Yanis Varoufakis 中国是技术封建主义 Techno-Feudalism

中国 VS 美国 | 亚尼斯·瓦鲁法基斯谈大科技、资本主义和技术封建主义（第 3 部分）

China VS America | Yanis Varoufakis on Big Tech, Capitalism and Techno-Feudalism (Part 3)

How To Academy 2024 年 8 月 24 日
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaIKeXnX1UM

这位世界著名经济学家和前希腊财政部长与 Ash Sarkar 一起认为资本主义已死，并提出了一个改变游戏规则的新范式：技术封建主义。大科技的所有者已成为世界封建霸主——用一种奴役我们思想、藐视民主、改写全球权力规则的全新体系取代资本主义。但正如瓦鲁法基斯也将揭示的那样，技术封建主义包含着阻止和推翻它的新机会，比以往任何时候都更清楚地聚焦于我们逃离数字监狱所需的革命。观看 Ash 和 Yanis 为您揭开重塑我们的生活和世界的新力量的面纱

第 1 部分 - “这不再是资本主义了！”Yanis Varoufakis 谈技术封建主义、大公司和大科技•“这不再是资本主义了！” Yan...

第 2 部分 - 社会主义还是银行家” Yanis Varoufakis 谈什么杀死了资本主义？• “银行家的社会主义” Yanis Var...

第 3 部分 - 中国 VS 美国 | Yanis Varoufakis 谈大科技、资本主义和技术封建主义• 中国 VS 美国 | Yanis Varoufakis 谈...

第 4 部分 - Yanis Varoufakis 和 Ash Sarkar 谈阿根廷、亚马逊和优步• Yanis Varoufakis 和 Ash Sarkar 谈阿根廷...

好吧，让我直接说为什么美国是霸权主义记得二战后美国作为唯一的债权国经济体走出了战争，除了瑞士但那不算数对吧唯一的债权国，经济体唯一的经济体是盈余它有贸易顺差它卖的东西比它进口的东西多是美国它的工厂完好无损它们没有像整个大陆那样被摧毁欧洲，或日本呃，它没有像这个国家一样破产，记住你为什么破产，因为你欠美国人这么多钱，因为他们在第二次世界大战期间没有给你一颗子弹，他们没有向你收取费用，事后要求付款，这意味着战后的英国破产了，它完全被关在美国拥有的监狱里，我们称之为特殊关系，这是一种特殊关系，是的，我们称之为同样的事情，这就是现在发生在希腊的事情，我们在监狱里，但我们与布鲁塞尔有着非常特殊的关系，就像你们与美国的关系一样，呃，或者在 1945 年，好吧，他们走出了困境，他们的工厂的生产力和生产能力在第二次世界大战中得到了极大的提升，到 1945 年，美国工业能够生产的东西是 1941 年的八倍，就在珍珠港事件之前，珍珠港事件是八倍，他们创造了布列塔尼木材系统，你们中的一些人年纪大一点的人会记得，英镑与美元的汇率是固定的，实际上我们都有美元，我们希腊人、德国人、法国人和意大利人都有自己的货币，但汇率是固定的，美元是固定的，我们有资本管制，我们可以把我们想要的货币兑换成美元，但如果是固定汇率，那本质上就是一个货币联盟，1944 年至 1971 年期间，我们处于美元区，理查德·尼克松摧毁了美国人创建的布列塔尼森林体系，他之所以摧毁它，是因为布列塔尼森林体系的重点在于，它是一个基于美国贸易顺差的管理型国际美元体系，到 60 年代末，我的核武器已经不复存在，核武器在哪里，核武器在哪里，热核战争，我明白了，我的核武器在哪里，哇哇，所以 19771 年，我们有一个霸权国家，现在陷入了赤字，现在大英帝国发生了什么，当它陷入赤字时，它崩溃了，发生了什么罗马帝国每次崩溃，一个大国就会开始衰落，衰落非常接近，就美国而言，在1971年至20120年，假设疫情开始，它的霸权和权力随着贸易逆差成倍增长，它是世界上唯一一个由于赤字加深而变得更强大的大国，这是以前从未发生过的，他们是如何做到的，这是你的答案，通过保持对国际支付的严格垄断，它是地球上历史上唯一一个拥有需求货币的国家，人们想要美元，即使他们不想从美国人那里买任何东西，因为当你把汽油加到你的车里，如果你还有一辆汽油车，好吧，即使它是一家荷兰拥有的公司，它从一家尼日利亚公司购买在尼日利亚钻探的石油，而且每次都没有美国人参与，因为每次你给宠物加油时，它都会以美元计价
China VS America | Yanis Varoufakis on Big Tech, Capitalism and Techno-Feudalism (Part 3)

