Rishikesh Mishra

“The black magic of banking destabilizes market societies. It massively amplifies wealth creation during the good times and wealth destruction during the bad times, constantly skewing the distribution of power and money. But to be fair, bankers are just that: massive amplifiers. The root causes of market society’s fundamental instability lie elsewhere, buried deeply in the weird nature of two peculiar commodities: human labour and money.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter

“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”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter

“In important ways, we resemble hamsters on their spinning wheels: no matter how fast we run, we are not really going anywhere. We might well conclude that the machines aren’t slaving away for our benefit; at times it even seems like we’re working furiously to maintain them.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“And worst of all, we knew this could happen. We've been impotently worrying about what a solar flare could do to electronic infrastructure since the 1900s. But my generation was so preoccupied with fixing the mess left by the unaddressed-and-fully-known-about environmental disaster of the previous generation that we committed the same sin of criminal procrastination against yours. I ask no forgiveness for this, because we deserve none.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate