Big! We really need to be talking about this and examining assumptions and presuppositions that act as hidden assumptions. Yanis is a systems thinker.
The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to do with… really-existing capitalism. Behind this elegant utopian mathematical the powers-that-be hide a dismal dystopia that is failing humanity in a variety of ways.…
The emperor has no clothes.
Pure capitalism and pure socialism are both based on utopian thinking. They are ideal rather than real, based on models whose stipulated assumptions are not achievable in the real world given existing conditions. It is questionable whether those conditions could ever be met.
This doesn't imply, however, that more ideal society as a functional utopia is not achievable by getting from here to closer to there, that is, getting from where we are now to where would like like to be and doing so realistically through iteration and incrementation. This is an evolutionary process in a complex adaptive system characterized by reflexivity and emergence, hence, affected by synergy with the implication of uncertainty. Conversely, trying to impose an ideal structural system constructed from assumptions is folly.
Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford UniversityYanis Varoufakis
“Pure capitalism and pure socialism are both based on utopian thinking. They are ideal rather than real, based on models whose stipulated assumptions are not achievable in the real world given existing conditions. It is questionable whether those conditions could ever be met.”
ReplyDeleteNo those conditions can never be met in this world. Nor would we want them to be, since the extremes of capitalism and socialism each have problems.
I say the preferable setup is balance between capitalism and socialism. This balance can never be perfectly achieved, but it is a worthy star to steer the ship of state by.
Today the West is radically skewed toward neoliberalism. This loss of balance will be the West's undoing.