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> I fail to see how one can genuinely cherish freedom and tolerate capitalism. Quote of the article, imo. The framing of these questions is interesting in the

> I fail to see how one can genuinely cherish freedom and tolerate capitalism. Quote of the article, imo. The framing of these questions is interesting in their bias, but the answers do a great job navigating them.

pDiddlyDoRight 5y ago
When he said the words "liberal techno-communism" in seriousness, as something NFTs could help? He lost me. I sincerely doubt he's talking about a moneyless, classless, stateless society - what Communism is. After all, there's (crypto)currencies and private (as opposed to personal) ownership rights. Sprinkle in some representative Democratic State that can build structures to isolate itself from the will of the people? And that's Liberalism, the thing Communists rebel against, critiquing to this day. Platonically-Synthesizing these two opposites would prove challenging without undermining the premise of one or both halves. While such a "Left" exists in more authoritarian contexts of international relations? They serve as examples of the failure of the previous "synthesis". Down here in the neighborhoods where life happens? Leftist action is often about showing each other that we're all we need. Why pay for a plow to scrape the apartment building's lot when we can do it? Why submit to draconian rent hikes from Slumlords when we can form a Tenant's Union? Why let people go hungry when we can throw in on a professional kitchen and the food we need to held our neighbors? There's plenty of work to do, even when there's no money. So damn the cash, full speed ahead! We have a better world to build. State be damned. Needless Social hierarchy be damned. Just do the things your neighbors need. And never act alone. Learn from Rojava. Learn from the Zapatistas. Learn from Cospaia. We don't need some magical thinking about how the Masters' Tools will dismantle the Masters' palace in the hands of some "great man". That same great man who, inevitably seeks - or is forced by necessity - to rise to dictatorship to keep the State together and potentially in line. And somehow, this whole State apparatus is supposed to wither away on its own? When it is our crutch against "external threats" and the State's own internal corruption? Color me skeptical.
- buddha420 5y ago
  You can use NFT's as decentralized permission tokens for access to decentralized databases. Abstract all the world's resources and how they're converted between each other into one big linked excel table. Everyone wants to know how resources are moving around, but nobody can be trusted to host "the diagram of everything". Different parts of the excel table correspond to different resources in different places, and have notions of data sovereignty over their resources in the table, with areas of joined access between separate entities along boundaries where they exchange resources. Obviously you'd use something like soulbound NFT's, so its harder for people to sell off write permissions. But you could use all sorts of Sybil protection techniques. It seems like one possible starting point for a decentralized communism.
twirlock 5y ago
That's neat how different people see things from different perspectives because that statement is meaningless sophistry in my world.
- turtledove 5y ago
  It's built on a bunch of education and theory that's not at all covered in the article. The man is sufficiently credentialed to suggest that this is at least a well considered position of his based on his experiences as an economist and finance minister.
  - arinlen 5y ago
    The man is sufficiently credentialed to suggest that this is at least a well considered position of his based on his experiences as an economist and finance minister. He was fired from finance minister of Greece after only a few months on the job for the less-than-braggable achievement of completely sabotaging Greece's recovery and ensuring Greece was the only European country which failed to recover during their bailout process.
    - lanfeust6 5y ago
      Not that I'm a fan of him, but that's the least generous interpretation of the negotiations for the crisis in Greece.
    - atmosx 5y ago
      > He was fired [...] He resigned and for good reason and he proved to be correct in all his assessments. You clearly don't know what you're talking about, at least get your facts straight.
  - PKop 5y ago
    >The man is sufficiently credentialed to suggest Who thinks this way? Credential-ism isn't a substitute for clearly stated arguments. If he presents an argument reflecting his credentials that's great, but some useless platitude doesn't get a pass because he went to college or some nonsense
monetus 5y ago
I know yanis' thoughts well enough to tell what he was saying, but I really wish he would define capitalism more narrowly there. The thrust of his argument lies somewhat far away from the broad brushes the vocabulary he uses has been painted with. Profitability no longer drives the system-as-a-whole, even though it remains the be-all and end-all for individual entrepreneurs. Consider what happened in London on August 12, 2020. It was the day markets learned that the British economy shrank disastrously – and by far more than analysts had expected (more than 20% of national income had been lost in the first seven months of 2020). Upon hearing the grim news, financiers thought: ‘Great! The Bank of England, panicking, will print even more pounds and channel them to us to buy shares. Time to buy shares!’
