Philip Bobbitt's Theories of Changes in the Constitutional Order

[sbarrera]

(08-23-2022, 01:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: To say that neoliberalism created any economic prosperity for anyone, as Bobbitt asserted, except for its wealthy promoters, is pure lies and obfuscation. Rachel Maddow straightens out anyone who bothered to pay any attention, which Bobbitt did not.

Bobbitt doesn't say that about the market state, though. He says it creates economic opportunity. Whether or not you can turn opportunity into prosperity is up to you (that's essentially Reagan's message too). That's why I say he's more identifying the shift to the Third Turning mindset than a new kind of order that will last. That order has to come now to correct for the excesses that the market-driven era created.

But again, Bobbitt is on to something with his basic premise that the strategic landscape has changed, and the state has to change with it. I think the big change is with the growth and density of information networks. And the lesson of these past years is that government has not done well in the context of these networks. The videos you posted make the point about how democracy has eroded, to the point of allowing a mountebank to become President for a term. That was in part because social media was used to manipulate the election!

The Covid-19 pandemic is another area where the market state has not coped well. If the market state offers opportunity while also offering protection, it runs into a big problem with a highly infectious disease, since preventing the spread of the disease entails restricting economic activity (and hence opportunity). In the case of Covid-19, the market state basically gave up, and is set to accept a constant death toll that's four or five times more than the death toll from car accidents.