Comment on Welcome to the Age of Technofeudalism - The tech giants have overthrown capitalism

mannycalavera@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• tofubl@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Is that a way of saying you think he’s wrong?

  I thought the book had an interesting core idea, even if his grasp on technology seems rather loose and I really disliked the literary device he used to explain said idea.

  What’s your take on it?

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  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Varoufakis likes to position himsetas a sage. Someone that “saw it coming and warned everyone but nobody listened”. He likes to pop back and pretend he had solutions or influence but the world just conspired against him.

    I don’t know if he’s wrong on this one. I do know he often sprays a bunch of doomsayer predictions and only reviews the ones he was vaguely in the same ballpark for. He’s the classic embodiment of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy and, naturally, a lot of people want to believe what he’s pedaling. If he sells a few books or gets paid to give speeches here and there then so be it. After all… he did warn us.

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    • tofubl@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hm, interesting. I didn’t read it like that, but as an economist trying to make sense of what’s going on and explain it to others. I didn’t question whether the thoughts are original, neither do I know if there are holes in his concepts that I as a non-economist am blind to. My personal opinion, anyway, is that the message is important today (or better yet 15 years ago but nobody would have listened 😉), no matter whether he is primarily motivated by his ego or what.

      Maybe this makes me part of the people he caters to, but that line of thinking doesn’t lead anywhere meaningful anyway, I think.

      I liked the end of the book: A call to action for us to come up with tools and technological solutions for “users” to stand together so we can create resistance against overly powerful cooperations and demand our rights. I don’t think it’s hypocritical for him to ask for this either. We need people to point problems out and problem solvers, both.

      Have you read more of what he wrote or how did you come by that opinion on him? Technofeudalism and a number of interviews leading up to the book release was the first I was exposed to him.

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      • mannycalavera@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah fair enough. I should say I haven’t read his latest. He’s been almost constantly on the European media circuit with hot takes on anything and everything from economics to science to politics to culture since the Greek economic crisis with the EU.

        I used to like him in the beginning but after a while I got the impression he was the guy at the bar with a whisky and cigar in his hand telling the same story to patrons. But, my god, what a story it was!

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