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The death of neoliberalism from within

theguardian.com

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Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

elgabogringo wrote: post #24
URSpider94 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule, I'd be very cautious before assuming that a columnist for The Economist doesn't understand what he is talking about. You may disagree with his conclusions, but that's a different matter. What I believe he's talking about is the introduction of free market dynamics to schools and single-payer health care, two institutions that have been resolutely socialist (in the classical sense of the word) for a…

The author of the editorial is from the guardian, not the Economist. The individual using the NHS/Schools as examples was the IMF author, not the editorial writer. I never said either didn't understand economics. I said he didn't understand some of the words he was using. I was referring to the use of "neoliberalism" & "laissez faire"

> The author of the editorial is from the guardian, not the Economist.

True.

> The individual using the NHS/Schools as examples was the IMF author, not the editorial writer.

False. The NHS/Schools example comes (as is explicitly stated in the Guardian piece) from Will Davies, author of The Limits of Neoliberalism, a completely separate work from the IMF report.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#33

Post by zwerdlds »

elgabogringo wrote: post #25
zwerdlds wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it is the IMF - their inherent mission is to lend, it's even in their name.

What does lending government money to other governments have to do with the free market?

The IMF is a lender of last resort. Governments aren't forced to utilize them, and evidence shows that currency devaluation is often a better strategy.

Having unfavorable terms, as you've described, makes the bitter pill of devaluation look a little sweeter.

But in response to your question, I'm not sure how it's not free market. Can you describe specifically what doesn't get covered from the "it's not forced lending" argument?

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#34

Post by eli_gottlieb »

elgabogringo wrote: post #13

Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…

> Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion.

Then why do IMF economists refer to it as a real thing that the IMF actually practiced?

>The IMF itself is not a proponent of the free market. It exists precisely to support excess government spending and to bail rich bondholders who make donations to politicians. Nothing lassiez faire about that.

Then why is the IMF's usual advice to almost all countries to cut "excess" government spending on social programs while privatizing the kinds of revenue-making national resources/firms that keep the government from having to tax too much?

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#35

Post by clarkmoody »

elgabogringo wrote: post #13

Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…

Thank you for this clarification.

Hand-wavy editorials about economic busts always come across half-baked and incoherent when they blame the "free market."

Inequality remains a massive red herring. Instead we should be concerned about the absolute standard of living and the level of corporate-government corruption.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#36

Post by Snargorf »

djsumdog wrote: post #30
elgabogringo wrote: post #13

Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…

Markets don't exist without States. You cannot have a market without a State, and therefore you cannot have a "free market". They don't exists. The idea that there is or can be a free market is one of the great myths of our civilization (along with the idea that humans started out with barter based economies. We didn't. The earliest economies in human history were based around credit). I highly recommend the book Deb…

Markets don't exist without states?

Do you not believe that markets existed 1000, 2000, 5000 years ago, in areas that were tribal or feudal or in anarchy?

Do you not believe that markets exist in Somalia and other conflict zones today, where there is no functioning government?

Markets exist any time there are two or more people with goods that they could and would trade.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#37

Post by theseatoms »

kaoD wrote: post #10
maxerickson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think free markets are fine. We just need a huge revaluation of capital. Downwards.

Isn't the "death of neoliberalism from within" just the market adjusting itself? I think the situation completely fits what free markets propose. The problem is not that the system isn't working but rather that it is working too well and we're witnessing the painful consequences of self-adjusting markets. Self-regulation is cool on paper but in the end we're talking about real people suffering real consequences and,…

> painful consequences of self-adjusting markets.

The consequences are only painful for certain parties/demographics. Others reap the benefits of change. (If we're going to continue speaking in these broad generalities.)

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#38

Post by puranjay »

the thing about capitalism is that capitalism has no ideology, only the profit motive (nothing wrong with that)

if tomorrow the capitalists of the world were to figure out that communism is more profitable and efficient for conducting business, they would change their ideology accordingly.

capitalism can't die because capitalism is innate to human beings; it is infinitely adaptable and flexible

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#40

Post by caseysoftware »

riphay wrote: post #17

We're seeing more and more of these types of articles coming up, but they're all talking about different aspects of the same issue: inability to share growth with wide swaths of the population. In the west, our quality of life has never been higher and products/services have never been cheaper. This has been caused in large part by automation, lean manufacturing, globalization, etc. and each one of these is net posit…

Forget about the content of the articles and instead look at the themes.

The current system is fundamentally broken and levers that governments have to "fix" things aren't working as they (claim to) want.

Everyone is looking for someone to blame instead of debugging what's there and seeing if there is a way to change things before they go (more) catastrophic.

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