#Neoliberalism says we should use public resources to make people's lives more miserable. Sadly, saying we can and should do the opposite is very controversial. Happily, it is also very popular. #TaxTheSuperRich
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ux34natbhxube3xgdu3rhf45/post/3mawjr52qvs2f
#Neoliberalism
"You might say voters have some degree of influence, but really, in a money-driven system like the United States, it’s investors, it’s capitalists — it’s big capital. They’re the ones who are pushing for these changes.
That means that if you want to understand where neoliberalism comes from, or rather if you want to understand why it came about, the answer is, it came about because capitalists ceased to tolerate the welfare state.
Now, why did they tolerate the welfare state at all? Most people on the Left understand the welfare state was brought about through massive trade union mobilization and labor mobilizations and was kept in place as long as the trade union movement had some kind of presence within the Democratic Party, within the economy more generally, because those unions were powerful enough, employers had to figure out a way of living with them. Part of what they did to live with the trade unions was to agree to a certain measure of redistribution and a certain kind of welfare state. As long as that was the case, politicians kept the welfare state going.
This is why, in that era from the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s, Keynesianism or the economics of state intervention of some kind was the hegemonic economic theory. The theory became hegemonic because it was given respectability by virtue of the fact that everybody in power was using it. Because it’s being used by people in power, it has great respectability.
This is why, in the 1950s and ’60s, Milton Friedman was in the wilderness — same guy, same ideas, equally intellectually attractive, equally technically sophisticated, but he was in the wilderness."
https://jacobin.com/2025/12/neoliberalism-keynes-friedman-hayek-class/
#Neoliberalism #Economics #Politics #PoliticalEconomy #Ideology
"The far right is gaining power in Europe, fueled by conspiracies about migrant invasions and a shrinking white population.
But someone else is funding it: powerful tech billionaires in the US, who have their own agenda at play."
Interview: "How the elites continuously find ways to screw you."
~Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: the elite charade of changing the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFgIRpGnUJA
#USPol #Europol #oligarchy #Epstein #broligarchy #neoliberalism #racism .
@ChrisMayLA6 @bjn "#Freedom" was a big part of the rhetoric of capitalist ideologues such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
But the mendacity of that rhetoric was repeatedly demonstrated by their opposition to rights to resist capital, e.g. through trade unions. And Freedman's hypocrisy is starkly illustrated by his close association with Pinochet's brutal dictatorship in Chile. "Los Chicago Boys" replied on repressive military rule to crush popular resistance to #neoliberalism.
Interview: "How the elites continuously find ways to screw you."
~Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: the elite charade of changing the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFgIRpGnUJA
#USPol #Europol #oligarchy #Epstein #broligarchy #neoliberalism #racism .
All in all, fighting both the more traditional #extremeright and the more modern #FarRight is probably the fastest way to solve issues of #antisemitism and #racism in general. And to do so, we need to tackle the huge damages wrought by #neoliberalism during the 20th century and early 21st. #capitalism is already pretty bad, bur neoliberalism has plunged us in socio-political and cultural quagmire of wich we are seeing the results once again now.
Book Review: The Shock Doctrine
This popular 2007 book told us the nefarious ways of neoliberal economic policies. Its author was on many talk shows.
But it did nothing to stop the ways of neoliberalism.
What went wrong?
https://tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/blog_details.php?blog_cat_id=19&id=100
What will the renaissance of 2030’s be like I wonder?
After the boomers finally start to die off and climate change crunches down, I see no alternative to there finally being a reckoning.
I’m sure capitalism’s ills will be blamed on the boomers and their specific cultural traits of course, and a lot will be missed. But if the new generation fails to rise up.. I would be very disappointed!
