Yanis Varoufakis recently participated in various discussions on Metaverse, NFT, and play-to-earn games. Before becoming a member of Parliament, Varoufaki was an economist at Valve and eventually became Minister of Finance in his native Greece. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Essex. Varoufaki taught economics at the University of Sydney and the University of Athens.
Varoufaki calls himself an “unstable and inconsistent Marxist.” He sat down with CryptoSyllabus and discussed his views during the interview. The organization describes itself as “a network hub, a decentralized think tank that will enable, deepen and improve the work of journalists, scholars and intellectuals.” We promised to break through the hype and critically analyze the world of cryptocurrencies. “
The economist didn’t really chop up the words about the Metaverse. “It’s clear that a gaming community like the one we studied at Valve today, ten years later, is acting as a full-fledged metaverse for using Zuckerberg’s terminology. Gamers were attracted to the game, Once inside, they stayed alive. Most of their lives are making friends, producing goods for sale, consuming and discussing entertainment, “Barrowfaquis said. -A down-platform currency he manages. How can Zuckerberg resist the parallelism with Digital Fifdam, who dreams of becoming a techno road? “
While he was absorbed in the games he earned from play, Varoufakis pointed out that some positive things could potentially come from them. “When I worked with Valve, there were thousands of young people 10 years ago in China, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere making mint by servicing members of Valve’s gaming community.” He said. It was good for Shenzhen youth who could make $ 60,000 a year by designing a digital hat on a PC instead of destroying themselves in a sweatshop. But the question is whether all workers in Shenzhen (and beyond) can be saved from the sweatshop by migrating to the Metaverse? The answer is not before we can move robots for all of us to recreate the material state of our lives. Varoufaki called “the idea that people have to play like robots to make a living in their spare time” as “the deification of misanthropy.”
When it comes to NFTs, Varoufakis believes “like all other products.” He said they “provide nothing new in the digital world, except perhaps supercharging the idealism of capitalism.” “In the analog world, NFTs are only valuable to the extent that the right to brag provides usefulness to those who care for them,” he said. He believes that NFTs will not overturn “the structure of property rights that creates and supports the exorbitant power of oligarchy for many.” Varoufakis drew similarities between NFTs and the markets that emerged around in-game items when working at Valve. What if the prices of these voluntarily profitable items and activities plummet? That was the reason why the people of Valve were awakened at night. “
Economists have finally embarked on cryptocurrencies and blockchain. “The environmental cost of cryptocurrencies is very high, but even if there is a magic wand that runs the blockchain at zero watts due to its abandonment, cryptocurrencies remain more of a problem than a solution,” he continues. , “In our current clever, exploitative, irrational, and inhuman world system, the rise of cryptographic applications makes our society more clever, more exploitative, more irrational, and It just makes it more inhuman. Cryptocurrencies, I don’t even mention their environmental impact. “
Varoufakis raised many interesting points about Metaverse, NFT, and play-to-earn games. These are of interest to everyone who participates in these communities, regardless of the opinions of all the discussions around them. Economists can be a valuable source of wisdom when it comes to navigating these issues in the future.
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