FBL58: Yanis Varoufakis - Techno-Feudalism & the Death of Capitalism

This week my guest is Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician who was the acting Minister of Finance in Greece during their debt crises in 2015. Since then, he founded the political party Mera25, and now sits in the Greek parliament as a member of the party. Aside from his work in government, Yanis has extensive experience with the role of technology in the economic sphere, which includes researching virtual economies at one of the world’s largest gaming companies, Valve, and he has even put forth plans for blockchain-based payments systems for Greece. He also recently wrote a science fiction novel entitled, Another Now, which challenges readers to "Imagine a world with no banks. No stock market. No tech giants. No billionaires."

While we discuss some larger implications of tech on economic structures, much of our conversation focuses on his concerns for what he calls “Techno Feudalism,” which he describes as the potential death of democratic capitalism at the hands of the tech elite. 

Follow more of Yanis' work at yanisvaroufakis.eu or twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis

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Host: Steven Parton - LinkedIn / Twitter

Music by: Amine el Filali