Yanis Varoufakis on Valve, Spontaneous Order, and the European Crisis

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2013

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

Yanis Varoufakis of the University of Athens, the University of Texas, and former economist-in-residence at Valve Software talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the unusual structure of the workplace at Valve. Valve, a software company that creates online video games, has no hierarchy or bosses. Teams of software designers join spontaneously to create and ship video games without any top-down supervision. Varoufakis discusses the economics of this Hayekian workplace and how it actually functions alongside Steam--an open gaming platform created by Valve. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the economic crisis in Europe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links
0:16.3	and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.3	back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is mailadykontalk.org, we'd love to hear from you.
0:33.4	Today is February 14, 2013, and my guest is Janis Varafakis of the University of Athens
0:39.8	and the University of Texas.
0:41.9	He's the author of the Global Minotaur, and he is the economist and residence at Valve Corporation.
0:47.1	Janis, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:49.4	It is very good to be here.
0:52.4	We're going to talk to begin with about Valve, which I found out about because a number
0:56.8	of listeners and readers of mine told me that I had to do a podcast about Valve, and I
1:04.2	started to look into it, and they were right.
1:06.2	It's a really good idea, because Valve is a very unusual corporation.
1:10.7	Describe for us what they produce, what's their output, and tell us about their structure,
1:16.7	which is particularly unusual.
1:19.7	Well, they're a video game company.
1:23.2	It was started by Gabe Newell, who was a Microsoft high ranking software development officer,
1:33.7	who cashed in his shares in 1996.
1:35.5	I believe, and together with Mike Harrington, a colleague of his, they set up this video
	...

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