How To Academy 2024年8月24日
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaIKeXnX1UM

The world-famous economist and former Greek Finance Minister joins Ash Sarkar to argue that capitalism is dead and present a game-changing new paradigm: technofeudalism. The owners of big tech have become the world's feudal overlords—replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy, and rewrites the rules of global power. But as Varoufakis will also reveal, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison. Watch Ash and Yanis open your eyes to the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world

Part 1 - "This is not Capitalism Anymore!" Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism, Big and Big Tech• "This is not Capitalism Anymore!" Yan...   

Part 2 - Socialism or the Bankers" Yanis Varoufakis on What Killed Capitalism?• "Socialism for the Bankers" Yanis Var...   

Part 3 - China VS America | Yanis Varoufakis on Big Tech, Capitalism and Techno-Feudalism• China VS America | Yanis Varoufakis o...   

Part 4 - Yanis Varoufakis and Ash Sarkar on Argentina, Amazon and Uber• Yanis Varoufakis and Ash Sarkar on Ar...   

okay let me go straight to that why is the United States hegemonic remember that after the second world war the United States came out of the war as the only creditor economy
except Switzerland but doesn't that doesn't count right the only creditor
economy the only economy was that was in a surplus it had a trade surplus it sold
more stuff than it cons that it imported was the United States of America its
factories were intact they were not destroyed like across Continental Europe
or Japan uh it wasn't bankrupt like this country was and remember why you were
bankrupt because you owed all this money to the Americans because they didn't
give you a single bullet during the second world war that they didn't charge
you for and demand payment afterwards which meant that postwar Britain was
bankrupt it was completely in a det prison owned by the United States um we call that D prison the special relationship it's a special relationship yes indeed we call the same
thing that this is what's happening to Greece now we are at detos prison but we
have a very special relationship with Brussels of the same ilk as you do with
the United States uh or back then in 1945 okay so they came out of it with
their factories having their productivity and production capacities being massively enhanced by the second world war by 1945 the United States industry was capable for producing eight times more stuff than it was in 1941 Pearl Harbor just before Pearl Harbor eight times more stuff and they created remember the Breton wood system some of you who are older will remember that the British pound was fixed with a fixed exchange rate to the dollar essentially we had the dollar all of us the Greeks the Germans the French the Italians we had our own currencies but it was a fixed exchange rate with a dollar essentially we had a dollar there were Capital controls we could convert as many of as much of our currency as we wanted to the dollar but if it was a fixed exchange rate it was essentially a currency Union we were in the dollar zone between 1944 and 1971 when Richard Nixon destroyed the Breton wood system that the Americans had created he destroyed it because the whole point about the Breton wood system was that it was a managed International dollar system predicated upon based upon the American Trade Surplus by the late 60s there was no where my nukes where in the nukes where the nukes Thermonuclear War I get you the words where my nukes wa wa so here we have a hegemonic power in 19771 that is now into the red now what happened to the British Empire when it went into the red it collapsed what happened to the Roman Empire it collapsed every time a major power goes into the red it starts fading and the fall is very close in the case of the United States between 1971 and 20120 let's say the beginning of the pandemic its hegemony and power increased exponentially along with its trade deficit it is the only Power in the world that became stronger as a result
of going deeper into a deficit that has
never happened before how did they
succeed in doing it and this is your
answer by maintaining a strict Monopoly
on International payments it was the
only country in the history of the
planet that had a currency which was in demand
people wanted the dollar even if they
didn't want to buy anything from the
