Schäuble’s plan for Europe | Hacker News Reader

Schäuble’s plan for Europe

yanisvaroufakis.eu

16 pointsreinhardt10 comments

This is just an announcement of an article that apparently hasn't come out yet. It would be better to wait for the actual piece.

Copy of my reply to his question:

As a German, and a worker in the tech industry, Schäuble has proven only one thing in the past, that he is an ignorant and stubborn man, who completely lacks a broader view of the consequences of the things he tries to put in motion, but insists of pushing horrible things that he thinks help germany. (Previously: Trying to allow German army activities within the borders of Germany, trying to implement and make legal a government-sponsored trojan that he claimed would be able to infiltrate every computer.)

As far as i am concerned he is only continuing his plan of trying to put Germany over everything, regardless what kind of damage he does or even of whether he even does any good in the process.

I don't know if Yanis will be able to effect any positive change anymore at this point, but if even a few people learn that this is a horribly nationalist plan by a horribly nationalist man, then i praise his efforts.

Edit:

Just to make it clear how horrible Schäuble as a human is:

    - committed tax fraud on 100_000 DM by a gun trader
    - tried to make it legal for the german army to operate
      in german borders in case terrorists try to attack
      ports with ships as bombs
    - tried to make it legal for the german army to shoot
      down passenger planes in case of terrorists
    - tried to make legal a government trojan that would
      breach all privacy rights, but is also impossible

Now he's minister of finance and seems to be successfully throwing a country out of the EU.

Setting aside the rhetoric of Schäuble and his supporters, is there any defensible argument for the capacity of this (or future) Greek administrations to enforce fiscal discipline on its peoples.

There is nothing to suggest even affluent Greeks want to pay their share of the tax burden.

From a Der Spiegel article, five years ago:

  His staff have become very creative when it comes to 
  tracking down tax offenders: They use police helicopters
  to fly over Athens' affluent suburbs and make films of 
  homes owned by doctors, lawyers and businesspeople. They
  use satellite pictures by Google Earth to locate country
  villas, swimming pools and properties. And these tactics
  have revealed that the suburbs didn't have 324 swimming 
  pools, as was reported, but rather 16,974.

  Tax fraud investigators spent a number of weeks on 
  nightclub parking lots in Athens and noted down the
  registration numbers of luxury sedans. Their  
  investigation revealed that approximately 6,000 car 
  owners have vehicles worth €100,000, but only reported
  to the tax authorities that they have an annual income 
  of €10,000.

[1] Finding Swimming Pools with Google Earth: Greek Government Hauls in Billions in Back Taxes

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/finding-swimming-...

Not just any army activities by the way. Schäuble pushed for shooting down civilian airplanes in case of a 9/11 scenario, something that is in clear violation of the first amendment of Germany's constitution.

Let's not forget his previous financial dealings either, being involved in illegal donations for the CDU and not willing to testify.

Schäuble is an incompetent despicable human being by any reasonable measure.

Goddamn, i had completely forgotten about his involvement in the tax fraud issue. Let me update my post a bit.

There are no amendments in the constitution.

Thanks for that perspective, I was wondering if, as a Greek, I'm being biased against him when he seems very myopic to me.

Sticking to your validly formed opinion, no matter what, and never compromising in the slightest is beneficial in academia, because you need grit in convincing all those new students of your theories, and your results probably came from decades of work. Similarly, diplomacy is not too important, at least as soon as you have tenure.

While being a politician and dealing with other countries means lots and lots of (sometimes bad) compromises and a lot of diplomacy.

Varoufakis never cared for that. He constantly insulted the people on the other side, with the simple "excuse" that they are filthy politicians and he's a noble warrior for the common good. He didn't care for established procedures and common courtesy (like recording others without their knowledge or consent), everything was fair game to him.

That's why he was such a terrible representative of Greece. And all his petty attacks after the fact don't serve Greece in the slightest, they only feed his ego and his fans.

I would have expected him to keep silent for a while, in order to help Mr Tsipras reach a solution.

"You have to be willing to blow things up in order to be effective in negotiating strategy." Y. Varoufakis on "Behind the news" podcast, 2014.

Varoufakis is using classic populist rhetoric:

- Simplisitc notion of the cause of the problem by an international cabal of bankers and capitalists.

- Us-vs-them, good-vs-evil manichean worldview.

- Simplistic notion of how problems can be solved.

- Strong and resolute mobilisation against "unnaturally" divisive parties and querulous organised interest groups that want to destroy "us".

- Varoufakis cast himself as representatives of the comman person, of an betrayed and neglected Greek public.

- He's effectively capitalising on lingering anti-german sentiment, and personalising it in the figure of Schauble.

He was dealing with power hungry career politicians and did everything to piss them off and is now wondering why they act so mad and irrational.

I personally think, that Schäuble is horrible. Aside from the political anecdotes [0] I find the press conference in which he humiliated his spokesman particularly informing about his character [1].

In my mind Varoufakis is partly responsible for how things went, though. He always underestimated how fragile the EU community is and how little interest other leaders had to enrage the people at home by seemingly giving money away to Greek clowns on motorcycles.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_2.0

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8TzusgYN30

Reply on news.ycombinator.com