"Professor Philip Mirowski author of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, explains the intellectual history of Neo-liberalism, what Neo-liberals believe, making capitalists think differently, the role of think tanks in Neo-liberalism, the mythology of market supremacy..."
The Neo-Liberal general action pattern:
1. Create a fog of confusion about a social policy issue, its sources, and its nature.2. Propose 'new markets' to fix the problems created by gaps or flaws in existing markets which are the language by which to define the public policy issue.3. Build the solution as a platform to encourage phony 'entrepreneurs' to come in and expand and embed the market solution, perspective and terminology into the social structure. Provide little to no regulatory oversight so that monopolies and predatory pricing policies protected by monopoly enrich a powerfully dominant few.
The Obama healthcare 'market' is one such example, and it is no accident that it was created by the neoliberal Heritage Foundation, before Obama made it his own.
Was President Obama merely being expedient in choosing such a solution? I do not think so. I believe he is and always has been a creature of, by, and for the system and the status quo of the elite. He aspires to be rich and powerful, and to serve he recreates himself as a brand.
A similar approach to the problem of stagnant economic growth and wages is to create even more new markets like the trade deals such as TPP.
People, plants, animals, land, happiness, work, the environment are all merely commodities to be supremely dispensed with by the gods of the markets, without interference. Their gods price everything, but inherently value nothing, including life, love, liberty, and peace.
Everything is but a transaction for the moment, without serious regard for longer term consequences or damage. Their god is power, and their religion is greed.
But all the time, and this is most important, the markets that are set up are rigged by insiders of the inner temple, and are very much a part of the 'grift.' For these are no true markets of purely rational equals, but mechanisms for transferring and accumulating wealth and power to a few.
And there is nothing wrong with markets, and market based economies, if they are honest and transparent. But the market is soulless, and it is not an appropriate mechanism for deciding policy. The market is a tool, not a god. And if used wisely with the proper care it can perform price discovery and capital allocation well in the right hands. But like all things, it is in the abuse of the market and the distortion of priorities that even a tool can become an instrument of disorder and abuse.
And there is nothing wrong with markets, and market based economies, if they are honest and transparent. But the market is soulless, and it is not an appropriate mechanism for deciding policy. The market is a tool, not a god. And if used wisely with the proper care it can perform price discovery and capital allocation well in the right hands. But like all things, it is in the abuse of the market and the distortion of priorities that even a tool can become an instrument of disorder and abuse.
One of the greatest propaganda triumphs of our age is to have identified neoliberalism with 'freedom' by portraying any generally beneficial public function as a source of all evil, all difficulties because they impede the policy making action of the omniscient market, which to the people is as a god. Instead, it is a monstrous creation, an affront to all that is human, all that is just, all that is good, that brings with it only the utmost desolation. The madness serves only itself.
Like most old wickedness and folly brought forth as something new, there is nothing 'new' about Neoliberalism. It is as old as Babylon, and evil as hell.
We think that these things take place in other times, in histories and fables, and in far off lands. We do not see them unfolding here, playing out amongst us, in our own time and day. But like all who have gone before and will come after, we too have been called to decide, not only in our words, but in our actions.
Do you not know, that to whom you yield yourselves as servants to obey, his servants you become, whether of a corruption unto death, or of a righteousness unto life?
