UPDATES on Gaza and Libertarianism IS Neoliberalism

 '“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Malcolm X 1965

'The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.' Malcolm X

 

 https://www.britannica.com/money/neoliberal-globalization

 neoliberal globalization, an approach to economic globalization, or the integration of the world’s economies, based on neoliberalism, an ideology and policy model that emphasizes the value of free market competition.

The globalization that has taken place since the late 1980s (understood by some economists as a “third” globalization, following the spread of new transportation and communication technologies beginning in the late 19th century and the adoption of an international monetary system in the mid-20th century) has been guided by the neoliberal model, insofar as the national and international economic policies by which it was enabled reflect neoliberal beliefs and values.

1. The state tends to withdraw from all areas of social life.
2. The welfare state and the ideal of collective responsibility are limited or undermined.
3. Self-help, self-responsibility of individuals for their problems, and the capability of the market to regulate itself without human intervention are emphasized.
4. Growth, productivity, and competition are presented as the only goals of collective human actions.
5. Old ultraliberal ideas are presented as modern and progressive.
6. Money and financial markets are homogenized under the dominance of a few nations.
7. A new social Darwinism puts across the message that only the strong and worthy survive in society and on the market.
8. A permanent insecurity of wage and living conditions (“flexploitation”), an individualization of work contracts, and state assistance and state subsidies for large corporations are all established and institutionalized.
9. It is emphasized that the economy is independent from society, that the market is the best means of organizing production and distribution efficiently and equitably, and that globalization requires the minimization of state spending, especially on social security.
10. The ideas in (9) are presented as inescapable, self-evident, and without alternatives.
11. The state creates the legal framework for flexible wages and flexible working times.
12. Collective bargaining systems are increasingly superseded by systems at a sectoral, regional, or company level.
13. The state tries to facilitate capital investment and technological progress through corporate subsidies and research and development (R&D) programs.
14. The state increasingly tries to activate entrepreneurial thinking by creating new forms of self-dependence and self-employment, reducing unemployment and social-welfare benefits, tightening eligibility criteria for such programs, and imposing sanctions and coercive activation policies designed to remove the poor or unemployed from social-welfare programs.
15. Pensions are increasingly cut, and the retirement age is lifted; private pension funds are encouraged.
16. Universities come to be treated as enterprises, and cooperation between universities and corporations is encouraged.
17. Public enterprises and services are increasingly privatized and commercialized.
18. The nation-state is transformed into a competitive state: there is competition for good conditions of economic investment between nation-states, and, hence, nation-states are frequently forced to facilitate privatization, deregulation, and the deterioration of wages, labour legislation, and welfare policies to attract the interest of transnational capital.

 

https://www.lp.org/platform/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/libertarianism-politics/Libertarian-philosophy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/clinton-says-era-of-big-government-is-over-in-1996-state-of-the-union/2014/01/22/da7c0cb4-83b6-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_video.html

'On Tuesday in his Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Barack Obama veered sharply down that same course, trumpeting his executive order "to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive."https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/obama-pulls-clinton-deregulation/

' The neoliberal revolution had a simple and, to some at least, intuitively attractive premise. By slashing taxes, removing regulations, and eliminating global barriers to the flow of capital, new wealth would be created, and a majority would share in the benefits. Free to spend and invest without the cumbersome burdens imposed by many states in the decades after World War II, individuals and businesses alike would in turn become more creative and more prosperous as entrepreneurship and rational self-interest replaced the clumsy and often arbitrary schemes of government bureaucrats. Measured against this story, it might be said that the neoliberal project has utterly failed.''

If the purported objective of neoliberal globalism was to foster collective prosperity, that objective has quite obviously failed. But the public-facing story of neoliberalism — with its faux-populist slogans of economic empowerment and trickle-down wealth — has, in practice, always been a fiction rather than a failure. To the immense credit of its authors, Oxfam’s report does not shy away from this reality or its implications. “The very existence of booming billionaires and record profits, while most people face austerity, rising poverty and a cost-of-living crisis,” they write,' https://jacobin.com/2023/01/davos-neoliberalism-capitalism-inequality-democracy