08-23-2022, 01:14 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-23-2022, 01:40 PM by Eric the Green.)
(08-23-2022, 09:45 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Bobbitt's market state has sometimes been called the "informational market state" or even the "neoliberal market state." Arguably, all that Bobbitt is talking about with the "transition to the market state" is the rise of neoliberalism.
Now, what is happening in the Fourth Turning? Is it the end of neoliberalism? One blogger at least (who is familiar with Bobbitt) made the argument that Trump's rise was exactly that:
https://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/glo...alism.html
SUNDAY, 29 JANUARY 2017
Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
What is Trump doing?
Trump was the final expression of the neoliberal market state, it's climax and most-concentrated expression in the presidency (it continues in legislatures, the states, etc.)
Any statement to the contrary is pure obfuscation and lies.
Trump's presidency showed where neoliberalism leads. It discredited neoliberalism enough so that trickle-down economics (neoliberalism) could begin to be dismantled by a non-neoliberal president, Joe Biden. But this rollback is only a bare beginning. Congress, in the person of two DINO senators, watered down the break with neoliberal policy tremendously. So, it's influence continues, but may not fully survive the 4T.
Policywise, Trump's only anti-neoliberal action was to opt out of the trans-pacific partnership and make small revisions to the NAFTA free trade agreement. That was it. Otherwise, his policies were neoliberalism on steroids. Extreme and destructive deregulation of the coal industry, for example. Rollbacks of national monuments. Opening federal leasing to drilling and mining. Destruction of auto emission regulations. Requiring that 2 regulations be removed for every 1 new regulation approved. Attacks on the post office. Massive new tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, lauding them as meaning "jobs jobs jobs". Resistance to any minimum wage increase. This is all textbook trickle-down economics (= neoliberalism). He did propose federal infrastructure projects, but did nothing to get them approved by congress, and they weren't. Destruction of democracy and replacement with autocracy, as Trump is proposing and creating, is explicit neoliberal policy.
Most costly to his chances for re-election was his interference with needed health measures against the covid pandemic. He did not organize any federal response and left such matters to the states. When states ordered lockdowns, he organized public demonstrations and attacks on officials who ordered them. He interfered with recommendations by his health officials. Leaving decisions to the states when federal action was needed was a neoliberal approach to the pandemic, and it failed.
One of the best definitions of neoliberalism and its effects has been given in articles and videos by George Monbiot. In this one he mentions that Trump, though too incoherent to be explicitly labeled as neoliberal, is the outcome of neoliberal policy over the last 40 years, and is the ideal leader that at least two of the neoliberalism founders, Frederick Hayek and Ayn Rand, envisioned and worshipped. Neoliberalism's aim and effect is destruction of the democratic power of the people and its replacement by the power of money. This has robbed politics of its relevance, and paved the way for an atomized and frustrated citizenry to opt for an anti-politics of mere sensations and slogans instead. That is what Trump offered.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/a...ge-monbiot
https://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html