Yanis Varoufakis:
know I come from the left we are The
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Losers of History we leftist as you very
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well know we used to believe that
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organized labor would overthrow Capital
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capitalism or takeover Capital it never
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happened but what has happened instead
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is a delicious irony the capital became
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so
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triumphant that it mutated like a stupid
virus creates a variant
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that kills its host so this is my
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hypothesis that Capital has become so
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successful and so powerful and so toxic
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that whereas uh profit was the fuel and
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the lubricant of the socioeconomic
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system known as capitalism and markets
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where the mechanism that uh synthesized
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all our efforts uh brought together
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producers consumers uh organized
thing now we are moving away from profit
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back to rent mhm which is the feudal
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form of wealth accumulation
right Once Upon a Time such and such the
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great advertisers would create a poster
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or TV ad they would put the idea in your
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head that you wanted to buy something
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then you went out to a shop and you
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bought it from the actual uh shop that
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gets it from the producer directly and
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the producer the capitalist would make a
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profit out of it and profit would run
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the system today Alexa sitting on your
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desk or Siri or whatever some interface
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with uh the net mhm uh you are training
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it to train you to train it to impress
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upon you how good it is at giving you
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advice on what to buy I don’t know about
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you but Spotify really is spot on
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regarding you know what I actually like
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yeah and once it gets this power over
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you on the basis that it serves you and
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it gives you good advice then it can
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recommend things for you to buy and not
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only that but this is the astonishing
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thing you don’t need to go to the shop
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to buy it the same piece of what I call
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Cloud Capital that Capital that lives in
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on the cloud sells you the stuff
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directly through Amazon.com which is the
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same um agglomeration of capital Cloud
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Capital as the Alexa that talks to you
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and interacts with you that’s not a
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market anymore it’s not capitalism what
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happens is Amazon charges 40% 40% to the
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capitalist who produces the stuff that
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you buy Amazon doesn’t produce anything
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so it’s not just that you do not own
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stuff that and you rent it it is that
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you have the complete bypassing of
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markets mhm and and the replacement of
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profit with a new form of cloud rent or
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rent which I called Cloud rent H and why
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does this matter it matters because our
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society becomes increasingly unstable as
that my problem because rent is waste
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right unlike profit when a producer of
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bicycles of binocular of cars Whatever
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Gets a profit they have to invest a
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large part of it uh in order to maintain
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competitiveness so this goes back into
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the economy uh if you are a rener you
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collect rent in your sleep Jeff pesos
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doesn’t need to do anything uh
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capitalist work for him and when he gets
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uh this 40% mhm he just puts it away he
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uses it to speculate in financial
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markets doesn’t go back into investment
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into anything but I mean but for the fo
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is feels intangible it feels intangible
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but it really does poison Our Lives
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because here go if you think about it
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when let’s say a large chunk of national
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income is withdrawn from the uh cirular
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flow of income and is stashed away in
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some
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Financial circuit and simply feeds this
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financial game and comes out of people
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people’s wages let me give you a very
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striking example General Motors Ford
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Motor Company zans Volkswagen they pay
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all those corporations all style
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capitalist corporations pay 85% of their
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revenues as wages salaries and so on
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Facebook 1% yeah Amazon 1.5% what
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happens to the rest is withdrawn the
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result is that the people out there
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suffer permanent austerity not
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necessarily you know George Osborne’s
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hostility but hostility in the sense
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that there isn’t enough money going
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around that’s why we have what David
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Graber so scientifically described as
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jobs because there are there’s
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no good investment in in jobs this is
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why central banks like the bank of
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England cannot stop printing money even
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when they when they’re trying to you
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know quantitatively tighten because
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there’s not enough money going around so
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the state has to keep producing money
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feeding even inflation so if we feel
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today that uh um there’s a poly crisis
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as Adam Tu has described it that you
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know have multiple crisis including the
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climate crisis that in my estimation has
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to do with that with the fact that after
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2008 governments tried to save the banks
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and by printing something like 30 to 35
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trillion right remember Gordon Brown
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April 2009 bringing together the G7
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Central Bank is they started the
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printing processes now that money was
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never invested in anything except Cloud
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Capital by the B is in big Tech and the
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other big Tech uh conglomerate
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revolution of course took place in China
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yeah in my book I Tred to explain the
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new cold war between the US and China I
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ignore issues of Taiwan and so on that I
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think this is absolutely relevant uh
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just a red heading it’s the clash of the
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two forms of cloud Capital that are
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taking over the world the American and
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the Chinese and we here in Europe and in
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Britain are becoming increasing
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sad irrelevant entities well that’s I
you to find yourself in I’m nostalgic
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about poetry about uh drama about art
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I’m never nostalgic about a dead
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socioeconomic system so if this was the
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1770s 1800s would we be nostalgic of
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feudalism which was dying no let’s move
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on uh I I’m just nostalgic of the idea
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of the liberal individual and that I’m
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saying as a leftist yeah because the
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idea of you know of nice ring fencing
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between your work life and your leisure
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that’s all gone now
happening in the United States today
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Lima KH who is the chair of the FTC the
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Federal Trade Commission is starving I
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think she’s very well-meaning and she’s
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a very smart woman and I wish her very
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well she’s starting a law um a legal
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battle against Amazon yeah but I think
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she’s uh doing it the wrong way because
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she’s
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treating Amazon in the way that Teddy
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ruselt treated Standard Oil and
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Rockefeller back in the 1920s as a
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monopolist that needs to be broken up
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Amazon is much worse than a monopolist
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it’s not just a monopolist it’s not a
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market M it is not a capitalist it is
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like think of it as a
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digital version of a system? in
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which vassel capitalists are laboring
for the Lord along with the peasants who
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may even love the Lord so you mentioned
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before that you know the these gadgets
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are all very convenient I can’t live my
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life without them yeah sure so we are
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voluntary servants voluntary Cloud
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serves to these people so and you know
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Lima Khan has her work cut out for her
Recap
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de politization of the left happened in greece after pm resigned after getting 62% of votes in referendum.