Yanis

I’ve just turned the last page of Talking to My Daughter About the Economy by Yanis Varouvakis.

I’ve long admired Yanis and he’s good authorial company in this book but I ultimately found it a bit thin, especially when compared to other popular books with similar remits (Filthy Lucre by Joseph Heath being my fave).

I have a special dislike of the Guns, Germs and Steel narrative of history and I think it has influenced Yanis’ writing for the worse. I don’t see how anyone can believe in the inevitability of geographic determinism while also being an activist with “resistance is never futile” as a personal motto. Sorry Yanis. I still love you.

Anyway, Yanis does have a certain Escapological sensibility that I thought I’d share with you all today. Towards the end of the book (shortly after a sub-chapter called “Escape Hatch,” oddly enough) he writes:

Something that angers and terrifies me more than almost anything else is the thought of being the plaything of forces and people of which I am oblivious.

and

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.

I just wish he’d more successfully squared this libertarian streak with the broader socialist/democratic moral of the book. That is the challenge for intellectual Escapologists.

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