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| Yanis Varoufakis |
Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek Minister of Finance, the co-founder of DiEM25, elected MP and leader of MeRA25 (DiEM25's Electoral Wing in Greece), and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, delivered a virtual keynote speech on post-capitalism before DiEM25.
Varoufakis told the 6,210 viewers that we are beyond the free-market perspective of "Ludwig Hayek (sic)."
His speech did provide a lot of factual insight as to what has been going on in global economies since 2008 but his failure was astonishing on the theoretical level.
He seemed to have no theoretical understanding of how the financial crisis of 2008 was just one in a long series of crises created by central bank money printing (To understand how the 2008 crisis was one in a series, see my book: The Fed Flunks).
It was clear he has no understanding of business cycle theory.
His correct factual observations on expanding crony-capitalism failed to make the important link between the growth of crony-capitalism and the growth of central power. That is, he failed to reach the important conclusion that if you shrink (end?) the state, you eliminate crony capitalism.
Instead, he called the current period a post-capitalist period and offered a solution, the next step, an economy where every worker owns one share in a corporation and has one vote. Thus completely failing to recognize the extremely important role of insightful individuals, known as entrepreneurs, in an economy.
To say nothing about his confusion about the role of capital and laborers.
To make it clear, we are not in a post-capitalist period. We are in a typical period of strong central bank money manipulations and expanding government power that results in great corruption.
Varoufakis sees the current corruption but is terribly weak in economic theory and thus misses the solution from the current situation. It is as though he has never read Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.
-RW
Post-capitalist is a euphemism for Marxism. One of the few remaining Marxists who will self-identify as such, Richard Wolff, espouses the same "worker owned corporation" bs. Nothing new here and nothing of value.
ReplyDeleteThe post capitalism era takes us backward over a century to the failed ideas of syndicalism. Ok got it. Thanks Yanis. Try learning a skill or something so that you can use your mind in a productive way.
ReplyDelete"It is as though he has never read Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek."
ReplyDeleteHe hasn't. None of them have. And they never will.