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>Varoufakis, tech has emerged from nice career to political engine of the next decades. Uh, he is universally regarded as a failure in Greek politics and a nat

>Varoufakis, tech has emerged from nice career to political engine of the next decades. Uh, he is universally regarded as a failure in Greek politics and a national embarrassment. He resigned in disgrace. If anything, Greece accepted terms worse than the original terms he fought against. He'll be forever known as the guy who hysterically yelled "terrorism" at his creditors and refused to look at Greece's spending, its tax cheats, and its over-abundance of social entitlements. Turns out his "Modern Marxism" is just as much of a failure as classical Marxism. Yeah, I think the blowback for "Revenge of the Geeks" started long ago. The mainstream long appropriated internet/geek culture, rules and regulations have long been in place, and ideas of some kind of tech-led political revolution are fairly silly. A different kind of taxi isn't a revolution. Its boring.

lifeisstillgood 11y ago
I'm surprised by that assessment - my perception of his actions (well apart from the in person in the negotiation rooms which seemed to be beyond what even diplomats were used to) was a consistent planned approach - there is no way to pay back Greek debts, no matter how it came about. Reform is needed but first take the debt yoke off. As the yoke was used to effect reforms the EU thought were needed as opposed to any democratic slice of Greece, it's in no way democratic. And that seems to have been Varoufakis position all the way through too. Structural reform that deep is always going to be painful - but it needs to be bought into by the people - not imposed from outside. Britain still has deep divisions (North South, Labour Tory) from years of transferring manufacturing and heavy industry to cheaper off shore locations in the 1980s. But Greece will just hate Germany without any political tranche to explain why the reforms were necessary. This should have been a Greek decision - if they needed to leave the Euro to be free to make those decisions then so be it. No one learns from being forced to do the right thing.

lifeisstillgood 11y ago

I'm surprised by that assessment - my perception of his actions (well apart from the in person in the negotiation rooms which seemed to be beyond what even diplomats were used to) was a consistent planned approach - there is no way to pay back Greek debts, no matter how it came about. Reform is needed but first take the debt yoke off. As the yoke was used to effect reforms the EU thought were needed as opposed to any democratic slice of Greece, it's in no way democratic. And that seems to have been Varoufakis position all the way through too. Structural reform that deep is always going to be painful - but it needs to be bought into by the people - not imposed from outside. Britain still has deep divisions (North South, Labour Tory) from years of transferring manufacturing and heavy industry to cheaper off shore locations in the 1980s. But Greece will just hate Germany without any political tranche to explain why the reforms were necessary. This should have been a Greek decision - if they needed to leave the Euro to be free to make those decisions then so be it. No one learns from being forced to do the right thing.