He's not wrong. We're only a few years away from the big five in the US owning all of our land in one way or another. It's like a corporate showdown at this point. The government did nothing to stop this conglomeration of assets and wealth.
The government did nothing to stop this conglomeration of assets and wealth.
Being owned by those megacorps is a prerequisite for holding office. Why would they do anything to stop their benefactors?
He's referring not to a land grab but cloud capital charging rent to the capitalist class. Essentially creating a class as far above the capitalist as the capitalist is above the worker.
Listened to a good interview with him on a podcast last night after trying to read this shit article.
That's just capitalism. But I guess when you benefit so greatly from the system, you can't risk rocking the boat by talking about it openly. So you have to invent scary new names to smokescreen the root of the matter. "Technofeudalism", "Neo feudalism", "corporatism", "crony capitalism" etc, is such crap. It's still just capitalism.
Ignoring the ridiculous manner in which the article is written, look at the clownish arguments being made.
He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism.
I know you have an island home dickhead, but the rest of us have been paying plenty of rent under capitalism.
Greece has 6000 islands.
His lives in a house on one the 227 inhabited ones.
He pays his rent writing books and giving talks against capitalism., sharing what he learned in his time as Greek finance minister, when the EU and Germany were crushing Greece with debt and forcing neoliberal policies on them the detriment of its citizens and for the benefit of the banks.
What are your plans for today ?
Capitalism has a definition. He’s saying that the markers that define Capitalism (as opposed to Mercentilism, Feudalism, etc.) are no longer there.
Specifically he’s saying that you can now no longer be on the top rung by privately owning the means of production, which is probably the biggest hallmark of Capitalism.
When you consider the definition of fascism is (as defined by the comintern) "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.", it's hard not to feel we are sliding into an insidious, new and distinct, technological form of it.
If you think of society through the view of class hierarchy, Jeff and people like him have created a class of power above capitalist. As far above capitalist as the boss is above the worker.
That's what he's meaning.
The article really doesn't engage much with what YV actually wrote; she says that she disagrees with him sometimes or that other people disagree, but with very little substance.
Like others have already commented, she's also excessively obsessed with describing his house and wife. I can't believe The Observer paid for her to fly out there to write such drivel.
Whatever they call it, it's shit for humans to live in.
"Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse"
Capitalism 2.
He's spoken on the topic elsewhere, at least a few interviews (on youtube). That'll be better than this slop - edit: the Guardian was co-opted by the UK securlty state after cops raided them soon they did their reporting on Edword Snowdon.
Yeah, this interview is pretty bad.
But this post did turn me onto his ideas and found an interview with him on a podcast last night that was really good.
But this post did turn me onto his ideas and found an interview with him on a podcast last night that was really good.
Nope but I will give that a listen too! So thanks for the link.
I'm interested in getting his book also.
It died when socialism became a corporate only condition. Now its corporate capitalism with government socialism.
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!
So the bot thinks this story is about his house and his wife, which isn't surprising. The article is unbelievably florid, I couldn't get through it.
Like seriously shut the fuck up about the setting in which you had the interview. Are these people paid by the word? And why does every phrase need to be couched three layers deep in entendre and negatives? Just say what you mean, ffs. Every time I felt like it was starting to get to the meat of the issue they got distracted talking about some completely unrelated bullshit.
EDIT: Don't downvote the bot, people. It's doing its best, it just doesn't know how to deal with neoliberal slop. As a thinking person, I can barely deal with it.
Thanks for dealing with that frustration so that I don't have to
I mean I didn't get through it. It's entirely possible the location of Atlantis is somewhere in that article, I wouldn't know.
Are these people paid by the word?
I think a lot of these articles have a required word count, because supposedly google doesn't rank short articles well. A lot of journalism seems to be writing for bots rather than humans.
I've seen this writing style in many Swedish article I read but usually it's kept short and interneting. If I wanted to know all about the interview setting and the imagery mattered to me, I would have watched a recording of it.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