Americans because when you put Petrol in
your car if you still have a petrol car
okay even if it is a company owned by
the Dutch and it buys um oil drilled in
let's say Nigeria from a Nigerian
company and there's no American involved
at all every time because it's
denominated in dollars every time you
fill up your pet
rol tank 你要美元，你必须把英镑、日元或欧元兑换成美元，所以拥有国际支付系统是美国比无处不在的美国陆军、海军和空军更有能力维持其霸权的原因。基辛格知道我在书中提到过，1970 年，他问身边的人，基辛格当时是国家安全委员会的成员，他是尼克松成为外交大臣之前的国家安全顾问，他问他们，如果我们处于赤字状态，我们将如何维持我们的霸权，他得到的答案是我们会让其他人，其他资本家，来自世界其他地方的资本家为我们的赤字买单，这就是一直在发生的事情，但为什么他们可以这样做，因为他们垄断了国际支付系统，它威胁到垄断，记得德国制造商的故事，他脱离了美元体系，随着乌克兰战争，发生了一些了不起的事情，因为我们一方面聊天，另一方面中央银行中国已经创建了一种数字货币，它拥有自己的公共应用程序，允许你以人民币免费付款，因此，有两种方法可以免费进行国际支付，作为外国人，作为英国人，你不必是中国人，你有两个，你有wichat，你有中国央行的数字货币，正如我们所说，数字货币有2.1亿个账户，商界人士可以在世界各地使用它进行免费支付，而无需绕过美元体系，这对美国霸权来说是一个明显而现实的致命危险，唐纳德·特朗普发动对华冷战的原因，这是我在书中的理论，为什么他开始攻击华为，然后是中兴通讯，然后你可能会说当然，但唐纳德·特朗普是个疯子，他会为了它而攻击任何人，乔·拜登作为反特朗普的美国总统上台，他对特朗普发起的冷战做了什么，他会退缩吗，他会撤退吗，他会加强它，他提出了2021 年秋季的一份声明，本质上是在向中国传递一个信息，我们将通过禁止所有先进微芯片的销售来阻止你成为发达经济体，这本质上就像 1800 年禁止蒸汽机向德国出口蒸汽机一样，这就像在说，我们正在向你宣布经济福利，为什么他要这样做，说这是因为台湾的论点是胡说八道，台湾什么都没有改变，自从尼克松访问北京以来，西方一直接受一个中国政策，所以不是说中国正在建设军队或海军，只有当我看到洛杉矶郊外的中国驱逐舰和护卫舰时，我才会相信，目前，我看到的只是上海郊外的美国军舰，所以这一切都没有意义，有意义的是，中国的支付系统带来了以最有效的方式将中国金融和中国云资本结合在一起，只需访问我们的聊天室，您就会明白我的意思，这对美元垄断构成了致命的危险，乌克兰战争做了一些非常有趣的事情，这条高速公路上所有人都在唱歌跳舞，数字支付，中国支付，中国央行的数字货币已经存在，但这就像修建一条高速公路，你知道，想象一下在一条崭新美丽的高速公路上，两边都有五条车道，没有汽车，因为如果你是一个资本家，即使你是中国资本家，你仍然想使用美元，因为如果你在上海生产铝，你想把大部分卖给美国人，所以你想把它卖成美元，然后你把它换成美元，你把它带到华尔街，你买美国债券，你在迈阿密买房地产等等，所以中国资本家甚至不想使用这种超高速的支付方式但当美国和欧盟联合没收了价值 4500 亿美元的俄罗斯资金时，我并没有对此作出评判，我并不是说他们应该这样做，或者不应该这样做，我只是说，他们这样做了，所以想象一下你是沙特阿拉伯人，或者某个酋长国的埃米尔，或者某个印度尼西亚的大人物，我想象你是马里人，我在想象，你可以想象，然后你会想，哦，我的天，他们没收了 4500 亿美元的俄罗斯资金，因为他们不喜欢他们的政策，他们明天可能不喜欢我，因为我不是世界上最好的人，他们知道这一点，嗯，也许我应该对冲我的赌注，不要把我所有的钱都投入美元体系，我会把我的大部分钱投入美元体系，但我会把一些钱投入中国的高速公路，美国人认为华盛顿的聪明人认为这是一个严重的威胁，因为如果他们失去垄断，你知道的美元体系的支付体系
rol tank you are demanding dollars you have to convert
pounds or Yen or euros into dollars so the ownership of the international payment system is what allows the United States much more so than the ubiquitous
US Army Navy and Air Force Force to maintain his emony Kissinger knew that I mentioned that in the book in 1970 he asked his people around him Kissinger back then was National Security Council he was a national security adviser to Nixon before he became foreign secretary
and he said to them how are we going to maintain our hegemony if we are in the red and the answer he got was we'll make other people other capitalists capitalists from the rest of the world pay for our deficits this is what has
been happening but why is it that they can do that because they have the Monopoly of the payment system
internationally what wichat does it is threatens that Monopoly remember the story with the German manufacturer he's out of the dollar system and with the
war in Ukraine something remarkable happened
because we chat on the one hand and the Central Bank of China having created a digital currency its own publicly owned app that allows you to make free payments in rembe in one in the Chinese currency so there are two things you can use to make international payments for
free as a foreigner as a Britain you don't have to be Chinese you have two you have wichat and you have the digital currency of the Central Bank of China there are as we speak 210 million accounts of the digital currency and business people can use it around the
world to make free payments without bypassing the the dollar system that is a clear and present mortal danger for
for American hegemony the reason why Donald Trump started the Cold War against China this is my theory in the
book why did he start attacking Huawei and then ZTE and then you may say of course but Donald Trump is a Madman he would attack anyone just for the sake of
it well Joe Biden comes in as the anti-trump President of the United States and what does he do with the cold
war that Trump had started does he Clow back does he Retreat from no he turbocharges it he comes out with a
declaration in the fall of uh 20 uh 2021 essentially sending the message to you to China we are going to stop you
from becoming an advanced economy by banning all sales of advanced microchips which is essentially it's like it's like in 1800 Banning steam engines the export of steam engines to Germany this is like saying this is a we
are declaring econom economic welfare
against you and the is why does he do that the
argument that it's because of Taiwan is
rubbish nothing has changed about Taiwan