- sangnoir 5y ago
  I immediately thought of Uber - widely considered to be a successful market leader, yet not profitable, and funded by VC money which ultimately comes from the central bank money printing.
walkhour 5y ago
[flagged]
- Adraghast 5y ago
  What is this in response to? Do you think Yanis Varoufakis is unfamiliar with undergrad-tier “communism has failed every time” bromides?
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    This is an undeniable fact, not some "undergrad-tier bromide" as left-wing grifters dismiss it as. Even now, after a century of failure, some dogmatic utopianists won't admit that their ideas don't work. What is most tragic in all this is that it takes experimenting obviously bad ideas - whether it be socialism, or lockdowns - on billions of people, and producing hell on Earth, before a certain class of individuals will admit they are wrong.
  - walkhour 5y ago
    This is a response to the illusion that we know there's a better alternative to capitalism
    - turtledove 5y ago
      It can be the case that we no know better alternative while simultaneously being true that capitalism and freedom are opposed.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        Opposition to capitalism consistently produces less free societies.
        jerojero 5y ago
        There might be many factors involved in this. Not least of them, the influence of capitalist countries over alternative societies. Chile for example was crushed internally and externally when it tried to move away from the system they had at the time. Though inflation did raise there was a huge campaign against the government to purposefully make it fail. Is this a failure of socialism? Any new system will naturally find resistance because it has to break the old one and make the new one work. Though, in reality, these experiments even if they fail change perspectives of people. When Germany had to be put back together they didn't get rid of everything that east Germany was. And these ideas then spread through out the rest of Europe. And the world. And finally, it might be misleading to look at things from the perspective of a person in a developed society and go "yes this system is great!" When on the other hand, this very same system, is producing and reproducing extreme global inequality. El Congo and other extremely poor and unstable countries in Africa, as well as in central and south america are all capitalist countries... theyre just the other side of the coin. And don't get me started on other externalities! I'm sure if birds and monkeys in the amazon could talk they would say they would rather see humans go back to primitivism. Though that's really a question about progress and industrialisation; but it's a question that capitalism has a really hard time dealing with. So, I guess I simply dont think the statement "opposition to capitalism consistently produces less free societies." is a statement that should be done so freely. When something doesn't work we should ask why and what can be done better, not simply shrug and keep ourselves covered in mud. I think the future will look closer to socialism than capitalism, but ofc, that's just my opinion. If you want to read more on global inequality I recommend pikettys book "capital and ideology".
incomingpain 5y ago
Yanis is Syriza, the radical left(their description) democratic socialists.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- turtledove 5y ago
TimPC 5y ago
I’ve always found these quotes a tad ridiculous. The two ways we’ve discovered to allocate jobs are labour markets and central planning. People arguing that capitalism is antithetical to freedom have to make the case that a government deciding for you what your job should be is more free than the status quo. They fail to even attempt to do so, possibly because most people would find such arguments ridiculous when it’s explicitly spelled out. Capitalism has plenty of flaws but alternative mechanisms for allocating labour seem far more against freedom.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Labour markets != Capitalism. I suspect Varoufakis would be more amenable to labour markets regulated so that labour without ownership is not legal, which would not be capitalism. There is no reason for the government to decide for you what your job is. Even the USSR since the 60s didn't have such a system. You would have to work for a set amount of years for a set job if you wanted to get an advanced education. After that, you were able to go look for available jobs and choose which one you wanted. Which is just a price-controlled labour market. I doubt very much that the market socialist Varoufakis would want a more restrictive labour market than that of the USSR, so your accusation really seems to be a strawman.
  - TimPC 5y ago
    Price-controlled labour market implies that price is actually a mechanism which is complicated to do if you’re operating on something akin to “from each according to ability and to each according to need”. Whatever system you use needs to somehow resolve the issue that 53% of the youth population wants to be a social media influencer yet far fewer than 1% of jobs are that. Permitting price gets you this but it seems to be a very weak form of socialism if you adopt a system in which some people will make millions and others will make peanuts.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago

