Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present

by Yanis Varoufakis

‘Capitalism and science fiction share one thing,’ he replied coolly. ‘They trade in future assets using fictitious currency.

‘None of us are free if one of us is chained.’

Today, every Apple, Samsung, Google or Microsoft device relies on infrastructure and components that were originally developed thanks to a government grant or made possible by drawing on the commons of ideas that grew in the same way folk tales and songs do: communally. While big tech has eagerly appropriated all this socially produced capital – and made a mint in the process – it has never paid any dividends to society.

‘Who needs mythology when reality is so unreal?’

isegoria – the ancient Athenian ideal that every opinion in an assembly should be judged on its merits alone, rather than according to who spoke the words.

‘That exorbitant power ultimately enslaves those who acquire it.’