the one China policy had always been
accepted by the West since Nixon went to
Beijing uh so it's not that it's not
that China is building up its army or
its Navy I will believe that only when I
see Chinese destroyers and frigates
outside Los Angeles for the time being
all I see is American warships outside
Shanghai so it none of that makes sense
what makes sense is that the Chinese
Payment Systems which brings together
Chinese finance and Chinese Cloud
capital in a most effective way just
visit we chat and you'll see what I mean
is a mortal danger for the Monopoly of
the dollar the war in Ukraine did
something quite interesting this super
highway of all singing all dancing
digital payments Chinese payments the
weat and the digital currency of the
Central Bank of China that was already
there but it's like building a super
highway you know imagine five Lanes on
each side in big spanking new beautiful
Highway with no cars on it because if
you were a capitalist even if you were a
Chinese capitalist you still wanted to
use a dollar because if you produce
aluminum in aluminium in shangzhen you
want to sell most of it to the Americans
so you want to sell it for dollars and
then you take it to Dollars and you take
it to Wall Street and you buy American
bonds you buy real estate in Miami and
so on so the Chinese capitalist didn't
even want to use this super high way of
payments but the moment the United
States together with the European Union
confiscated $450 billion dollars worth
of Russian money I'm not judging this
I'm not saying they should have done it
or not have done it I'm simply saying
they did it so imagine you are a Saudi
Arabian shake or the Amir of some Emirate or
some Indonesian bigwig I'm imag Malian
there you are I'm imagining you can
imagine right and you think oh my God
They confiscated 450 billion smackers because they didn't like their policies well they may not like me tomorrow because I'm not the best guy in
the world they know that right um well
maybe I should hedge my bets not put all
my money in the dollar system I will put
most of my money in the dollar system
but I will put some in the Chinese Super
Highway the Americans see that the smart
people in Washington see this as a serious threat because if they lose the Monopoly of of you know of the dollar system of the of the payment system internat
从本质上讲，美国已经完蛋了，他们深陷赤字，他们有巨大的预算赤字和巨大的贸易赤字，只要中国人不触及他们的垄断地位，他们就能把这些赤字变成一种优势，中国大科技公司也会这么做，我要在这里暂停一下，我要给你们一个选择，我们可以花 5 到 10 分钟的时间问 Janis 一些尴尬的问题，或者我可以问他最尴尬的问题，我已经写在我的纸上，所以你们将有一个公民投票，所以你们决定观众问答，尴尬的问题写在纸上，观众提问，好吧，我要问每个人，哦，我的问题，好吧，或者这里的组合，一切都好，看，这取决于你如何回答，我会很快回答他们，好的，好吧，所以我们会按照语法来做，我们会做最后一个尴尬的问题，所以在书中，你所争论的是，我们所拥有的更糟糕比资本主义更糟糕，对吧，它不再是资本主义了，它比资本主义更糟糕，你概述了一条通往美国和中国之间热战的合理道路，你写到了所有不只是我们作为工人被剥夺权力的方式，而且我们过去认为的资本家阶级、所有权阶级被剥夺了权力，你知道这些超人的这些 Hy，我称之为云，这些云资本家，然后在我看来，在你的政治生活中，你说的投票给左翼政党，你说我们应该竞争的政治行动领域，无论是工作场所组织还是竞选，以及在我们眼皮底下发生的财富和权力争夺的规模，这之间不存在不匹配，如果我这么说，那我就完全荒谬了，呃，我不是说，我不是在贬低参加选举和战略投票的重要性和投票，创建政党，或者你知道前几天我和我的朋友杰里米·科尔宾在一起，伊斯灵顿北杰里米·科尔宾呃，你知道我们我们要求我们要求参与选举，但这还不够，你知道 B 民主不会改变任何事情，我的意思是它可能会被禁止，正如我们从希腊所知道的那样，所以如果你在最后一章和我之前的书里，我明确表示我们需要一场技术革命，我们需要使用这些应用程序来组织对这些权力的抵抗，例如，让我给你举个例子，我们需要打倒这个国家的自来水公司，因为圣路易斯和苏纳克都不会这样做，你怎么做，这里有一个例子，我们可以组织一次战略性时间安排的付款罢工，这样我们就可以找出，例如通过金融部门的好同志，那是什么句子，顺便说一下，同志们金融界可能有人，那里有潜伏者，只是因为你知道他们需要一份工作，他们已经在那里工作了很长时间，我遇到他们，他们来在我耳边低语，你知道我讨厌这份工作，但你知道我能做什么吗？我需要赚点钱，呃，还有什么替代贫困的方法，我的贫困将如何帮助这项事业，我对他们说，是的，继续吧，但你知道那里有人，特别是在 2008 年之后，有很多心灰意冷的人，在柠檬兄弟工作的人，你知道，我有柠檬兄弟的人来帮助我对抗国际货币基金组织，因为他们他们想以某种方式赎回自己，因为 20 年来，他们通过柠檬兄弟的行动摧毁了世界，你知道，无论如何，如果那里没有任何潜伏者，我们需要研究 cdo 的结构，这些是金融衍生品，其中 T临时水务局已经植入了自己发行的几支债券，并了解它们何时到期，以及它们何时容易受到影响，然后发起一次付款罢工，例如，假设所有必须向临时水务局支付账单的人，我们在四月份不支付，我们推迟支付，如果你被罚款，那么我们会发起一个众包国际众包活动，帮助有需要的人向临时水务局支付罚款，你知道，如果我们的目标正确，这将导致它破产，所以你需要将财务知识、cdo 和衍生品知识与集体行动结合起来，这是很聪明的，而不是简单地走上街头，因为我们非常擅长为好的事业动员支持，但我们不太擅长将这种能量转化为权力，转化为选票，转化为推翻破坏我们环境的企业集团的力量破坏我们的河流，以此为例，如果我简单地说投票给我们，那我就太荒谬了，我们需要以我们自 19 世纪以来一直在做的方式组织起来，我的意思是工会运动一直在做什么，它一直在针对资本家的权力, 拥有资本品的人, 这些资本品为他们提供了过高的权力，但
ionally that's it the United States is finished they're deeply in the
red they have a huge budget deficit and
a huge trade deficit which they manag to
turn into a strength only as long as the
Chinese do not touch their Monopoly Chinese big Tech does I'm going to pause you there
and I'm going to offer you guys a choice
we can have basically 5 to 10 minutes of you guys
asking Janis awkward questions or I
could ask him the most awkward question
I have here written down on my piece of
paper so you're going to have a plebis
side so you guys decide audience Q&A
awkward question on piece of
