roman philosophique ( )

Yanis Varoufakis came to fame in 2015, when he briefly served as Greece's Minister of Finance during the height of their sovereign debt crisis. You likely know him from his non-fiction writing on economics. In the same vein of Bill McKibben's, Vermont Free Radio, it seems as though Varoufakis wrote Another Now as an respite from all his serious work, to get to daydream for awhile.

Another Now is of an emerging genre referred to as "FinFi" (financial fiction); whereas SciFi explores novel scientific innovations, FinFi explores novel financial innovations. As the title suggests, the book describes the opening of a communications portal between world. The year is 2025. One "now" is very much like our own; in the "other now," histories diverged around the 2008 Financial Crisis: Occupy Wall Street was instead "Ossify Wall Street." Instead of Bitcoin, our doppelgängers got "kosmos," (a decentralized "Bancor" of sorts to replace the dollar as an International Reserve Currency). Instead of a doubling down on neoliberalism, stock exchanges were abolished.

There are some places where Varoufakis ventures out on a limb. For example: he writes from a feminist perspective at one point to speak about sex and gender roles. I would be interested to hear the take of women on whether this lands, or is a bridge too far.

To revisit "Vermont Free Radio," I feel as though Varoufakis didn't quite achieve the level of narrative engagement McKibben pulls off in his book. "Vermont Free Radio" feels first a work of fiction, and secondarily a manifesto. With Varoufakis, the order feels reversed; "Another Now" is first and foremost a manifesto; secondarily a work of fiction. This detracts a bit from its readability. I would say it is pretty comparable to "Sophie's World" in this regard.

That said, this means there is substantial meat to Varoufakis' proposals. I would love to hear some in-depth explorations by researchers and activists in this area—such as in the pages of "Dissent."

If you're looking for an approachable readable book exploring the frontiers of alternative economics, you'll likely enjoy Varoufakis' latest! ( )

Wow!

This is a Utopia, with flaws! Thomas Moore wrote the original Utopia and, since then, many Utopias and Dystopias have been created. This is, by far, the most complex that I have read.

The novel is written from a point 15 years in the future. It looks not just upon the world in which we live, but that of a parallel world in a different dimension. This 'new' world is accessed through a wormhole in which, one is only allowed to communicate with one's alter ego.

The new world treated the financial meltdown of 2008 in a very different manner. The result was the end of Capitalism, but not the market. Banks, stock exchanges and all financial activity is changed to rid us of those mass egos that make up the giants of industry. How could this be bad?

By a clever method of having four characters interact with this new now, Yanis manages to explore many perspectives of Utopia and, surprise, surprise, some things are better, and some are worse.

By this complex play with literary entities, Yanis Varoufakis examines our actions post the financial crisis AND the other actions we could/should have taken. Were I to pretend to understand all of the economic ins and outs, my nose would start to go: the main thing that we realise, is that governmental cries of, "There is no alternative" are somewhat alienated from the truth. ( )

In the alternate future, Yanis Varoufakis is a science fiction writer. I enjoyed the discussion of the economic ideas but the science fiction story used to frame it was redundant.

If you like these ideas, the good news is you can try them out right now! In fact one of those ideas the author lifted from his experience working for Steam. One of the characters raises this issue in the book and it is not addressed save for pithy aphorisms. The difference between the other world and ours is that you can do all the things from their world in ours, but our actions would be illegal in theirs. One man's utopia is another man's tyranny, I guess.

I would've liked the book more if it was a straight up proposal for a new constitution. ( )