Talking to My Daughter About the Economy Quotes

“The worst slavery is that of heavily indoctrinated happy morons who adore their chains and cannot wait to thank their masters for the joy of their subservience.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism

“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.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism

“My reason for writing it was the conviction that the economy is too important to leave to the economists.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“All systems of domination work by enveloping us in their narrative and superstitions in such a way that we cannot see beyond them. Taking a step or two back, finding a way to inspect them from the outside, allows us a glimpse of how imperfect, how ludicrous, they are. Securing this glimpse keeps you in touch with reality.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“John Maynard Keynes, wrote the following: “The love of money as a possession … will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“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

“The Matrix is a reflection of our times, or at least our anxieties. It reveals our fear of a mechanization so complete, of a commodification of our bodies and enslavement of our minds so successful, that we are no longer even aware of it, having been made oblivious to our reality by the very technologies that rule us.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“Try mentally to travel to a faraway place, if not necessarily in order to move your world – though how splendid that would be! – but to see it clearly for what it is. Doing so will grant you the opportunity to retain your freedom. And to remain a free spirit as you grow up and make your way in this world, it is essential that you cultivate a rare but crucial freedom: the liberty that comes from knowing how the economy works and from the capacity to answer the trillion-dollar question: ‘Who does what to whom around your neck of the woods and further afield?”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism

“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

“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

“...a cynical person is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Our societies tend to make us all cynics. And no one is more cynical than the economist who sees exchange value as the only value, trivializing experiential value as unnecessary in a society where everything is judged according to the criteria of the market.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“All babies are born naked, but soon after some are dressed in expensive clothes bought at the best boutiques, while the majority wear rags.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“It is at this point in the book that the author famously laments that despite our ability to bring food from the earth, we are incapable of creating a system in which the hungry can be fed.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Μιλώντας στην κόρη μου για την οικονομία

“It may seem paradoxical to you that preventing the destruction of the environment by market society’s preference for exchange value over experiential value should require us to convert every last remaining experiential value into exchange value, but this type of thinking and proposal is currently all the rage.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter

“Los estudios de economía puede que utilicen modelos matemáticos y métodos estadísticos, pero se parecen más a la astrología que a la astronomía.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Economía sin corbata: Conversaciones con mi hija

“So, how did these rulers manage to maintain their power, distributing surplus as they pleased, undisturbed by the majority? The answer is: by cultivating an ideology which caused the majority to believe deep in their hearts that only their rulers had the right to rule. That they lived in the best of all possible worlds. That everything was the way it was destined to be. That the situation on the ground reflected some divine order. That any opposition to them clashed with that divine power’s will, threatening to send the world spinning out of control.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter

“Very briefly, this simple, practical measure would be for a portion of the machines of every company to become the property of everyone – with the percentage of profits corresponding to that portion flowing into a common fund to be shared equally by all. Consider what effect that would have on the course of human history. Currently, increasing automation reduces the portion of total income that goes to workers, diverting more and more money into the pockets of the rich who own the machines. But as we have seen, this ultimately diminishes demand for their products, as the majority have less and less money to spend. But if a portion of the profits were to go automatically into the bank accounts of the workers as well, then this downward pressure on demand, sales and prices would be alleviated, turning the whole of humanity into the beneficiary of the machines’ labour.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter

“The stigma attached to the charging of interest was simply incompatible with the commodification of land and labour and with the Great Reversal. It had to be overturned – and so it was. The Protestants, who broke away from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, played a crucial role in this reversal. Protestantism emerged in opposition to the Pope and the cardinals’ monopoly of God. Protestants insisted that anyone could speak personally with the divinity, unmediated by an authoritarian, stifling Church. Suddenly, the person, the individual who is the director of his own affairs, became the pillar of that reformed Church.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter

“Without profit, they would have become slaves to their creditors”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“Si nos interesa la salvación del planeta, aparentemente la solución pasa por encontrar una manera inteligente de recuperar la capacidad de los humanos de funcionar y de decidir colectivamente, para que dejen de «hacer los idiotas», es decir de mirar sólo sus intereses particulares.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Economía sin corbata: Conversaciones con mi hija

“¿Sería inteligente por parte de los astronautas envenenar el oxígeno de su nave espacial? Esto es exactamente lo que hacemos los seres humanos. Y lo llevamos haciendo desde hace trescientos años, desde que surgieron las sociedades de mercado, cuando los valores de cambio triunfaron sobre los valores experienciales y el beneficio (es decir, la «plusvalía ») adquirió un poder único y absoluto sobre las almas y las acciones de los seres humanos.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Economía sin corbata: Conversaciones con mi hija

