Talking to My Daughter

by Yanis Varoufakis

the original question, ‘Why so much inequality between peoples?’ blends into another, more sinister question: ‘Is it not simply that some groups of people are smarter and, as a result, more capable than others?’

When our eyes fall on those who lack the bare necessities, we immediately sympathize and express outrage that they do not have enough, but we do not for a moment allow ourselves to think that their deprivation may be the product of the same process that led to our affluence.

Anything without a price, anything that can’t be sold, tends to be considered worthless,

when they are offered a monetary sum for it, the shift from contribution to transaction ruins the pleasure, while the sum being offered isn’t enough to make up for it,

Steinbeck tells the story of how, while millions were hungry, tons of potatoes were thrown into a river and crates of oranges were sprayed with kerosene in order to make them inedible.

However hard central bankers have tried to stop bankers from starting uncontrollable fires, the bankers have almost always got away with arson, forcing panicking central bank officials to create rivers of new money with which to extinguish the flames.

Bankers pull every string they can to convince politicians to legislate against debt forgiveness. And yet it is the banks above all who are responsible for the recklessness that makes such forgiveness essential, and it is the bankers who are least likely to lose their personal wealth or even the control of their businesses when the crash comes.

when a crash occurs brought on by their actions, those who have delivered the fieriest of speeches vehemently opposing substantial government intervention in the economy suddenly demand the state’s aid. ‘Where is the government when we need it?’ they yelp.

And it is true that, all other things being equal, any employer would rejoice at the thought of paying lower wages. The trouble is that those dastardly other things just refuse to remain equal.

The Luddites are among history’s more misunderstood protagonists. Their quarrel was not with the machines themselves, even though they wrecked quite a few of them; they were opposed to the fact that so few owned the machines. It was the social arrangement not the technology they objected to.

‘Azande see as well as we that the failure of their oracle to prophesy truly calls for explanation, but so entangled are they in mystical notions that they must make use of them to account for failure. The contradiction between experience and one mystical notion is explained by reference to other mystical notions.’

Quoted with reference to mainstream economists.

When economists insist that they too are scientists because they use mathematics, they are no different from astrologists protesting that they are just as scientific as astronomers because they also use computers and complicated charts.