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Yanis Varoufakis is a curious character, endlessly promoted across mainstream media including the BBC. His wife is said to be the basis of Pulp's song "Common P
by nephihaha 11mo ago
Yanis Varoufakis is a curious character, endlessly promoted across mainstream media including the BBC. His wife is said to be the basis of Pulp's song "Common People" about a rich girl at St. Martin's College trying to slum it. That's debatable, but her father was one of the biggest industrialists in Greece. Yanis Varoufakis went to a private school in Athens and has taught at Cambridge... Seems like he has a pretty elite background.
- master-lincoln 11mo agoHow is that relevant here? Did anyone claim anything to the contrary?
- nephihaha 11mo agoIt skews his view of the entire situation in ways he isn't even aware of. In this case, he talks about feudalism, and it's arguable if that's where we're headed at all. Feudalism requires the peasantry to provide something useful to the overlords, which will not be the case when low paid jobs are automated.
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoMarx married into minor mobility and was himself descended from prosperous Jews. Lenin's father was ennobled. Aristocrats turning against capitalism is as old as communism.
- nelox 11mo agoYanis, wasn’t an aristocrat. However, these were all from upper-class or elite backgrounds too: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Josip Broz Tito.
- nephihaha 11mo agoThere are tonnes of people like that in Marxism. The irony is that they claim to want to liberate the working class when they were never part of it. Guevara especially came from a wealthy background. YV was born into a monied family and married into one. He also went to private school as a child. As far as I know he has spent most of his life in an ivory tower.
- saubeidl 11mo agoHow dare people use their privilege for good instead of for self-enrichment!
- nephihaha 11mo agoHe is a World Economic Forum stooge, mate. There are only two ways into that. You either pay hundreds of thousands to attend each day, or you get invited from the inside as he did. The WEF includes the top 100 companies in the world, along with the leaders and opposition leaders of every country. He's part of it. https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/
- saubeidl 11mo agoYou seem to be on some sort of vendetta against the messenger instead of addressing the message at all.
- nephihaha 11mo agoWe have heard plenty from this particular messenger. He is/was never off the BBC at some stage. I always ask why someone is pushed on the public so hard, whether it is him or even someone like Jordan Peterson. I have the same basic issue with him as I do with the Guardian... He is completely out of touch with what is happening at ground level because of his current life and his origins.
- danaris 11mo agoI'm with saubeidl—while I, too, am deeply suspicious of anyone who comes from that level of privilege, and I've heard some shady stuff about Varoufakis in the past, you are refusing to present a) any meaningful criticism of his actual arguments, or b) any specific causal link between aspects of his background and reasons to doubt his work. You just keep pounding on the fact that he is from privilege, but that alone is not enough to be suspicious. At the very best, you are arguing guilt by association.
- rithdmc 11mo agoRose Dugdale springs to mind, also.
- dauertewigkeit 11mo agoI don't think that's abnormal. That's the norm for political leaders in western countries. There are very, very, few people that rise to leadership positions from a purely working class background. Even Jeremy Corbyn grew up middle class. It's almost tautological that leaders are going to be above average in some respect and this talent will be recognized early and the way it works in western countries, the elite institutions try to recruit all the talented folk from non-elite backgrounds into their ranks. I think it's overall a good thing that not all people from elite backgrounds with above average IQ/skills end up being purely upper class aligned.
- nephihaha 11mo agoYanis Varoufakis is a rich kid as is his wife, and their relatives. That's my point. He is part of the very thing he claims to be fighting. You say he is talented. I say he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has been promoted by some powerful institutions such as mainstream media and elite universities. He did not get up there on his own. He isn't some street kid from Athens who clawed his way up by his own intellect. By the way, I don't have a big problem with Corbyn as an individual. I think he is personally honest. I do have concerns that a decent man like him (or Bernie Sanders) may be used by individuals who are less honest. That has happened in the British Labour Party many times.
- dauertewigkeit 11mo agoI'm not disputing the facts. I'm just pointing out that it's the norm. I'm not sure what you're implying though. I don't think he is being platformed by current mainstream institutions if that's what you're saying.
- nephihaha 11mo agoHe is being platformed by them. He was never off the BBC at one point and he writes for broadsheet papers on a frequent basis.
- lysace 11mo ago
- hexbin010 11mo agoWhich parts of the article do you disagree with?
- nephihaha 11mo agoI discuss that elsewhere. The feudal tag is inaccurate. The USA is not feudal minded, at least not yet. Europe is far more feudal in its deference to the authorities. (I live in Europe by the way.) Also you can't have a feudal system when the peasantry have been replaced by machines which is the end game here. Feudalism is parasitic but it still requires goods and services to flow up from below. When your food, defence and goods are all supplied by robots or AI, then that is not the case.
