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The death of neoliberalism from within

theguardian.com

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Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#61

Post by pdeuchler »

marricks wrote: post #55
kiruwa wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 actu…

1) I'm discussing the narrative, the poster only cites over-regulation as a problem, which I haven't seen bail-outs called before. The language implies government rules are the problem. 2) Many notable economists actually blame deregulation, such as Alan Greenspan & the SEC [0]. I think the man who oversaw much of the deregulation while it was happening calling it a problem in hindsight is a pretty darn good indicati…

Nobody is arguing for deregulation. We just want government regulation that doesn't overtly protect the wealth of the ruling class.

Stop perpetuating false dichotomies that preclude valid criticism of current policies.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#62

Post by logfromblammo »

wfo wrote: post #42
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 an…

A truly free market has a price for contract killings--including, for instance, the current CEO of Bank of America, or the current chairman of the Fed, or someone like Bernie Madoff.

If the wealthy make a figurative "killing" abusing the poor, the poor turn around and make a literal killing. An unethical executive would have to hole up in a fortified compound and surround it with hired guns, just like a Mexican drug lord. That places limits on how much money you can make from antisocial behavior, simply because people stop voluntarily doing business with you.

All big business ends up being a variant of the Mafia, but there has to be some honor among thieves, otherwise gang wars break out and ruin the regular revenue streams for everyone.

Few people would actually be comfortable with a completely free market.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#63

Post by lucozade »

Somewhat tangentially, I wonder if the kind of misrepresentation* present in this article is going to get better or worse in the future.

The fact that, in a lot of cases, it's trivial to go read the source [0] makes me feel that it should dwindle. However, it seems that, with the substantial increase in content available, having more strident views is required to be heard.

* by misrepresentation I mean that the article was by no means a denial of "neo-liberalism". It was generally very positive about free market economics but looked at 2 niche areas and concluded that 1) short term capital controls may sometimes be worth doing and 2) deficit reduction isn't that valuable in very prosperous countries but is in weaker economies. Not quite what Mr Chakrabortty said it said.

[0] http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#64

Post by cft »

marricks wrote: post #59
cft wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is bad about climate change? There might be more land with warm and mild climates. What is inherently bad about this? There were much bigger climate changes in the past, such as snowball earth era, when the entire earth was covered with ice and snow.

Massive increases in droughts which are already happening? Not to mention sure with the changes farming areas could get worse elsewhere and better other places like Greenland but we already have farms in those locations which were good 50 or 100 years ago, it takes time to adapt and there's no law saying things even out. Not to mention when will the change stop? There isn't any indication it will stabilize in the nea…

Increase in temperature could actually increase agricultural output long term. Melting ice in Greenland and in Antarctica could provide the fresh water. Also, there's no fundamental reason why human population should increase indefinitely. Perhaps it will stabilize to an environmentally sustainable level. By the way Pangaea was mostly a desert due to it's smaller ratio of shoreline length to landmass. My main point is that I don't know which way is "better": global warming could be bad, or it could actually be good, or overall irrelevant (bad in some places, good in others). I do not know if anybody actually knows this.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#65

Post by dv_dt »

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…

To me there is an inherent contradiction in the concept of a 'free market'. They work very poorly unless there is protection of a number of market attributes.

One fundamental attribute is the protection of property rights - otherwise that market would be chaos and whoever could muster the most force could automatically take everyone else's property and destroy the 'free market.'

But the very act of 'protecting property rights' isn't as simple as just the enforcement of who owns what physical thing. There are fuzzy lines all over the place e.g. if I buy a beautiful plot of land to live on, and a neighbour sells their land for use as a garbage dump - how is that resolved?

So when someone criticizes that its not the 'free market' that failing, I think that's partially right and partially wrong. What often fails is our many rules (i.e. regulation) to try and build this abstraction of a 'free market', but when someone says the free market isn't failing because it can't because of gov't regulation - well .. this is wrong too, because without some form of framework of regulation (formal or informal) I don't believe you'd find any stable large scale free markets.

The other issue here is when people say 'free markets', I think they unconsciously mean efficient free markets. And then there are a number of other attributes that really need to be there in the abstraction for it to work (e.g. reasonable information equity between sellers/buyers).

