Yanis Varoufakis on the future of capitalism [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
1. He claims that Google and Facebook and the like only spend 1% of their revenue paying their employees and that therefore any money that goes to them sort of stays out of the circular economy. As far as I can tell, there are absolutely no sources to back this up available online. Not from Google's official reporting, and not even from him: he himself just states the number, but doesn't explain how or where he got it from. In my search I haven't found a case where he cites it, either. ~All I can really find is that Google's operating expenses are around $261 billion as of this year[1], and their revenue was $385[2] — and since operating expenses are usually at least substantially payroll, it's hard to tell.~ Edit: At least two commenters below did a quick back of the napkin calculation, multiplying the median salary of a Google employee by the number of Google employees to get something like 36 billion, which is about 10% of the companies overall revenue. So maybe that's what he meant. But it would have been good for him to actually — first of all — not get the number an order of magnitude off, and second of all, to actually explain how he got that number!
2. Then he brings up the idea that someone's Tesla was remotely deactivated. This was debunked[3]. Edit: Another commenter pointed out that maybe he meant this story where full self-driving got remotely disabled on a car that was bought secondhand[7]. This does match better the part where he mentioned that the car was sold secondhand before it got deactivated. So there's that. But again, it would have been good if he had actually gotten his facts straight.
3. He brings up this idea that Teslas sell your user data Amazon. This is, at least, roundly contradicted by their legally binding privacy policy, and even according to the Mozilla Foundation there's no evidence of Tesla ever selling driver data to a third party[4] (although they've been very, shall we say, uncareful about it in at least two instances, but those don't resemble anything like what he's claiming). One random user on a Tesla owners' forum got freaked out because they saw the car sending data to "Amazon", but when they checked on the IP addresses, it became clear it was using just sending information to AWS servers, which are almost certainly run and owned by Tesla, not Amazon[5], which is what a technically savvy person would assume to begin with anyway.
4. He argues that Volkswagen electric cars can't compete with Teslas because Volkswagen cars "don't have access to cloud capital", which he says gives Tesla an advantage because they do, based on point 3. But given that there's absolutely no evidence of that anywhere, I feel like his entire argument crumbles, because it becomes very unclear how Tesla is benefiting from cloud capital in a way Volkswagen it is not. *Especially* since according to the Mozilla Foundation, Volkswagen not only gathers much more data about you, but actually actively sells it to third parties for advertising purposes, which they openly admit[6].
[1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOGL/alphabet/ope... [2]: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/reve... [3]: https://www.theverge.com/tesla/757594/tesla-cybertruck-deact... [4]: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/tesl... [5]: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/uploaded-data-to-ama... [6]: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/volk...
"What does VW say they can do with this vast treasure trove of personal information, car data, and inferences they collect on you? Well, they use it to make more money, of course. Because selling cars isn't a big enough business these days, now, your personal information is another gold mine for all car companies to tap into. And tap into it they do. VW says they can use it for their own personalized and targeted advertising purposes or those or their affiliates, business partners, or other third parties. They can share it with third parties who can use it for the commercial purpose of marketing their products and services to you. They also say they can use or disclose your de-identified data for "any purpose." "
[7]: https://www.jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-fe...
It's unlikely that this is mostly for payroll. From AI I got:
"median total compensation per employee was approximately $279,802 in 2022, and with 183,323 employees at the end of 2024, total estimated compensation (salary + equity + benefits) likely exceeds $50 billion, or ~14–15% of total revenue"
So maybe it's not 1% as in Varoufakis talk but even if it's 15% of revenue that's also quite low. Also keep in mind in this AI reponse it includes equity (stocks) so that in this way employee is becoming investor/shareholder.
To call it "labor" to share boomer-humor memes and use Marketplace (i.e. users doing what they want on FB) is stretching the term. As with youtube, the prolific creators on instagram and the like also make piles of money. Yet it's being framed as though they're putting all this effort for the company's benefit only.