pDiddlyDoRight 5y ago

When he said the words "liberal techno-communism" in seriousness, as something NFTs could help? He lost me. I sincerely doubt he's talking about a moneyless, classless, stateless society - what Communism is. After all, there's (crypto)currencies and private (as opposed to personal) ownership rights. Sprinkle in some representative Democratic State that can build structures to isolate itself from the will of the people? And that's Liberalism, the thing Communists rebel against, critiquing to this day. Platonically-Synthesizing these two opposites would prove challenging without undermining the premise of one or both halves. While such a "Left" exists in more authoritarian contexts of international relations? They serve as examples of the failure of the previous "synthesis". Down here in the neighborhoods where life happens? Leftist action is often about showing each other that we're all we need. Why pay for a plow to scrape the apartment building's lot when we can do it? Why submit to draconian rent hikes from Slumlords when we can form a Tenant's Union? Why let people go hungry when we can throw in on a professional kitchen and the food we need to held our neighbors? There's plenty of work to do, even when there's no money. So damn the cash, full speed ahead! We have a better world to build. State be damned. Needless Social hierarchy be damned. Just do the things your neighbors need. And never act alone. Learn from Rojava. Learn from the Zapatistas. Learn from Cospaia. We don't need some magical thinking about how the Masters' Tools will dismantle the Masters' palace in the hands of some "great man". That same great man who, inevitably seeks - or is forced by necessity - to rise to dictatorship to keep the State together and potentially in line. And somehow, this whole State apparatus is supposed to wither away on its own? When it is our crutch against "external threats" and the State's own internal corruption? Color me skeptical.

buddha420 5y ago
You can use NFT's as decentralized permission tokens for access to decentralized databases. Abstract all the world's resources and how they're converted between each other into one big linked excel table. Everyone wants to know how resources are moving around, but nobody can be trusted to host "the diagram of everything". Different parts of the excel table correspond to different resources in different places, and have notions of data sovereignty over their resources in the table, with areas of joined access between separate entities along boundaries where they exchange resources. Obviously you'd use something like soulbound NFT's, so its harder for people to sell off write permissions. But you could use all sorts of Sybil protection techniques. It seems like one possible starting point for a decentralized communism.

twirlock 5y ago

That's neat how different people see things from different perspectives because that statement is meaningless sophistry in my world.

turtledove 5y ago
It's built on a bunch of education and theory that's not at all covered in the article. The man is sufficiently credentialed to suggest that this is at least a well considered position of his based on his experiences as an economist and finance minister.
- arinlen 5y ago
  The man is sufficiently credentialed to suggest that this is at least a well considered position of his based on his experiences as an economist and finance minister. He was fired from finance minister of Greece after only a few months on the job for the less-than-braggable achievement of completely sabotaging Greece's recovery and ensuring Greece was the only European country which failed to recover during their bailout process.
  - lanfeust6 5y ago
    Not that I'm a fan of him, but that's the least generous interpretation of the negotiations for the crisis in Greece.
  - atmosx 5y ago
    > He was fired [...] He resigned and for good reason and he proved to be correct in all his assessments. You clearly don't know what you're talking about, at least get your facts straight.
- PKop 5y ago
  >The man is sufficiently credentialed to suggest Who thinks this way? Credential-ism isn't a substitute for clearly stated arguments. If he presents an argument reflecting his credentials that's great, but some useless platitude doesn't get a pass because he went to college or some nonsense

monetus 5y ago

I know yanis' thoughts well enough to tell what he was saying, but I really wish he would define capitalism more narrowly there. The thrust of his argument lies somewhat far away from the broad brushes the vocabulary he uses has been painted with. Profitability no longer drives the system-as-a-whole, even though it remains the be-all and end-all for individual entrepreneurs. Consider what happened in London on August 12, 2020. It was the day markets learned that the British economy shrank disastrously – and by far more than analysts had expected (more than 20% of national income had been lost in the first seven months of 2020). Upon hearing the grim news, financiers thought: ‘Great! The Bank of England, panicking, will print even more pounds and channel them to us to buy shares. Time to buy shares!’