paper audience questions all right so
I'm going to ask everyone oh my question all right or a combination here
goes well look it depends on how you
answer it I will answer them quickly
okay all right so we'll do grammatically
we'll do this very last awkward question
so in the book what you're arguing is
that what we have is worse than
capitalism right it's not capitalism
anymore it's worse than capitalism
you've outlined a plausible path to a
hot war between America and China you
write about all the ways in which not
just we as workers are disempowered but what we used to think of as the capitalist classes the ownership classes are disempowered in relation to these you know the hyperal these Hy the cloud as I call them these
these Cloud capitalists and then it seems to me that in your political life what you say is well vote for a leftwing
party is there not a mismatch here
between the arena of political action
that you're saying we should contest
whether that's workplace organizing or
it's contesting elections and the size
of the wealth and power grab that's
happening under our eyes absolutely if I
said that then I would have been
completely ludicrous uh I'm not saying
I'm not I'm not diminishing the importance of
participating in elections and voting
strategically and voting and creating
political parties or you know I was with
my friend Jeremy Corbin the other day
Islington North Jeremy Corbin uh and you
know we we we demand we demand participation in election but that's not
enough you know B democracy is not going
to change anything I mean it's a could
it would have been banned as we know
from Greece right so if you in the last
chapter and in my previous book um I
make it clear we need a tech Revolution we need to use
these applications in order to organize
resistance against the power of these
clists so for instance let me give you
an example right we need to bring down
the water companies in this country
because neither St nor sunak will do it
how do you do it here's an example what
you we could do we could organize a
payment strike which is strategically
strategically timed so we can find out
for instance through good comrad that we
may have in the financial sector what sentence that was by the way
comrades we might have in the financial
there are people there are sleepers in
there simply because you know they need
a job it's they've been a long time I
meet them I meet them and they come and
whisper in my ear you know I hate this
job but you know what can I do I need to
make some money uh and what is the
alternative poverty how is my poverty
going to help the cause and I say to
them yeah go on but you know there are
people in there and especially after
2008 there were many disenchanted people
people who worked in lemon Brothers you
know I had people from lemon Brothers
come and help me fight the the IMF
because they they they wanted somehow to
redeem themselves as a result of 20
years of destroying the world through
lemon Brothers you know operations anyway and
if there aren't any sleepers in there we
need to study the structure of the the
cdos in these are the financial
derivatives in which T the temps Water
Authority has implanted you know several
of its own bonds and find out when they
are expiring when they are vulnerable
and stage when they are vulnerable a
payment strike for instance let's say
that all the people who have to pay
their bills uh to the temps Water Authority um
in April we don't pay in April we we we
delay it and if you're fined then we
have a crowdsourcing International
crowdsourcing uh campaign to help people
who are in need pay Their fines to the
temp Water Authority you know that will
bring that will make it bankrupt if we
target it properly so you need to
combine knowledge about finances knowledge about cdos and
derivatives with Collective action which
is smart not simply going out on the
street because we are very good at
mobilizing support for good causes we
are not very good at converting that
energy into Power into votes into the
power to bring down the conglomerates
that destroy our environment that
destroy our rivers to use that example so I would if
I simply said vote for us I would be
just ridiculous we need to organize in
the way that we've been doing since the
19th century I mean what have the trades
unions movement been doing it's been
targeting the power of the capitalists
of the ones who own the capital goods that furnish them with exorbitant Authority but

