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The death of neoliberalism from within

theguardian.com

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Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#41

Post by elgabogringo »

clarkmoody wrote: post #35
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.

Inequality isn't a red herring - not IMO. It's the natural outcome of our fed policies, which have existed largely to recapitalize banks. They've hampered growth (hitting the middle class) while causing asset inflation (and how owns assets? The rich.) So inequality is real, but not for the reasons most think.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#42

Post by wfo »

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…

Of course it is an explicit ideology that many associate themselves with (though not by name, since it's become something of a slur because it's so obviously religious about the "free market" and hated because of this). It's explained clearly in TFA.

Of course, the classic rabid libertarian answer -- any time any economic failure happens, blame regulations. When we free the markets, and the markets fail to provide anything we want (income equality, fairness, a middle class, a healthy society) -- the obvious conclusion? The markets aren't free enough. Deregulate, so the wealthy can make a killing abusing the poor more than they already do.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#43

Post by ethbro »

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…

The biggest problem, when I look at the American labor market, is that it seems physically unjust.

The sweat of a person's brow and the wear and tear on their body should have some intrinsic value above and beyond what the market will bear.

That someone working as a farm hand, mover, framer, or roofer gets paid a pittance compared to what I earn for sitting in a climate controlled office, moving my fingers, and thinking? I can't reconcile that with any definition of "fair."

UBI is perhaps one way to address this. Wealth transfer to increase robotics usage and physical mechanization / automation application is perhaps another.

But no one should end up with a broken body at 65 just because we stopped aspiring to do better by each other.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#44

Post by eli_gottlieb »

kiruwa wrote: post #3

> Two British examples [of neoliberalism], suggests Will Davies – author of the Limits of Neoliberalism – would be the NHS and universities “where classrooms are being transformed into supermarkets”. Without taking a bit of Davies' argument into the article, that seems to badly undercut the argument. I'm not sure I can imagine a segment of society less neoliberal than either of them. (particularly by comparison to ot…

Well that's the point: neoliberalism is when you start trying to push market-capitalist dynamics into domains people view, both traditionally and normatively, as not appropriate for those dynamics.

For instance, if you agree with the statement, "Students are not customers and should not be able to dictate to professors", you are saying something that is actually directly opposed to neoliberalism. You are saying that society needs to use material resources to create a space of non-market relations, and needs to withdraw resources from existing efforts to transform that space in the image of consumer markets.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#45

Post by elgabogringo »

zwerdlds wrote: post #33
elgabogringo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One government overspends, gets bailed out by a quasi-government entity that is funded by other governments. This is government intervention in currency in debt markets, by definition not laissez faire.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#46

Post by djsumdog »

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…

Economies are based around scarcity. In the fictional economies of Sci-Fi like Star Trek, there is no scarcity. If you can replicate a Rembrandt, atom by atom, it essentially loses its value.

Today is all about me creating something, convincing you that you need it, and getting enough "yous" to contribute that I make enough to produce said thing. When you really start to break it down, money is like the Ghz speed of a processor or the Calorie measure used to measure energy in food. It's a poor measure of worth. We see people with millions of money, just because they convinced some poor smoo their life wouldn't be complete without this shitty knife.

If you believe in Glenn Renolds version of reality (Army of Davids), technology is what will level the scale. But he wrote that a decade ago and it hasn't really held true. There are Kickstarters and crowd-funding, but it's all still based around the same failing model.

We need some pretty big technological breakthroughs: truly mastering the atom. Right now we can only blow shit up (and by we I mean the ones with the money, resources and power to build atomic bombs) or generate power by breaking apart that atom to boil and pressurize water.

Humanity needs to solve the energy problem: both producing large amounts of power in non-polluting ways and storing power more efficiently.

Humanity needs to truly master the atom: to be able to manipulate atoms with a reasonable amount of energy to easily synthesize things (3D and chemical printers on steroids)

Humanity needs to move beyond money. Once you eliminate scarcity, money will essentially become worthless; an archaic idea.

This might all seem crazy and well beyond even the realm of what's possible. But I really feel like if it's not, humanity may only have another 3,000 ~ 5,000 years left. It's pretty much the simulation theory argument: we either continue to evolve and develop to the point where we could partially simulate enough of our world that the simulations would be self away (feel real) ... or we go extinct... Even if we go back and fourth between the stone age due to war/conflict ... eventually one of those two outcomes is inevitable.

I really feel if humanity is here 5,000 from now, money will be an ancient concept that people will have difficult comprehending.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#47

Post by kiruwa »

marricks wrote: post #29
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…

You're blaming government regulations! That's absurd given many people at this point have said that the deregulation of the 90's on the financial sector is what lead to much of our housing financial crisis, not to mention the widening pay gap. Your comment might actually be a good representation of how Neoliberal ideas of deregulation will continue to flourish despite them hampering to middle and lower classes. Peopl…

> You're blaming government regulations! That's absurd given many people at this point have said that

1) That's not actually what he said. He said that the regulatory apparatus is currently working to assist rent-seeking and pushing wealth to the "1%". Regulation has been used to protect the wealth of the wealthy from the consequences of a free market, at everyone else's expense.

2) Argument from consensus isn't actually a valid argument. Most of the people in your consensus have been journalists, not economists. (economists are mostly trying to get people to understand that the causes are way more complex than the journalists want to believe)

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#48

Post by wfo »

puranjay wrote: post #38

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

Profit motive above all else is literally the prototypical example of an ideology, just not one that most people would publicly espouse.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#49

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ethbro wrote: post #43
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…

The biggest problem, when I look at the American labor market, is that it seems physically unjust. The sweat of a person's brow and the wear and tear on their body should have some intrinsic value above and beyond what the market will bear. That someone working as a farm hand, mover, framer, or roofer gets paid a pittance compared to what I earn for sitting in a climate controlled office, moving my fingers, and think…

>That someone working as a farm hand, mover, framer, or roofer gets paid a pittance compared to what I earn for sitting in a climate controlled office, moving my fingers, and thinking? I can't reconcile that with any definition of "fair."

We all know manual labor isn't that productive, so there's an upper limit on how much the laborer can be paid (the marginal productivity). The problem is the exploitation: the wages unorganized workers receive are far, far below their marginal productivity.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#50

Post by elgabogringo »

Bombthecat wrote: post #27
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…

And removing the government would give the rich 100% control. So what would be a solution?

The government in this case isn't restraining the rich. It's protecting them.
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