What could be more delightful than a trip to Greece to meet Yanis Varoufakis, the charismatic leftwing firebrand who tried to stick it to the man, AKA the IMF, EU and entire global financial order? The mental imagery I have before the visit is roughly two parts Zorba the Greek to one part an episode of BBC series Holiday from the Jill Dando era: blue skies, blue sea, maybe some plate breaking in a jolly taverna. What I'm not expecting is a wall of flames rippling across a hillside next to the highway from the airport and a plume of black smoke billowing across the carriageway. Because even a modernist villa on a hillside on the island of Aegina – a fast ferry ride from the port of Piraeus and the summer bolthole of chic Athenians – is not the sanctuary from the modern world that it might once have been. The house is where Varoufakis and his wife, landscape artist Danae Stratou, live, year round since the pandemic, but in August 2023 at the end of a summer of heatwaves and extreme weather conditions across the world, it feels more than a little apocalyptic. The sun is a dim orange orb struggling to shine through a haze of smoke while a shower of fine ash falls invisibly from the sky.

In fact, though, the world that Varoufakis has created feels strangely foreign, partly as a result of the rather essayistic writing style. There are constant references to somebody or something: Plato, Odysseus, futurists or even just the Eurovision Song Contest. It's not always clear what the references are meant to convey. When told that it wasn't particularly easy to read, he says: "My wife also tells me that it was hard to read. She said she loves it, but needed to read it again."

If rumors that James Cameron is interested in picking up Terminator 6 prove true, perhaps Bill Gates will be in the running for a cameo. Gates recently cautioned that robots are replacing humans in a wide range of jobs, and he proposed implementing a robot tax as a way to temporarily slow the spread of automation. He was promptly -- and predictably -- trashed by a bevy of economists. Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, dubbed Gates' plan "protectionism against progress," and others scoffed that the founder of Microsoft had joined the ranks of Luddites. Economic growth has slowed markedly in the past decade, they pointed out.

A tax on robots is one of those ideas that sounds attractive, and when it's put forward by someone with the credibility of Bill Gates, as it was in a recent interview with Quartz magazine, you can guarantee it will generate a lot of interest. If he, of all people, says taxing robots is a good idea, then surely it is worth considering? At first pass, the idea feels like common sense. After all, if robots replace workers but don't generate tax revenue, it means not only that the funds available for government services are substantially diminished, but that inequality – already at record levels in developed nations – is likely to increase. Wages that would have been earned by human workers, now displaced by robots, will go straight to profits, increasing the wealth gap between those who own the robots and the growing pool of unemployed workers.