<<<<<<>>>>>>
China VS America | Yanis Varoufakis on Big Tech, Capitalism and Techno-Feudalism (Part 3)

How To Academy 2024年8月24日
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaIKeXnX1UM
  
The world-famous economist and former Greek Finance Minister joins Ash Sarkar to argue that capitalism is dead and present a game-changing new paradigm: technofeudalism. The owners of big tech have become the world's feudal overlords—replacing capitalism with a fundamentally new system that enslaves our minds, defies democracy, and rewrites the rules of global power. But as Varoufakis will also reveal, technofeudalism contains new opportunities to thwart and overturn it, bringing into focus more clearly than ever the revolution we need to escape our digital prison. Watch Ash and Yanis open your eyes to the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world

Part 1 - "This is not Capitalism Anymore!" Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism, Big and Big Tech• "This is not Capitalism Anymore!" Yan...   

Part 2 - Socialism or the Bankers" Yanis Varoufakis on What Killed Capitalism?• "Socialism for the Bankers" Yanis Var...   

Part 3 - China VS America | Yanis Varoufakis on Big Tech, Capitalism and Techno-Feudalism• China VS America | Yanis Varoufakis o...   

Part 4 - Yanis Varoufakis and Ash Sarkar on Argentina, Amazon and Uber• Yanis Varoufakis and Ash Sarkar on Ar...   

