Part of Econ 135: The History of Economic Growth course unit 5. After Neoliberalism Comes "Polycrisis": What the Neoliberal Order was, & what pressures are making whatever is going to come after...
Brad, you said, "But a good many of the rich and prosperous in a market economy are people who have gone out into the world and found something useful to do, and their being of utility to society has then made them rich and prosperous."
For me, this represents the largest flaw in this article, and seeming in your economic worldview. The fact that something sells does not in the least mean that the item or service being sold is useful. It just means there's a demand for it. Without first defining what "useful" and "utility" mean, and over what timeframe and in what contexts, the statement is, unfortunately, useless at best. It is extraordinarily frustrating to see someone who is brilliant and has a good heart gloss over this essential issue.
"Unfortunately for us, the champions of the people being chosen today appear more fascist than populist—more interested in telling people what to do to make them followers to burnish the glory of the leader than in lifting the burdens from the people by cancelling the debts and redistributing the land—and more kleptocrat than plutocrat, with the leader’s skills more in running a con game than in understanding the workings of the system."
I would say that this describes most "populists" throughout all of history. "Populism" is generally a fraud -- mere rhetoric to gain political advantage to do exactly what you describe here.
NIMBYism: Doesn't it live on both sides of this fence? The NDO suburbanized expectations, including the presumption that we all have a right to the idyllic, even inside a metropolis. That seems like a Polanyian point. But isn't NIMBY also allied with the Hayekian/Friedmanian hostility to the state/collective choice -- leave me alone; I solve my own problems?
I'd put NIMBY 100% on the Polanyian side of the fence. It was an exercise of collective action (zoning) to defeat market forces--politically undesired development that would have been economically lucrative. It was part of Uncle Miltie's nightmare: comfortable people remaining comfortable because of their political power alone.
There is a dark side to Polanyi: not only NIMBY. The ultra-neoliberal Margaret Thatcher was right to crush Arthur Scargill's coal miner's union, although she did it with an added flair for impersonal cruelty.
Right now, I'd say that the balance is overtipped toward Thatcher, and we need more Polanyi. But neither of them are all butterflies and roses.
Your perspective and context are much appreciated, especially your paragraph, “The Neoliberal Order was about capitalism but it was also about freedom…” linking the social, cultural, racial, economic and political forces that exploded everyone’s sense of order in the Sixties. Here’s hoping these lessons will be learned before the monsters destroy us.
No society has been totally one type of economic model. The free market system first has to provide a reasonable amount of security in health care and retirement, and this is done by the government. I am thinking about expansion of Medicaid for increasing number of low wage earners. Social Security provides the elderly at least some of their retirement income. A certain amount of government welfare is necessary to assist workers who have lost their jobs.
The philosophy that capitalism is a dog eat dog operation is not what modern capitalism is about. There is more market seeking on the part of businesses today. Rather than compete with another company based on price only, they try to find a market they can make a reasonable profit on. Thinking of Coke people vs Pepsi people. Also, what kind of people buy which type of cars, I am thinking of Chevrolet for the common man, and Ford for the business class, but that was a long time ago. Also what I think was probably too much price competition, the case of Office Max, Office Depot, and Staples.
So, I think a free market can be achieved in the future, where the wealthiest people have no choice but to invest money in low interest accounts, making very low cost of money available to the general public. They might even be happy with this type of organization.
I agree with those who find the connection between NIMBYism and neo-liberalism questionable at best, if not outright misleading: neo-liberalism may exhibit a congenital aversion to big-government re-developing projects, but it should be equally averse to intrusive zoning regulations: the ideal (city-)state of Milton and Rose Friedman was Hong-Kong not Singapore.
Should not you be more straightforward in setting out your informed view - after all you are the learned and smart professor and they are ignorant students no longer benefitting from the Flynn effect - when it comes to the real as opposed to the perceived outcomes of the neo-liberal experiment? Neo-liberalism may be perceived not to have strengthened the American industry’s competitive advantages: is this really the case? Is not the main case for retreating from free trade one outside economics, namely, national security (where one should probably admit that neo-liberalism has not delivered on the promise of increasingly peaceful relations across countries). Neo-liberalism was supposed to foster growth in the Global South: has not it delivered (possibly by making in the process some countries in the South ‘too strong’)? Last but not least, is not perhaps migration - not mentioned at all - the issue in which the tenets of neo-liberalism run most strongly against deeply ancestral tendencies rooted in the 99% of mankind (pre-)history (see eg
White males, principally those who are patriarchal, have resisted the idealism of the US Constitution by suppressing non-whites (also non-Christian), and white, not-males. Women's suffrage, civil rights were all acheieved with partial success in the C20th, with resistance from the established top of the pecking order. It continues to this day. Increasingly "woke" women won't date, let alone marry, "unwoke" men. Cultural change can be difficult, but someone has to do it.
I will disagree with one of Our Host's historical judgments. I see no discontinuity in the civil rights struggle until the mid-1960's. Up to then, it was steady pressure at the very limits of the possible, undertaken by people who knew what they were doing. Yes, the advances were far quicker in the postwar era. But this was only because past pressure had expanded the limits of the possible.
Brad, you said, "But a good many of the rich and prosperous in a market economy are people who have gone out into the world and found something useful to do, and their being of utility to society has then made them rich and prosperous."
