Another Now
Metadata
- Author: Yanis Varoufakis
Highlights
‘What does it mean to be a proletarian, really?’ Costa continued, without waiting for a reply. ‘Let me tell you. From bitter experience. It means you are a cog in a process of production that relies on what you do and think while excluding you from being anything but its product. It means the end of sovereignty, the conversion of all experiential value into exchange value, the final defeat of autonomy.’
We are both product and producers, only measured in currency.
Science fiction is the archaeology of the future, a leftist philosopher once said.
In The Republic, Plato has Socrates ask: if you discovered such a ring, would it be rational not to use it to do as you please? Costa remembered Socrates’ answer well: anyone who uses the power of the ring to get what he wants enslaves himself to his own appetites. Happiness, and not just morality, hinges on one’s capacity not to use the ring’s exorbitant power.
the formal ownership of a company is of less importance, he decided, than the way in which power is structured and reproduced within it. Even though the absence of private property rights limited the capacity of Soviet bosses to profit, it did not limit their hierarchies’ dictatorial power over the workers, and often over consumers and local communities as well. So when in 1991 the communist system collapsed, Costa was saddened that the only alternative to capitalism that actually existed had disappeared, but he was not at all surprised.
via higher bonuses, did not translate into more votes. They may have had more influence in the debates preceding any vote, just as a skilled orator in a parliament does, but the one-person-one-share-one-vote rule was paramount.
Is effective net equality the goal?
John Kenneth Galbraith, an eminent twentieth-century American economist who referred to capitalism’s network of power, its agglomeration of mega-firms and mega-banks, as the Technostructure.
???
Of course, the money they were lent did not actually exist – yet. Rather, it was as if they were borrowing the future profits of their mega-firms in order to fund those mega-firms’ construction.
Share markets exist to create imaginary - or future - cash inflows. This finncial innovation allows mega firms to create mega projects.
ask, too, whether one focuses kn the ethucs of these or onky in nkts practice: Wayne P
They paid also for mergers and acquisitions that generated industrial cartels far larger than the original networked mega-firms. A Soviet-like, albeit privately owned, planned system emerged, spanning the globe, allowing the captains of industry and the masters of finance, together, to shape the future for themselves and in their image. This, explained Costa, is what John Kenneth Galbraith called Technostructure,
A structure forged and held bg techbological advances, particularly in the field of finance, credit, and record keeping. Is this what crypto sought to dissole? Or is it simply another attempt to further profit from it.
In any marketplace, especially the digital one, you simply buy and sell, often anonymously. Beyond the financial transaction, there is no relationship with your counterparty. Once you join a company, by contrast, you cooperate, cajole, propose, argue, support, vow, inspire, form coalitions, moan about colleagues – in short, you enter a relationship unregulated by prices, just like a marriage or joining the army or forming a theatre company.
Can we talk abiut markets ifbwebhave rrlationship? How does buyijg from onenseller affect thu?
‘Every time a banker approves a loan of, say, one million dollars for Jack, a typical business customer, the banker just types 1,000,000 on Jack’s bank statement. However incredible it may seem, that’s all it takes. Bankers create money
Loans are thr main mechabism for creatin money?
It is from this surplus that the banker takes his interest and Jack his profit. This is what Iris was referring to as a fool’s wager when she said that bankers plundered value from the future, or when Costa had once claimed that capitalism, like science fiction, trades in future assets
to maintain stability a strngnprocess of money creation is then necessary; thus it js necwssary tok alqys grow and expand. Explains why lack of growth is seen as a recession.
utterly private while, at the same time, everyone could see how much money sloshed around the system in aggregate. In other words, the authorities could not create more money – under, say, pressure from special interests – without everyone knowing.
Unlike crypto , which is entirely public.
Another of Jerome’s features that enthused Eva was its fully decentralized digital architecture. This mattered both technically and politically. Technically, it meant that all the payment data within Jerome would survive, should any part of it be damaged or destroyed. Politically, it mattered even more because it meant that no one had central access to or control over this information – not even the central bank.
Crypto as a ledger instead of speculative lending.
Eva’s initial terror at the idea of a state monopoly of financial services began to wane once she heard of the boisterous, decentralized market for credit. It abated further when she learned about citizens’ monetary assemblies. And it almost disappeared when she discovered from Eve that there existed a multiplicity of community-based currencies alongside the central bank’s. As Eve explained, any group who wanted to create its own currency was given the digital tools and entitled to do so, and a small fee was charged whenever someone wanted to convert it into the national currency. As a result, from northern California to Kosti’s native Crete, local authorities had issued digital currencies for transactions within their communities using a model very similar to Jerome, their advantage being that they kept value produced locally within the community. Unlike in Our Now, where value produced in Aberdeen can freely emigrate to London, in the Other Now any transfer of wealth could be regulated by increasing or decreasing the amount charged for exchanging local for national currency, in proportion to the imbalance of wealth
Cf. Suzanne
The spectre of so much social control terrified Eva. She loved markets for one important reason: the freedom they granted from social obligations and power dynamics. To get something you just paid for it, anonymously, without having to befriend or negotiate, and certainly without having to convince some panel of strangers that you were sufficiently deserving.
