Another Now, by Yanis Varoufakis

Originally published on Josh Friedlander's Goodreads Reviews.

Varoufakis was the Greek finance minister who briefly gained fame in 2015 when he tried to stare down the troika during his country's debt crisis. For a few weeks Greece failed to pay back an IMF loan (a first for a developed country), after which Varoufakis resigned and became something of a spokesman for the nebulous opposition to neoliberalism, multinationals and financial capitalism. This novel is basically economic science fiction (a bit like Red Plenty), a frame story about an engineer discovering a portal to a parallel world closer to its author's ideal, which encloses dispatches from it. In this alternative reality, some global movements to fights back against banks and Big Tech have led to the abolition of stock markets, companies becoming worker-owned and -governed collectives, and universal basic income, all explained in extensive detail. Blockchains come into it somehow, and Big Data, harnessed for the collective good instead of corporate profit. If this all sounds a bit didactic and preachy, well, it is, but somewhat tempered by the author including a banker character who is more critical of the whole thing (though by the end she is mostly won over).

Speculation is fun, but I felt like there was just too much hand-waving about potential problems. The idea about worker-owned tech companies reminded me of the recent story of a start-up CEO who lent money to his employees to buy equity in the company, branding it as "the most employee-friendly program possible". Had the company become a huge success, it would have seemed like a nice gesture: instead of letting wealthy insiders get all the access to that equity, he'd helped ordinary workers take part. But when the company spiraled, it ended up laying off many of the people who were now in debt to it for its worthless equity, and looked more like a scam. (And this in turn reminds me of the perennial discussion about making it easier for regular people to become "accredited investors", allowing them access to some of the best investments - but much more often, to some of the worst ones.) In the case of worker-owned tech companies, for the vast majority of cases the ups and downs of the company's shares wouldn't provide great returns, definitely as compared to investing the equivalent in a diversified portfolio. You already work there, why would you want to own it! CEOs getting paid in equity is essentially a penalty, a way to align their incentives with those of the company, although it is an easier risk to handle when your pay is much higher. (For the record, I think executive pay is way too high and a classic case of market failure, although this book doesn't get onto it.)

Anyway, I think the same applies mutatis mutandis with stuff like the UBI alternative he suggests (everyone is born with an endowment that they aren't allowed to use until they're older, and it pays dividends). It works great in a wealthy society with a positive growth pyramid, but in the absence of that, where do those dividends come from? And the "Other Now"'s idea of a double tax on countries with a trade imbalance (both sides have to pay it) which funds a relief fund for poor countries seems like a terrible inefficiency (although its appeal to the author is easy to understand). Near the end there is an unexpected attack on idea of "affirmative consent"

If I have to ask, my desire must be weak. And to be honest, comrades, if he has to ask, it’s over for me before it begins.

I would say that the fundamental difference between me and this book's author is that he is a populist and I'm an elitist; he thinks that the global polis generally believes in liberal ideas and can be relied on to produce a safe and equitable society, as long as the tentacles of the Davos types are removed. I…doubt that, I come from a third-world country. But look, this is his book, and it's fiction. He's having some fun here and trying to poke holes in conventional wisdom - never a bad idea.