okay let me go straight to that why is the United States hegemonic remember that after the second world war the United States came out of the war as the only creditor economy
except Switzerland but doesn't that doesn't count right the only creditor
economy the only economy was that was in a surplus it had a trade surplus it sold
more stuff than it cons that it imported was the United States of America its
factories were intact they were not destroyed like across Continental Europe
or Japan uh it wasn't bankrupt like this country was and remember why you were
bankrupt because you owed all this money to the Americans because they didn't
give you a single bullet during the second world war that they didn't charge
you for and demand payment afterwards which meant that postwar Britain was
bankrupt it was completely in a det prison owned by the United States um we call that D prison the special relationship it's a special relationship yes indeed we call the same
thing that this is what's happening to Greece now we are at detos prison but we
have a very special relationship with Brussels of the same ilk as you do with
the United States uh or back then in 1945 okay so they came out of it with
their factories having their productivity and production capacities being massively enhanced by the second world war by 1945 the United States industry was capable for producing eight times more stuff than it was in 1941 Pearl Harbor just before Pearl Harbor eight times more stuff and they created remember the Breton wood system some of you who are older will remember that the British pound was fixed with a fixed exchange rate to the dollar essentially we had the dollar all of us the Greeks the Germans the French the Italians we had our own currencies but it was a fixed exchange rate with a dollar essentially we had a dollar there were Capital controls we could convert as many of as much of our currency as we wanted to the dollar but if it was a fixed exchange rate it was essentially a currency Union we were in the dollar zone between 1944 and 1971 when Richard Nixon destroyed the Breton wood system that the Americans had created he destroyed it because the whole point about the Breton wood system was that it was a managed International dollar system predicated upon based upon the American Trade Surplus by the late 60s there was no where my nukes where in the nukes where the nukes Thermonuclear War I get you the words where my nukes wa wa so here we have a hegemonic power in 19771 that is now into the red now what happened to the British Empire when it went into the red it collapsed what happened to the Roman Empire it collapsed every time a major power goes into the red it starts fading and the fall is very close in the case of the United States between 1971 and 20120 let's say the beginning of the pandemic its hegemony and power increased exponentially along with its trade deficit it is the only Power in the world that became stronger as a result
of going deeper into a deficit that has
never happened before how did they
succeed in doing it and this is your
answer by maintaining a strict Monopoly
on International payments it was the
only country in the history of the
planet that had a currency which was in demand
people wanted the dollar even if they
didn't want to buy anything from the
Americans because when you put Petrol in
your car if you still have a petrol car
okay even if it is a company owned by
the Dutch and it buys um oil drilled in
let's say Nigeria from a Nigerian
company and there's no American involved
at all every time because it's
denominated in dollars every time you
fill up your petrol tank you are
demanding dollars you have to convert
pounds or Yen or euros into dollars so
the ownership of the international
payment system is what allows the United
States much more so than the ubiquitous
US Army Navy and Air Force Force to
maintain his emony Kissinger knew that I
mentioned that in the book in 1970 he
asked his people around him Kissinger
back then was National Security Council
he was a national security adviser to
Nixon before he became foreign secretary
and he said to them how are we going to
maintain our hegemony if we are in the
red and the answer he got was we'll make
other people other capitalists
capitalists from the rest of the world
pay for our deficits this is what has
been happening but why is it that they
can do that because they have the
Monopoly of the payment system
internationally what wichat does it is
threatens that Monopoly remember the
story with the German manufacturer he's
out of the dollar system and with the
war in Ukraine something remarkable happened
because we chat on the one hand and the
Central Bank of China having created a
digital currency its own publicly owned
app that allows you to make free
payments in rembe in one in the Chinese
currency so there are two things you can
use to make international payments for
free as a foreigner as a Britain you
don't have to be Chinese you have two you have wichat and
you have the digital currency of the
Central Bank of China there are as we
speak 210 million accounts of the digital currency and
business people can use it around the
world to make free payments without
bypassing the the dollar system that is
a clear and present mortal danger for
for American hegemony the reason why
Donald Trump started the Cold War
against China this is my theory in the
book why did he start attacking Huawei
and then ZTE and then you may say of
course but Donald Trump is a Madman he
would attack anyone just for the sake of
it well Joe Biden comes in as the
anti-trump President of the United
States and what does he do with the cold
war that Trump had started does
he Clow back does he Retreat from no he
turbocharges it he comes out with a
declaration in the fall of uh 20 uh
2021 essentially sending the message to
you to China we are going to stop you
from becoming an advanced economy by
banning all sales of advanced microchips
which is essentially it's like it's like
in 1800 Banning steam engines the export of steam engines to
Germany this is like saying this is a we
are declaring econom economic welfare
against you and the is why does he do that the
argument that it's because of Taiwan is
rubbish nothing has changed about Taiwan
the one China policy had always been
accepted by the West since Nixon went to
Beijing uh so it's not that it's not
that China is building up its army or
its Navy I will believe that only when I
see Chinese destroyers and frigates
outside Los Angeles for the time being
all I see is American warships outside
Shanghai so it none of that makes sense
what makes sense is that the Chinese
Payment Systems which brings together
Chinese finance and Chinese Cloud
capital in a most effective way just
visit we chat and you'll see what I mean
is a mortal danger for the Monopoly of