Not that we have much choice even now . However, in thatvsysten housing is molre assured rather than monopolized and turned intona resource.
Only by groping around in the marketplace as individual consumers and producers can we hope to find out what each of us wants and what each is capable of.
Until the markets begn to dictate what we want, knstead of the other way around.
and he had been forced to attempt a different analogy. But had Thomas been familiar with the two musical works, Eva was sure he would have chosen the Valkyries every time. Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ required an optimism of the spirit that her son lacked.
How does our view of nlife say biut the nusic qe enjoy? How does the music we enjky affect our life?
can we ckassify lofi as a bandaid kr as a reflection of working conditions?
With the arrival of the virus came the twenty-four-hour curfew, the closure of the local pub, the ban on walking through the park, the suspension of sport, the emptying of theatres, the silencing of music venues. All notions of a minimal state mindful of its limits and eager to cede power to individuals went out of the window. Many salivated at this show of raw state power. Even free-marketeers like Eva here, who had spent their lives shouting down any suggestion of even the most modest boost in public spending, demanded the sort of state control of the economy not seen since Leonid Brezhnev was running the Kremlin. Across the world, the state funded private firms’ wage bills, renationalized utilities and took shares in airlines, car makers, even banks. From the first week of lockdown, the pandemic stripped away the veneer of politics to reveal the boorish reality underneath: that some people have the power to tell the rest what to do.’
is this, at its core, the majn problem peole have had with the virus? is it thr main fault line between the two distinct groups?
And it was the widening gulf between these two groups of people, between the beneficiaries of lockdown – Amazon, Google, Netflix, Microsoft, their shareholders and financiers – and the billions who struggled and suffered in its aftermath that led to the monsters Iris was warning about who govern us now.’
Ij talkijg abiut this my issue is that i wanted the lockdowns, the curfews, etc insofar as they avoided useless deaths. But indeed, a lotnof this coukd have been avoided if we had access to the wealthbkf Amazon and kts ilk
The apps and bracelets with which governments now track our every move began, you may not realize, as a way of stopping new outbreaks. Systems designed to monitor coughs now also monitor laughs. It makes the KGB and Cambridge Analytica seem positively neolithic.’
But what should have we done? Before the pandemic, kn 2008, we had a chabce to undo some kf the evil. But jn 2020, with the virus spreading : was it a time fkr revolution? The Floyd protests sparked at tbhis tine, so a social will existed.
point that had been eating at him for years. ‘Our moment of truth came in 2008,’ he said. ‘Once we dropped the ball back then, by 2020 it was too late.’
Indeed, see previous note. But so, what now? Do we just accept being fucked?
But the truth is we face a fork in the road every day of our lives. Every single day we fail to take advantage of opportunities to change the course of history. And do you know how we console ourselves? We look into the past, pick out one “pivotal” moment and try to lessen our guilt by saying that was the moment we missed. No, mate. We miss pivotal moments every day, every hour, every freaking instant.’
The suggestion is that the deal is not done. We fuck up, but the show.must go lon.
The answer I gave you then is the one I give you now: a good life requires that we find, like Odysseus, a strong mast to which to tie ourselves when it matters, lest we remain slaves to our every whim. This mast must be good and it must be self-chosen, but crucially it cannot simply be another, higher or more powerful desire. It must be something separate from and independent of our self. Lashing ourselves to it is the only way of ensuring the true freedom and autonomy that we crave.’
A mast not desire , not.skmlly higher. Bkt the ame job butbbetter paid, not simply wanting mkre, but a principle to groubd us.
how can my mast be made of something I don’t want? It is the most important question of all. If one’s mast is not to be made of one’s own desires, then what is it to be made of? And my answer is this: it must be made of a capacity to do what is right, and to do it for no reason at all – except that it is right and good.’ ‘But
Goodness for nits own sake?
Not being a bully is like a great work of art that you sweat long and hard to produce for no reason other than that you must. Just as art is, and can only be, an end in itself, so good things happen only for their own sake, for the hell of it – not because our desires drive them but only after we restrain those desires.
Indeed the art or the grratness may exist in the very deni or something.