- petre 11mo ago> Also you can't have a feudal system when the peasantry have been replaced by machines which is the end game here. Feudalism is parasitic but it still requires goods and services to flow up from below. When your food, defence and goods are all supplied by robots or AI, then that is not the case. Do machines drive your Uber ride? Deliver your food? No. They assign jobs to gig workers. Those are the serfs. Your goods and services are by people managed by AI. Yes, I know, FSD is just around the corner rendering truck and taxi drivers obsolete. /s
- nephihaha 11mo agoI have boycotted Uber and dodgy food delivery companies from the beginning because of their zero hours contracts... I've never used Uber in my entire life.
- petre 11mo agoImagine you're in London. How you pick a restaurant for dinner? Do you simply walk into a restaurant or do you use Google too feed you a list of 'curated' venues? Because in the latter case both you and the restaurants (along with their owners, employees) are subject to FAANG's central planning. And that's exactly how people end up in tourist traps. https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-al...
- notarobot123 11mo agoHow dare he use his privilege for any ends other than selfishly defending the rights of the privileged!
- nephihaha 11mo agoWell, he is. He has a cooshy number entertaining the chattering classes and educating their offspring. He has no experience or understanding of poverty from the inside. Like a lot of his ilk, most of his understanding is second hand and theoretical. He wouldn't last five minutes on a factory floor.
- notarobot123 11mo agoI'm not advocating for him specifically, but it doesn't seem reasonable that one would need a lived experience of poverty and deprivation to be able to meaningfully understand its causes and effects or to have some inclination to prevent it. Compassion is not a vice nor is making a career of advocating for change.
- nephihaha 11mo agoHe's never off mainstream media, has his own page on the World Economic Forum website, works for a posh university. He is in the elite and never left it. If he was compassionate, he would condemn the WEF, instead of enabling it. It is an antidemocratic organisation, is partnered with big business and does not allow free press coverage of its events. It does seem reasonable that people should have experienced poverty to understand it. The world has been full of people who came from privileged backgrounds who claim to speak for the working class and don't understand them. Maxim Gorky talks about this with Lenin and Lunacharsky. p.s. Also please don't use that word "change". It is meaningless. Change is something which happens anyway. "Progress" and "improvement" are better.
- _DeadFred_ 11mo agoStrong disagree. As someone who has dropped down multiple social classes, I had zero ACTUAL idea about what people were going through, nor about ACTUAL solutions to their problems. But I had lots of solutions to hypothetical problems in my head because I was smart and good hearted. Having been through the result of implemented hypothetical solutions, they suck. They not only suck, but the suck all of the oxygen up, so that real, better solutions can't replace them.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 11mo agoThis counts as ad hominem. Attacking the person and saying nothing of the argument.
- nephihaha 11mo agoIt affects his outlook and analysis of this subject at levels you can't even imagine. Simple as that.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 11mo agoWhy wouldn’t I be able to imagine
- nephihaha 11mo agoEven if he genuinely supported the working class and struggles against power, he would not be in the World Economic Forum today. He was born into privilege, and now belongs to an organisation which bans proper press coverage... Even though it is where top politicians and business men meet to decide what to do with us. That door opens from the inside. You either pay vast sums to join the WEF or they invite you. https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/
- bgwalter 11mo agoYes, the insiders wanted to let him in, but he refused: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufak... He’s in Washington for a meeting with Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary and Obama confidant. Summers asks him point blank: do you want to be on the inside or the outside? “Outsiders prioritise their freedom to speak their version of the truth. The price is that they are ignored by the insiders, who make the important decisions,” Summers warns.
- nephihaha 11mo agoThey did let him in. He was never off the BBC at one point. Also part of the elite WEF. https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/yanis-varoufakis/
- brnt 11mo agoThe difference between what some call the upper-upper-class and upper-middle-class is bigger than the difference between middle-class and lower-class. Or, the 1% and the 0.01%. The superrich are perhaps more alien than most aliens would be to us. (I'm assuming you are not a billionaire).
- seec 11mo agoWell, that's basically the template for your average socialist. They are so privileged that they argue for things that make no sense to your average commoner. It is some sort of signaling for the wealthy “intellectual” class. They gain status by pretending to care about the poor even though they'll have to pay zero cost for the implementation of their arguments. The cynic in me thinks it's because they stand to gain even more power/privilege this way. I think those people are disgusted by the fact that filthy capitalists can gain money and thus power while largely escaping their own power/control. So-called elite education is fucked up in a bizarre way. They all end up with an ideology that could be summarized by anything that isn't government controlled is necessarily bad. Not very surprising because the whole point is them getting this education to be “worthy” to lead. Hard to do when people can manage without your leadership. Allegedly they are smart, but I think their actual intellectual power is below that of most engineers.