Tesla does have the ability to remotely disable your car: https://theoffroading.com/can-tesla-shut-down-your-car-remot... Again: the tech is there and as we already experienced with John Deer machinery will be used when called upon https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrain...
The first link contradicts the cited, and much more trustworthy, analysis from the Mozilla Foundation:
"Here's the good news with Tesla when it comes to privacy -- they very clearly state in their privacy documentation that they don't sell or rent your personal information to third parties ... Tesla makes other promises in their privacy that sound quite good. They say they won't share your personal information with third parties for their own use unless you opt-in (don't opt-in!). They say they don't "associate the vehicle data generated by your driving with your identity or account by default.""
For the second, there's no reliable (not obviously AI generated slop) evidence I've been able to find outside of offroading.com, at all, that there's any remote shutdown feature in Teslas, user accessible or no. They have PIN to drive, Sentry mode, etc, and they can remotely limit the speed to 50mph, but afaict, there's no remote disable feature.
As you say, this is something they have he technical capability to implement, but (1) it would have to be a brand new feature they add, they don't have it yet and haven't done it, and (2) at that point basically any car company from Volkswagen to Toyota could equally also do it, since all modern cars are internet connected and controlled by computers now. So this introduced a parity that completely undercuts this guy's point about Tesla's being uniquely bad
As for selling data: have look at this table from Mozilla Org, particularly the table where they list the worst offenders re. privacy: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/arti...
That doesn't contradict what I was saying, really. They can do all the things the table checkmarks them as doing and it doesn't mean they're selling data to any third parties. It just says they collect a lot of data, use it, have a bad track record with employees accidentally leaking parts of it, and so on.
My whole overall point is that this guy is making specific claims that are either outright false (e.g. the reason Tesla is doing better than VW EVs is that they make money off selling user data as a sideline, and in general bolster their business with cloud capital) or misleading / not correct in the way he needs them to be true.
> Tesla is not uniquely bad - however, it is one of 5 companies that actually already maintains a kill-switch functionality: https://daxstreet.com/list/275984/5-cars-with-factory-kill-s.... The other 4 are BMW, GM, Ford and Chrysler. The tech is there and ready and can be used.
This article is formatted in a way that makes me strongly thing it is AI generated, but more problematically (since that's an imperfect indicator), when it makes claims like "[Tesla has] disabled vehicles used in crimes" or "The system includes redundant communication methods and can execute complex shutdown procedures that safely manage the vehicle’s transition from operation to immobilization.
Unlike simpler kill switches that merely cut ignition, Tesla’s system can coordinate with the vehicle’s autonomous driving features, regenerative braking, and battery management systems to ensure safe shutdown," it just says these things — it doesn't actually link to any news articles, primary sources, anything to substantiate them, and when I look them up, I don't find anything, as I said. So it seems to me as if you've found just another uncited tertiary resource saying the same things, but no meaningful evidence.
Wealth and income limits for individuals and companies are a start. No one needs to be a billionaire, and they sure as hell didn't earn it.
Then it’s not easy enough to deal with is it? And capitalism seems to have created this situation so you could are the that this is inherent in the system.
I mean, the solutions are easy, getting people to vote for them is a problem, although a problem more specific to the US.
> And capitalism seems to have created this situation so you could are the that this is inherent in the system.
I wouldn't say that, given most countries capitalist systems were able to deal with or avoid that situation altogether. Rather than this problem being inherent to capitalism, it seems it is the result of specific events that unfolded in the US. Really, it can all be traced back to Reagan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...
It might be interesting to try and find some more objective support of my claim, and I'll try and post anything worth posting, but anecdotally...the difference between the US and other developed countries is night and day. It's so incredibly easy to run into people in the US who genuinely astoundingly lack the basic knowledge that in other countries it is taken for granted that adults hold.
There's a reason other countries talk shows don't have segments like asking random pedestrians to name any country, literally any country on a world map, so they can laugh when they fail.
