‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech

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.

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.

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.

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!

Oh god, here come the liberals and communists

At his island home

... is where he lost me. He can call back when he has to choose between electricity and rent.