Yanis Varoufakis: Is Capitalism Devouring Democracy?
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Channel: WGBHForum
Views: 353,431
Rating: 4.7989984 out of 5
Keywords: Boston, WGBH, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge Forum, Yanis Varoufakis, Greek finance minister, philosophy, Karl Marx, Communist manifesto, DIEM2025, European Union, Diem 25 manifesto, socialism, capitalism, Talking to my daughter about the economy, economics, economy, debt, too big to fail, bankers, corruption, mortgage crisis, Germany
Id: gGeevtdp1WQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 108min 8sec (6488 seconds)
Published: Thu May 17 2018
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Pinning this for a bit becauseeven just watching from 48:00 to 1:00:00, he carpet bombs with truth, both things going wrong & some ideas on what can be done.Unpinning with a bon voyage & hope to see Yanis here again soon!
Thanks for posting this. When I learned about Varoufakis years ago I was still not woke. I thought he was just this crazy, motorcycle riding economist attention whore. I've since been red pilled. Can't get enough of this guy.
I haven't had time to watch all this yet, so I don't know if this is in this video: I was sad to learn that he broke with the Greek prime minister (president), an old friend, over the decision to bow to the EU central bankers. Varoufakis was ready to tell them to fuck off, but his friend wanted to stay in power. I sure would have liked to have seen how the "fuck off, we'll go back to the Drachma" scenario would have finished. Tougher at first; much better by now is my guess.
Calling the system that we have now "capitalism" is an insult to Adam Smith. Calling it a "Democracy" is an insult to the ancient Athenians. What we have is an international oligarchy powered by neo-feudalism. Unlike traditional feudalism in which the nobility pledges their allegiance to the king, the neo-feaudalists pledge their loyalty to each other. They manipulate parliamentary procedures and elections such that each national government is an instrument of the collective multi-national corporate oligarchy. Ordinary peasants (us) have the illusion of freedom, when in fact we are priced out the market through manufactured shortages of products as well as debt payments.
If we have freedom, why can't we vote for our employers? Why can't we afford real estate in any major city? Why are the politicians unable to deliver a service as basic as health care to all people?
Democratic Socialism is more in line with Adam Smith's version of capitalism, and more in line with Athenian Democracy. Replace corporations with worker-cooperatives, break up the monopolies, and guarantee health care as a right. Then watch how quickly things change.
Haven't watched the video and I'm sure he's got some really insightful things to say, but I personally can't forgive the man for being too full of himself to do what's right for his own country.
Is this some kind of present to me? Thank you very much.
About 1:36 Capitalism is an irrational system, has a capacity to produce that is much greater than its capacity to consume so something has to make up the difference.
1:45 about making the IRS do it's job because if an individual goes to Italy and earns income, they get taxed for it by the IRS here. Not so if you're a corporation. The Supreme Court decided that corporations are equal to humans when it comes to Super PACs, the same can be decided by Congress when it comes to equal taxation.
1:17:40 Keynes hated the workers and unions but his proposals to increase wages and welfare states and fiscal stimulus was to preserve capitalism. That was a large part of what motivated FDR. Talks about the precariat and the need to organize this group. Need to think innovatively about collective action.
1:20 or so - fascinating "what if" around exploitation by the privatization and financialization of public utility companies, with your bills going up and up. What if we could work out which financial derivatives (CDOs) are packaging the bills in this neighborhood and that one and that one, and organize via the internet to have an electricity bill strike that is timed in such a way as to explode those CDOs and make them bankrupt. That's collective action using the financial instruments against itself.
In response to the question (before listening to the video) : Of course is is destroying democracy...it is also destroying life on earth because capitalism has one and only one goal: profit . We are currently in a very late stage of capitalism.
1:08:30 question from audience about China's increased economic power and its activity using it in Africa - he points out how China peddles its influence but is non-interventionist, something western governments can't even fathom. China, the US and Europe are synergistic, they need each other to survive. My concern about China is its authoritarian regime and how it treats its people. But at the local level and regional level you have a boisterous democracy in terms of overthrowing local authorities, bureaucrats who were corrupt.
China went into Ethiopia and offered to rebuild their infrastructure and roads and etc. for free, no strings attached, using soft power. They went in because they suspected there was oil there, and now because of how they went in, there will more openness to Chinese oil companies. They've never combined their investment with imperialistic ambitions.
Talks about how when he became the Greek Minister of Finance, he was able to re-negotiate a deal for a port contracted with the Chinese by the previous administration at horrible detriment to the Greek people.