Inequality is mostly a red herring and not a core issue in and of itself. Public spending as % of GDP has only really been going up for over a century, and we expect UBI and the like to be in our future. Meanwhile we're already seeing what those excesses can lead to in France if we're not careful.
The problem is not inequality itself, is that an entity that grows without a ceiling will eventually reach a size such that rules can’t be enforced on it. From that point on, laws are wet paper.
As for individuals, dynasty dissipates and breaks up in wealth. A rich person doesn't live forever, and seldom do competing offspring manage to generate as much. Their pile shrinks as they spend it away.
Notwithstanding that, name a dollar figure above Bezos' wealth at which suddenly he can operate outside the law. We can already see what concentrated power looks like; it is entrenched and intertwined with government, not operating outside its bounds. See: Xi Ping, Putin and others. Power often comes with wealth, but wealth in itself doesn't lead to that level of power, at least in the Liberal world.
Above? He already does. He does not need to break the law in a literal sense: he can have teams of lawyers exploiting their way into not paying taxes faster than the state can patch the laws, avoid antitrust through lobbying, he owns a newspaper to influence public opinion and elections if needed…
>wealth in itself doesn't lead to that level of power, at least in the Liberal world.
How many presidential pardons have been bought so far in the US this term?
This is unsubstantiated.
> avoid antitrust through lobbying
Lobbying does not guarantee any result, it is literally just asking the government for something you want. And, why does Amazon need to be subject to anti-trust? By far their most profitable product is AWS, and it has a ton of competitors.
> How many presidential pardons have been bought so far in the US this term?
This says a lot about Trump, but pardons? That's it?
It is substantiated enough to have its own article on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_tax_avoidance
>This says a lot about Trump, but pardons? That's it?
Do we really need an enumeration of cases where corporations and the rich and are intertwined with political power in the west?
If political pardons are too tame, or trump is considered an anomaly, we can just point in the general direction of Iraq.
> Do we really need an enumeration of cases where corporations and the rich and are intertwined with political power in the west?
Not a level of power that allows them to completely operate outside the law.
Regulation works in a theoretical world where the rules of the game are set by an outsider entity, which is powerful enough to enforce said rules and yet completely separate from economic power.
In real life, players affect the rules: lobbying, marketing, media ownership, cronyism…
Context: the speaker Lea Ypi is a professor of political philosophy. She grew up in socialist Albania, and here she's talking about how during her studies of political philosophy in Rome, her Western "socialist" classmates had a fantasy about socialism, and didn't want to hear about her experience growing up in socialism/about the socialist countries that have failed.
I have a feeling you're doing the same, just with a different -ism.
There's often some bait-and-switch semantic games employed to sell people on the latter.
A lack of regulation.
> We are living in a world where corporations are people and it’s ok to lobby
Corporate personhood is not the same thing as "corporations are people". Lobbying wouldn't inherently be an issue with an education and caring voting population.
Europe has a weak tech sector and relatively high taxes and high regulations.
As an European I have to say, perhaps the American approach is better.
But he, feel free to tax that tech sector into oblivion. If Europe ever gets it's shit together, we would love to take over the crown.
The local governments in this area are mostly starved of funds, despite having the world’s largest companies who pay their executives and rare talent among the highest compensation in the world.
The big tech companies can afford to hire private security with staff larger than the local police departments.
And they NEED that security to keep the homeless people in tents and broke down RVs from parking on their property.
The homeless and jobless end up breaking into the houses of everyone who can’t afford private security. If they don’t become thieves or druggies, then they are a broken husk of a person.
When companies don’t like the neighborhood, they pick up and move to the next hot city and the cycle repeats there.
This isn’t the fault of big tech alone, but don’t pretend like the US has figured out how to balance society and taxation.
Lack of effective utilization of said revenue is by far the issue here, as can be seen by looking at peer states/cities/countries spending analogous amounts of money.
