown to work better than any pther system, instead of advocating its mindless destruction.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#34

Post by CamperBob2 »

darthrupert wrote: post #32

Leftist thinks (=wishes) capitalism is dead. Here's Jeff with the weather. Nothing new: this has been a thing since socialism was invented. Perhaps they should try to work within the system that has been shown to work better than any pther system, instead of advocating its mindless destruction.

I know when I need economic advice, I turn to experts from Greece.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#35

Post by tracerbulletx »

_oghd wrote: post #30
tracerbulletx wrote: post #19

This 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.

That's what I'm referencing with "monetary coercion". And anyways my comment's not exhaustive or particularly great, I'm just saying the whole family of related things we call capitalism has good and bad parts that we ought to be mixing together and open to criticizing specific parts without throwing away every part that makes sense compared to the alternative. Plenty of people DO do that, but it's not all that common in the public discourse.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#36

Post by jcranmer »

oraphalous wrote: post #20

Conversations about capitalism have become pointless... I'd rather eat mud. When people start arguing one way or the other about the goods or ills of capitalism, both sides inject definitional or theoretical aspects that include an entire mountain of pre-supposition, that I barely understand what anyone is talking about. It would take hours to unpick what the hell they mean by the term... which I thought generally sh…

I've held for several years now that any -ism term generally does more to obfuscate than it does to elucidate. And capitalism and feudalism are among the worst terms in that regard, as the former can mean anything from "money exists" to very specific ideas about how the government should regulate the economy (or more accurately, how it shouldn't), while the latter is generally a vague reference to Medieval Europe without recognizing that there was actually quite some diversity in political and socioeconomic conditions across time and space in that 1000-year period.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#37

Post by TapWaterBandit »

dangus wrote: post #29
stuart78 wrote: post #15

The 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 s…

> Nobody else besides Amazon can get a random product to my door in under 12 hours. If I buy the product direct from the manufacturer I often get charged shipping. That situation could be easily argued to be a monopoly.

Why do Amazon have a monopoly on this? Is it because they are engaging in anti-competitive practices preventing competitors from offering the same thing or do they just have the best logistics expertise and setup in the industry?

That's a genuine question btw because it matters a lot for whether or not regulation/the state should attempt to resolve it.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#38

Post by Lamad1234 »

stuart78 wrote: post #15

The 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…

As if "Shopify, Instagram, TikTok" are any better.. They are also fiefdoms and unless you are platformed by any of these big lords, you kinda don't exist (digitally at least).. In a way, I am kinda glad much of humanity still prefer running on pen and paper and cash and refuses to sell itself to computers.

Re: Is capitalism dead? Yanis Varoufakis thinks it is – and he knows who killed it

#40

Post by rainonmoon »

refurb wrote: post #21

Ahhh... he's trying to sell a book. Now the headline makes sense.

Are you familiar with the concept of a book review or is it always this confounding when the release of a thoughtful cultural artefact is responded to with discourse?
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