For me, this represents the largest flaw in this article, and seeming in your economic worldview. The fact that something sells does not in the least mean that the item or service being sold is useful. It just means there's a demand for it. Without first defining what "useful" and "utility" mean, and over what timeframe and in what contexts, the statement is, unfortunately, useless at best. It is extraordinarily frustrating to see someone who is brilliant and has a good heart gloss over this essential issue.
"Unfortunately for us, the champions of the people being chosen today appear more fascist than populist—more interested in telling people what to do to make them followers to burnish the glory of the leader than in lifting the burdens from the people by cancelling the debts and redistributing the land—and more kleptocrat than plutocrat, with the leader’s skills more in running a con game than in understanding the workings of the system."
I would say that this describes most "populists" throughout all of history. "Populism" is generally a fraud -- mere rhetoric to gain political advantage to do exactly what you describe here.
NIMBYism: Doesn't it live on both sides of this fence? The NDO suburbanized expectations, including the presumption that we all have a right to the idyllic, even inside a metropolis. That seems like a Polanyian point. But isn't NIMBY also allied with the Hayekian/Friedmanian hostility to the state/collective choice -- leave me alone; I solve my own problems?
I'd put NIMBY 100% on the Polanyian side of the fence. It was an exercise of collective action (zoning) to defeat market forces--politically undesired development that would have been economically lucrative. It was part of Uncle Miltie's nightmare: comfortable people remaining comfortable because of their political power alone.
There is a dark side to Polanyi: not only NIMBY. The ultra-neoliberal Margaret Thatcher was right to crush Arthur Scargill's coal miner's union, although she did it with an added flair for impersonal cruelty.
Right now, I'd say that the balance is overtipped toward Thatcher, and we need more Polanyi. But neither of them are all butterflies and roses.
Your perspective and context are much appreciated, especially your paragraph, “The Neoliberal Order was about capitalism but it was also about freedom…” linking the social, cultural, racial, economic and political forces that exploded everyone’s sense of order in the Sixties. Here’s hoping these lessons will be learned before the monsters destroy us.
Yes, but _what lessons_?
No society has been totally one type of economic model. The free market system first has to provide a reasonable amount of security in health care and retirement, and this is done by the government. I am thinking about expansion of Medicaid for increasing number of low wage earners. Social Security provides the elderly at least some of their retirement income. A certain amount of government welfare is necessary to assist workers who have lost their jobs.
The philosophy that capitalism is a dog eat dog operation is not what modern capitalism is about. There is more market seeking on the part of businesses today. Rather than compete with another company based on price only, they try to find a market they can make a reasonable profit on. Thinking of Coke people vs Pepsi people. Also, what kind of people buy which type of cars, I am thinking of Chevrolet for the common man, and Ford for the business class, but that was a long time ago. Also what I think was probably too much price competition, the case of Office Max, Office Depot, and Staples.
So, I think a free market can be achieved in the future, where the wealthiest people have no choice but to invest money in low interest accounts, making very low cost of money available to the general public. They might even be happy with this type of organization.
I agree with those who find the connection between NIMBYism and neo-liberalism questionable at best, if not outright misleading: neo-liberalism may exhibit a congenital aversion to big-government re-developing projects, but it should be equally averse to intrusive zoning regulations: the ideal (city-)state of Milton and Rose Friedman was Hong-Kong not Singapore.
Should not you be more straightforward in setting out your informed view - after all you are the learned and smart professor and they are ignorant students no longer benefitting from the Flynn effect - when it comes to the real as opposed to the perceived outcomes of the neo-liberal experiment? Neo-liberalism may be perceived not to have strengthened the American industry’s competitive advantages: is this really the case? Is not the main case for retreating from free trade one outside economics, namely, national security (where one should probably admit that neo-liberalism has not delivered on the promise of increasingly peaceful relations across countries). Neo-liberalism was supposed to foster growth in the Global South: has not it delivered (possibly by making in the process some countries in the South ‘too strong’)? Last but not least, is not perhaps migration - not mentioned at all - the issue in which the tenets of neo-liberalism run most strongly against deeply ancestral tendencies rooted in the 99% of mankind (pre-)history (see eg
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nber.org/papers/w33163&sa=U&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiZmee7lOmJAxWggf0HHbiNLy4QFnoECBQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw15Su9SStIa7heQft_loHZG)?
"resist being dominated by the behemoths of the New Deal Order: Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor, and also Big Cultural Expectations."
I guess you got around to "resisting being dominated by mega corps", in the parts about strongmen.
I wonder if white males feel dominated by their "woke" wives. Woke because of the feminist revolution.
White males, principally those who are patriarchal, have resisted the idealism of the US Constitution by suppressing non-whites (also non-Christian), and white, not-males. Women's suffrage, civil rights were all acheieved with partial success in the C20th, with resistance from the established top of the pecking order. It continues to this day. Increasingly "woke" women won't date, let alone marry, "unwoke" men. Cultural change can be difficult, but someone has to do it.
I will disagree with one of Our Host's historical judgments. I see no discontinuity in the civil rights struggle until the mid-1960's. Up to then, it was steady pressure at the very limits of the possible, undertaken by people who knew what they were doing. Yes, the advances were far quicker in the postwar era. But this was only because past pressure had expanded the limits of the possible.