the dollar the war in Ukraine did
something quite interesting this super
highway of all singing all dancing
digital payments Chinese payments the
weat and the digital currency of the
Central Bank of China that was already
there but it's like building a super
highway you know imagine five Lanes on
each side in big spanking new beautiful
Highway with no cars on it because if
you were a capitalist even if you were a
Chinese capitalist you still wanted to
use a dollar because if you produce
aluminum in aluminium in shangzhen you
want to sell most of it to the Americans
so you want to sell it for dollars and
then you take it to Dollars and you take
it to Wall Street and you buy American
bonds you buy real estate in Miami and
so on so the Chinese capitalist didn't
even want to use this super high way of
payments but the moment the United
States together with the European Union
confiscated $450 billion dollars worth
of Russian money I'm not judging this
I'm not saying they should have done it
or not have done it I'm simply saying
they did it so imagine you are a Saudi
Arabian shake or the Amir of some Emirate or
some Indonesian bigwig I'm imag Malian
there you are I'm imagining you can
imagine right and you think oh my God
They confiscated 450 billion smackers because they didn't like their
policies well they may not like me
tomorrow because I'm not the best guy in
the world they know that right um well
maybe I should hedge my bets not put all
my money in the dollar system I will put
most of my money in the dollar system
but I will put some in the Chinese Super
Highway the Americans see that the smart
people in Washington see this as a
serious threat because if they lose the
Monopoly of of you know of the dollar
system of the of the payment system
internationally that's it the United
States is finished they're deeply in the
red they have a huge budget deficit and
a huge trade deficit which they manag to
turn into a strength only as long as the
Chinese do not touch their Monopoly Chinese big Tech does I'm going to pause you there
and I'm going to offer you guys a choice
we can have basically 5 to 10 minutes of you guys
asking Janis awkward questions or I
could ask him the most awkward question
I have here written down on my piece of
paper so you're going to have a plebis
side so you guys decide audience Q&A
awkward question on piece of
paper audience questions all right so
I'm going to ask everyone oh my question all right or a combination here
goes well look it depends on how you
answer it I will answer them quickly
okay all right so we'll do grammatically
we'll do this very last awkward question
so in the book what you're arguing is
that what we have is worse than
capitalism right it's not capitalism
anymore it's worse than capitalism
you've outlined a plausible path to a
hot war between America and China you
write about all the ways in which not
just we as workers are disempowered but what we used to think
of as the capitalist classes the
ownership classes are disempowered in
relation to these you know the hyperal
these Hy the cloud as I call them these
these Cloud capitalists and then it
seems to me that in your political life
what you say is well vote for a leftwing
party is there not a mismatch here
between the arena of political action
that you're saying we should contest
whether that's workplace organizing or
it's contesting elections and the size
of the wealth and power grab that's
happening under our eyes absolutely if I
said that then I would have been
completely ludicrous uh I'm not saying
I'm not I'm not diminishing the importance of
participating in elections and voting
strategically and voting and creating
political parties or you know I was with
my friend Jeremy Corbin the other day
Islington North Jeremy Corbin uh and you
know we we we demand we demand participation in election but that's not
enough you know B democracy is not going
to change anything I mean it's a could
it would have been banned as we know
from Greece right so if you in the last
chapter and in my previous book um I
make it clear we need a tech Revolution we need to use
these applications in order to organize
resistance against the power of these
clists so for instance let me give you
an example right we need to bring down
the water companies in this country
because neither St nor sunak will do it
how do you do it here's an example what
you we could do we could organize a
payment strike which is strategically
strategically timed so we can find out
for instance through good comrad that we
may have in the financial sector what sentence that was by the way
comrades we might have in the financial
there are people there are sleepers in
there simply because you know they need
a job it's they've been a long time I
meet them I meet them and they come and
whisper in my ear you know I hate this
job but you know what can I do I need to
make some money uh and what is the
alternative poverty how is my poverty
going to help the cause and I say to
them yeah go on but you know there are
people in there and especially after
2008 there were many disenchanted people
people who worked in lemon Brothers you
know I had people from lemon Brothers
come and help me fight the the IMF
because they they they wanted somehow to
redeem themselves as a result of 20
years of destroying the world through
lemon Brothers you know operations anyway and
if there aren't any sleepers in there we
need to study the structure of the the
cdos in these are the financial
derivatives in which T the temps Water
Authority has implanted you know several
of its own bonds and find out when they
are expiring when they are vulnerable
and stage when they are vulnerable a
payment strike for instance let's say
that all the people who have to pay
their bills uh to the temps Water Authority um
in April we don't pay in April we we we
delay it and if you're fined then we
have a crowdsourcing International
crowdsourcing uh campaign to help people
who are in need pay Their fines to the temp Water Authority you know that will bring that will make it bankrupt if we target it properly so you need to combine knowledge about finances knowledge about cdos and derivatives with Collective action which is smart not simply going out on the street because we are very good at mobilizing support for good causes we are not very good at converting that energy into Power into votes into the power to bring down the conglomerates that destroy our environment that destroy our rivers to use that example so I would if I simply said vote for us I would be just ridiculous we need to organize in the way that we've been doing since the19th century I mean what have the trades unions movement been doing it's been targeting the power of the capitalistsof the ones who own the capital goods that furnish them with exorbitant Authority but