And yes, because of the tax situation these people are often not resident in the EU. London, Paris and Geneva have small neighborhoods of oil sheik families, for example. Brussels has entire neighborhoods effectively only accessible to EU appointees. Amsterdam ... and so on and so forth.
You'll get to the 19th arrondissement just after passing Lafayette. Go look "under the canal" (will make sense when you get there, it's really under a bridge)
I don't believe they're fentanyl addicts, no shortage of addicts though. The main bulk are refugees (from Afghanistan, Syria, Africa, ...), most of the addicts are French, the dealers are immigrants.
And then there's the very large "are they addicts?" group. You see, it gets cold there. You know what really increases your comfort level if you have to live in the cold? Alcohol. And they definitely consume alcohol at a rate that a doctor would call addicted, but they're not really addicted. Or, if they had proper shelter they wouldn't be. Of course, alcohol really increases your comfort and increased the odds you'll freeze to death, so there's a daily round ...
This is what it looks like:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/12/17/in-paris...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix1T0-nV8EA
(you can't really tell, but the whole camp is almost 1 kilometer long. Oh and this is one of 7 such places in the city center alone. In other words, you can start at the Notre Dame and go in basically any direction and there'll be a place like this. And the richest areas of France are right next to Notre Dame)
(btw: I've been to San Francisco too and the homeless camps in Paris are way bigger and worse than the ones in San Francisco. Way worse. Of course, I could easily have missed stuff. Oh, and obviously, while it's not impossible to freeze to death in San Francisco, I doubt it's common)
Don't worry, authorities are doing their very best to send these people away. Occasionally they succeed for a week or two, but never for very long. Half the time they essentially encourage them to go to the UK.
And this doesn't even remotely compare to the "Calais Jungle", I mean that particular camp is gone, but there's plenty new ones.
It's not better, it's just more attractive. The EU isn't the only country with regulations, every single other western country does, every single other first world country does.
The US allows greed to flourish at the expensive of it's people. That might be better for the people developing the tech, but it isn't better for society in the longrun.
Are you finding the EU to be even remotely greed-free?
Taxes are not required for spending. Spending isn't required for spending, because ultimately government money is a proxy for power differentials and collective strategy.
Money defines which behaviours and which demographics are rewarded, and which are starved and punished. There are numbers and flow dynamics, but it's primarily a social credit system, not a substance.
Taxes are really a way to control the relative power of some groups over others - a form of regulation.
So when you have events like the New Deal and high taxes on the super rich, that means the economy is tuned towards diminishing power differentials, expanding infrastructure, and access to opportunity.
Low taxes on the super rich means expanding power differentials, more rigid hierarchy, diminishing collective infrastructure, and decreasing access to opportunity.
Likewise with provision of public services. If healthcare is cheap, guaranteed, and widely distributed, that increases individual agency and diminishes hierarchy.
If it's expensive and rationed by/for corporate monopolies, it increases hierarchy and diminishes agency.
Taxes are a necessary evil for society and order. The USA tried to have zero ability to tax the states/people and that only lasted about 10 years before that national government failed and they tried another constitution with more national government powers.
You aren’t arguing “against taxes”, you just have a different opinion on the taxation regime and the coefficients. The sooner you recognize that, the faster your discussions with other humans might actually yield productive results.
(which is why many of EU's rich are domiciled there, which also means they're not counted in the EU's GINI coefficient. Almost no US citizens do the same, because of how the tax system works)
No, the EU rich very much physically stayed inside the EU, fully enjoying the benefits of those countries without paying tax.
Doesn't work for US citizens because global income is taxed in the US.
This provides an overview [1]
For 2026 "The UAE's tax system is getting stricter. Not in rates. In enforcement." [2]
[0] https://mof.gov.ae/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Federal-Decree...
[1] https://mof.gov.ae/en/public-finance/tax/corporate-tax/
[2] https://www.kayrouzandassociates.com/insights/uae-tax-change...
So who pays for these? What you are suggesting is government subsidies of companies. This sounds like communism to me.