sangnoir 5y ago
I immediately thought of Uber - widely considered to be a successful market leader, yet not profitable, and funded by VC money which ultimately comes from the central bank money printing.

walkhour 5y ago

[flagged]

Adraghast 5y ago
What is this in response to? Do you think Yanis Varoufakis is unfamiliar with undergrad-tier “communism has failed every time” bromides?
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  This is an undeniable fact, not some "undergrad-tier bromide" as left-wing grifters dismiss it as. Even now, after a century of failure, some dogmatic utopianists won't admit that their ideas don't work. What is most tragic in all this is that it takes experimenting obviously bad ideas - whether it be socialism, or lockdowns - on billions of people, and producing hell on Earth, before a certain class of individuals will admit they are wrong.
- walkhour 5y ago
  This is a response to the illusion that we know there's a better alternative to capitalism
  - turtledove 5y ago
    It can be the case that we no know better alternative while simultaneously being true that capitalism and freedom are opposed.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      Opposition to capitalism consistently produces less free societies.
      - jerojero 5y ago
        There might be many factors involved in this. Not least of them, the influence of capitalist countries over alternative societies. Chile for example was crushed internally and externally when it tried to move away from the system they had at the time. Though inflation did raise there was a huge campaign against the government to purposefully make it fail. Is this a failure of socialism? Any new system will naturally find resistance because it has to break the old one and make the new one work. Though, in reality, these experiments even if they fail change perspectives of people. When Germany had to be put back together they didn't get rid of everything that east Germany was. And these ideas then spread through out the rest of Europe. And the world. And finally, it might be misleading to look at things from the perspective of a person in a developed society and go "yes this system is great!" When on the other hand, this very same system, is producing and reproducing extreme global inequality. El Congo and other extremely poor and unstable countries in Africa, as well as in central and south america are all capitalist countries... theyre just the other side of the coin. And don't get me started on other externalities! I'm sure if birds and monkeys in the amazon could talk they would say they would rather see humans go back to primitivism. Though that's really a question about progress and industrialisation; but it's a question that capitalism has a really hard time dealing with. So, I guess I simply dont think the statement "opposition to capitalism consistently produces less free societies." is a statement that should be done so freely. When something doesn't work we should ask why and what can be done better, not simply shrug and keep ourselves covered in mud. I think the future will look closer to socialism than capitalism, but ofc, that's just my opinion. If you want to read more on global inequality I recommend pikettys book "capital and ideology".

incomingpain 5y ago

Yanis is Syriza, the radical left(their description) democratic socialists.

pessimizer 5y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
turtledove 5y ago

TimPC 5y ago

I’ve always found these quotes a tad ridiculous. The two ways we’ve discovered to allocate jobs are labour markets and central planning. People arguing that capitalism is antithetical to freedom have to make the case that a government deciding for you what your job should be is more free than the status quo. They fail to even attempt to do so, possibly because most people would find such arguments ridiculous when it’s explicitly spelled out. Capitalism has plenty of flaws but alternative mechanisms for allocating labour seem far more against freedom.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sudosysgen 5y ago
Labour markets != Capitalism. I suspect Varoufakis would be more amenable to labour markets regulated so that labour without ownership is not legal, which would not be capitalism. There is no reason for the government to decide for you what your job is. Even the USSR since the 60s didn't have such a system. You would have to work for a set amount of years for a set job if you wanted to get an advanced education. After that, you were able to go look for available jobs and choose which one you wanted. Which is just a price-controlled labour market. I doubt very much that the market socialist Varoufakis would want a more restrictive labour market than that of the USSR, so your accusation really seems to be a strawman.
- TimPC 5y ago
  Price-controlled labour market implies that price is actually a mechanism which is complicated to do if you’re operating on something akin to “from each according to ability and to each according to need”. Whatever system you use needs to somehow resolve the issue that 53% of the youth population wants to be a social media influencer yet far fewer than 1% of jobs are that. Permitting price gets you this but it seems to be a very weak form of socialism if you adopt a system in which some people will make millions and others will make peanuts.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago