11-21-2021, 11:40 AM
Neoliberalism is illiberal. It holds that the power, indulgence, and gain of entrenched elites (big landowners, tycoons, executives, loan-sharks, and landlords form the sole measure of economic progress. No human suffering can ever be excessive in the service of such 'progress'. The rationale is that the rest of humanity is so incompetent at deciding what to do with income and time that the economic elites are the only ones who can create and preserve wealth. Thus most people must work longer and harder to earn any chance of survival, a wise government privatizes everything possible so that profiteers have more opportunity to gouge, and debt bondage becomes an appropriate means of enforcing an adequate 'work ethic'.
It is a quasi-aristocratic order, one hostile to genuine entrepreneurialism, workers' rights, and any thought among the toilers other than owing everything to the entrenched elites. The difference between the old aristocratic order and neoliberalism is that the old aristocratic order was low-tech. I'm not convinced that high technology improves the lot of those who find that it controls them and befuddles them -- or even worse impresses them through its alleged wonder of the wisdom of buying their own chains.
America is the only advanced industrial country that had a full-blown slave system that lasted more than twenty years in its mainland (which recognizes the worst slave system that ever existed, Nazi Germany, as a gross aberration), and that slave system has a subtle influence on public attitudes in much of America. It created a sense of entitlement among agrarian elites that dominated political life until the 1960's, and that ethos has reappeared. It has merged with the ethos of those who profiteer by creating and enforcing scarcity in the basics of life.
Some ideas are truly putrid, and they get no better by simply adding some bells and whistles.
It is a quasi-aristocratic order, one hostile to genuine entrepreneurialism, workers' rights, and any thought among the toilers other than owing everything to the entrenched elites. The difference between the old aristocratic order and neoliberalism is that the old aristocratic order was low-tech. I'm not convinced that high technology improves the lot of those who find that it controls them and befuddles them -- or even worse impresses them through its alleged wonder of the wisdom of buying their own chains.
America is the only advanced industrial country that had a full-blown slave system that lasted more than twenty years in its mainland (which recognizes the worst slave system that ever existed, Nazi Germany, as a gross aberration), and that slave system has a subtle influence on public attitudes in much of America. It created a sense of entitlement among agrarian elites that dominated political life until the 1960's, and that ethos has reappeared. It has merged with the ethos of those who profiteer by creating and enforcing scarcity in the basics of life.
Some ideas are truly putrid, and they get no better by simply adding some bells and whistles.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.