“The key to happiness”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter

“Tapi apa yang wajib kita lakukan agar terjadi evolusi karakter dan hasrat? Konflik adalah jawaban singkatnya. Ya, kita punya kewajiban terhadap karakter kita untuk berkonfrontasi dengan dunia dan penolakannya dalam menganugerahkan seluruh keinginan kita seketika, sekaligus konflik dalam diri kita yang dimungkinkan oleh kapasitas kita untuk berpikir sendiri. Aku ingin X tapi apakah sebaiknya Aku ingin X? Kita benci terhadap kekangan tapi pada saat yang sama mengerti bahwa kekangan membebaskan kita, jika pun hanya dengan membantu mempertanyakan motif-motif kita sendiri. Dengan kata lain, kebahagiaan autentik adalah sesuatu yang mungkin tanpa ketidakpuasan maupun kepuasan. Alih-alih diperbudak oleh kepuasan, kita membutuhkan kebebasan untuk tidak terpuaskan.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“Kelas penguasa membutuhkan narasi baru yang dapat melegitimasi mereka, dan mereka pun mengambil sumber dari metode matematis yang sama dengan yang dibuktikan oleh fisikawan dan ahli teknik mesin dengan teorema dan persamaan, bahwa masyarakat pasar adalah tatanan alami yang tertinggi, diciptakan seolah-olah tangan oleh tangan tak terlihat, kalau kita gunakan kata-kata bapak pendiri mereka yang paling tersohor—ekonom Adam Smith. Ideologi ini, agama sekuler baru ini, adalah ilmu ekonomi.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“Ada cara-cara lain indoktrinasi lain pula. Salah satunya adalah media massa, yang tujuannya juga merekayasa persetujuan massal terhadap keputusan politik oligarki yang berlawanan dengan kepentingan kita dan kepentingan planet. Lainnya adalah bentuk indoktrinasi ideologis paling ampuh di antara semuanya: ilmu ekonomi.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“No,’ your grandfather said. ‘We shared whatever packages each of us received. Once, despite the fact that I didn’t smoke, I asked my aunt to send me cigarettes. As soon as I received them, I passed them on to others who smoked without expecting anything from them in return. That’s how it was. We helped each other out.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“On the one hand, you were appalled by the idea that some kids cry themselves to sleep because they are hungry. On the other, you were thoroughly convinced (like all children) that your toys, your clothes, and your house were all rightfully yours. Our minds automatically equate “I have X” with “I deserve X.” 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 About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“هل تعرفين ماذا يدعو سماسرة المال – الممولون والمصرفيون وما شابه – تسديد قرض، متضمناً الفائدة؟ يدعونه خلاصاً كذلك. هل الأمر مصادفة؟ لا، على الإطلاق. كانت مسألة الدَّين مسألةً دينيةً لزمن بعيد. لعلّك سمعت أنّ الإسلام يحرّم استيفاء الفائدة إلى يومنا، رسمياً على الأقل. ينطبق الأمر عينه على المسيحية عندما كان مارلو يكتب مسرحيته. على غرار بعض المسلمين اليوم، رأى المسيحيون في ذلك الوقت أنّ استيفاء فائدة على الدَّين خطيئة أطلقوا عليها تسمية الربا.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, ‫الاقتصاد كما أشرحه لابنتي‬

“Like any ecosystem, a modern economy cannot survive without recycling. Just as animals and plants are continually recycling the oxygen and carbon dioxide that the other provides, so too must workers recycle their wages by spending them in shops and businesses recycle their revenues by spending them on salaries if both are to survive. And just as in our ecosystems, in which a failure of recycling leads to desertification, so when recycling breaks down in the economy we end up with a crisis that results in devastating poverty and deprivation.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

“You may now be wondering, If bankers know that the state will come to their rescue in their time of need, what incentive do they have to limit the loans they dish out during the good times? Wouldn’t a better solution be for the state to rescue the banks – so that people’s savings and the economy’s payment system are preserved – but not to rescue the bankers themselves? Why not send them home penniless as a warning to any other banker who is tempted to do the same? Unfortunately, this obvious solution crashes on the shoals of harsh reality. More often than not, the politicians in charge of government are elected with the help of large contributions from those same bankers. Too often, the politicians need the bankers every bit as much as the bankers need them.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Talking to My Daughter