Yanis Varoufakis, an economist who worked for Valve Software and was a member of Greece’s Hellenic Parliament, believes that technology companies should pay a special tax on cloud computing.
His comment came to light in an interview in which he spoke about his most recent book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. According to Varoufakis platforms like Apple and Amazon are now ‘algorithm-driven fiefdoms’.
For this economist it seems that these companies, like Valve Software, have ‘extracted’ people in the market for another that benefits them more, and the one who calls ‘cloud capital’.
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So he suggests that the government could (and should) force these corporations to deposit 30% of their shares in a common fund. This is what Yanis Varoufakis calls ‘cloud tax’This money could be distributed to the public as a form of basic income.
It should be noted that Varoufakis does not mention Valve Software directly. In fact, compared to Amazon, Apple and Google, which he mentions in his book, it is much smaller and controls a smaller part of the market.
But his argument sounds similar to what others have said in the past. Someone who also argued for a control over the PC economy is Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. He did talk about the company earlier.
Sweeney said the fees Valve charges publishers on Steam are unjustifiable, hurt small developers and help maintain a monopoly.
Yanis Varoufakis does not reach that level, but he does point out that it is ‘part of the problem’ in today’s market, and that ‘everyone has participated in the creation of this world’. He even claims that the latter has usurped ‘capital in the cloud’.
The importance of the cloud is growing for some companies. Microsoft already makes more money from it than from selling Xbox, and is even looking for ways to diversify its service offering in that regard.
With details from Game Developer. Apart from the cloud, Valve and other companies we have more information on technology at TierraGamer. Follow our news on Google news so as not to miss any.
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