• rhythmisaprancer@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    These are some interesting talking points regarding our “rental” of services, property, etc. It seems like the EU is intent on, in varying degrees, regulating this, but not so much anywhere else. But nowhere is doing anything holistically in my opinion.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    What could be more delightful than a trip to Greece to meet Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic leftwing firebrand who tried to stick it to the man, AKA the IMF, EU and entire global financial order?

    The house is where Varoufakis and his wife, landscape artist Danae Stratou, live, year round since the pandemic, but in August 2023 at the end of a summer of heatwaves and extreme weather conditions across the world, it feels more than a little apocalyptic.

    Stratou and Varoufakis are a striking couple, as glamorous as their house, a cool, luminous space featuring poured concrete and big glass windows overlooking a perfect rectangle of blue pool.

    “I have no issues with luxury,” he says at one point, which is just as well because the entire scene would give the Daily Mail a conniption, especially since Aegina seems to be Greece’s equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, home to a highly networked artistic and political elite.

    I’d messaged a bunch of people to ask them what they would ask Varoufakis, including McNamee, and precised the book to him – that two pivotal events have transformed the global economy: 1) the privatisation of the internet by America and China’s big tech companies; and 2) western governments’ and central banks’ responses to the 2008 great financial crisis, when they unleashed a tidal wave of cash.

    This encouraged business models that promised world-changing outcomes, even if they were completely unrealistic and/or hostile to the public interest (eg the gig economy, self-driving cars, crypto, metaverse, AI).


    The original article contains 2,683 words, the summary contains 252 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Luke@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Capitalist propaganda has done a good job of equating itself to market trade so thoroughly that many people can’t even imagine markets existing outside of capitalism, and they think absence of capitalism means nobody buys anything from anyone else.

    • relevants@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      In a socialist system he would still be allowed to sell his own work and profit from his labor. Your point makes no sense

    • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      How does not stop people from selling and buying.

      You know “capitalism” is just a word used to describe things, right…

      Not sure I understand your point, sorry.