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#66

Post by rqebmm »

doctorcroc wrote: post #2

The big question then is what replaces laissez faire economics and how? How do we take the best of the free market while ensuring that governments and public sectors are also robust? I feel like software and technology must have a huge role here, but don't know enough to be able to point out specific solutions.

It's important to remember that "free market" does NOT mean "no regulation". A market inherently requires regulations (i.e. contracts, trademarks, currency policy, etc). Even Adam Smith knew this. [0]http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/03/ada...

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#67

Post by vixen99 »

wfo wrote: post #48
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.

No, it's one that everyone and all life espouses. All human interactions are transactions which express this 'ideology' as you misleadingly call it. Eric Berne understood this in 'Games People Play'. You transact because you get value; you profit. Only dead people don't transact which is why we dispose of their bodies. The profit motive is why we're alive and why evolution of life on this planet has arisen. It's deep within our genes.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#68

Post by EGreg »

Reminds me of this: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

I personally believe it is all the automation and outsourcing that is changing the fundamentals and causing a drop in the demand for human labor - thus undermining our trusty wage-based mechanisms to get money to the masses, who then spend it back on necessities. The drop in demand means less investment and lending. So the money supply shrinks.

The "Great Depression" was coined as a term by Hoover because it sounded calmer than the term commonly used at the time: FINANCIAL PANIC.

A lot of it was caused by automation leading to overproduction by farmers while simultaneously laying off their workers. It took years to build up a manufacturing economy, and it helped that after WW2 the USA had no competitors. So we became #1.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#69

Post by clarkmoody »

elgabogringo wrote: post #41
clarkmoody wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't want to have a back-and-forth about inequality. But at it's most basic level, what does it matter to me if someone else has lots of money/wealth? As long as they can't buy off government officials either through lobbying or cash bribes, then I don't care.

Also, large and growing inequality is usually a symptom of a more deeper issue in an economy. Pushing to "fix inequality" is just patching a symptom, and proposed solutions usually involve giving more power to the state (which is probably the root of the inequality problem).

And modern "inequality" in Western economies is nothing compared to what it was in the past, hence my comment about absolute standard of living. Historically, inequality meant that the aristocracy rode around in carriages while the peasants walked barefoot. Now, the rich have fancy cars / jets, and the "poor" have cheap cars. But everyone has cars! (or access to mass transit for most Europeans -- I'm coming from a US-centric view).

Absolute standard of living has increased to an unbelievable level: 200 years ago, we worked outside on farms doing back-breaking labor from sunup to sundown. Now, a vanishingly small proportion works the farms, and even the tractors are air-conditioned. And absolute standard of living continues to rise for much of the world.

So what if there's inequality? We are so much better off than we have ever been, in absolute terms.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#70

Post by vixen99 »

djsumdog wrote: post #52
areyoucrazy wrote: post #39

Communists have been saying neoliberalism(nonsense term, which serves as an insult)/capitalism is going to fall, but it ain't happening. It's stronger than ever. They're like Christians expecting rapture.

Are you serious? Capitalism has been failing most of this planet! You just don't think it's failing because you live in a mid-to-high income nation. One day those nations will run out of others to have war with and steal from. The earth has a lot of resources, but it's finite. This will all end one day.

You need to check your facts. 'World poverty is shrinking rapidly, new index reveals'.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-red...

'Some of the poorest people in the world are becoming significantly less poor, according to a groundbreaking academic study which has taken a new approach to measuring deprivation. The report, by Oxford University's poverty and human development initiative, predicts that countries among the most impoverished in the world could see acute poverty eradicated within 20 years if they continue at present rates.'

Why is this happening? Because our world has enabled people to trade with each other; that's another term for capitalism. As Tim Worsfall has put it: 'Choice, consumers, consumption, these are not things to be disdained from the comfort of an Islington eyrie, they are the entire damn point of having a society or an economy in the first place.'

The basic problem with your view: Today one can literally go from kindergarten to becoming a graduate student seeking a Ph.D., without ever hearing a vision of the world that conflicts with the vision of the left.

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