The Secret History of Neoliberalism. This is a pretty good documentary. I'm not a fan of their use of AI for many of the graphics but the history and information is very good. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gR4eSEetKP0
So, with #Firefox becoming a slop browser, I think I can see where we're going. We are going to have 2 internets;
1 internet that is corporate, AI-filled, without privacy, browseable only with Chrome and Firefox;
1 internet that exists of stuff like the Fediverse, personal websites, and is usable with FF forks and older browsers.
These worlds will grow apart over time, and with the second category of browser, we will not be able to visit the corporate sphere anymore; the big platforms, online stores, maybe also things like WordPress sites, and notably, this will also include governmental sites and banking sites.
In the corporate browsers, we are always identified, logged, tracked. VPN and ad blockers will be banned. In short, government and corporations (which is becoming the same thing in the west, yay #neoliberalism ) will have full control here.
Most people will fall in line and reluctantly keep using the corporate browsers, while a smaller group will move to the "alternative internet" altogether, on which #enshittification and #ensloppification doesn't take place. (we're already here! yay!)
We end up being forced to use the corporate browser for some stuff that you can hardly get around - government, banking, contact with normies - not unlike how living without smartphone feels today.
So, just like it is living without a smartphone, I see us non-compliant people using some second device with the corporate browser, to manage that kind of stuff, while steering clear from it in daily life. (at most workplaces though, people will have no choice.)
These are my thoughts on which direction the internet seems to be going. At one hand, I wouldn't mind the internet splitting into two, so I can evade the corporate part.
But my problem lies with the part where we kinda can't get around having to go into the corporate sphere regularly, forced by majority culture as well as governments, which will be all too happy to have everyone nicely identifiable and compliant.
It can get really bad if the good part of the internet becomes outlawed, and that might well happen if we keep living under corporate/neolib/authoritarian governments. (talking about "the west" in general, not just the US)
"What was promised by some on the post-neoliberal right was a return to the interests of workers, understood as wages and benefits generous enough to re-fix the social anchor of the male-breadwinner trad-family in the disorienting slurry of modern life. What has happened so far is a mockery of that promise. In practice, the MAGA-right version of post-neoliberalism has done nothing to realize the supposed values of community, place, dignity of labor, or any of the other fanciful terms proposed by the administration’s economist at the event. Instead, it has produced extraordinarily high levels of corruption and self-dealing; bilateral deals with overseas investors to privatize profits; and the inevitable prospect of future federal backstops for colossal investments by a small number of technology firms, with at best residual effects for the portion of the population not left behind by globalization—those positioned to profit via rising stock prices with fingers double-crossed that the bubble does not burst in the near future."
https://lpeproject.org/blog/post-neoliberalism-is-the-new-centrism/
#Neoliberalism #PoliticalEeconomy #PostNeoliberalism #EconomicNationalism
What will be the cost of Keir Starmer’s new medicines deal with Donald Trump? British lives | Aditya Chakrabortty | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/11/keir-starmer-medicines-deal-donald-trump-cost-british-lives
Government to "liberalize" economy, pushing for 12 hour workday in #Argentina. #Union members take to the streets.
#neoliberalism #unions #Milei #JavierMilei #CGT #SocialSecurity #DivideAndRule #strike #strikes #capitalism #exploitation #corruption #ClassWar
Final deliveries: Denmark ending postal service after 400 years
FTR, I do not think it's a good thing for nations' postal services to be folding up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swDGEI6WZEU #Post #Mail #Neoliberalism
Great panel on how misrepresenting ”talking truth to power” for minorities only, not the greater working class, paved the way for MAGA.
(Yes. I know this hurts. But what you consider ”left” in USA is not actually left. It’s center-rigth liberalism. And you need to hear this. You were fooled, bigtime, by anti-left neoliberals)
A theme that keeps returning in my political and philosophical reading and thinking is the lack of #imagination.
I just read an essay about Günther Anders, a philosopher who wrote about living in an age where our capacity to imagine thing is dwarfed by our capacity to act. For exemple: we can't imagine tackling climate change because it's so big, but at the same time, we are causing it.
There's a link here with #Graeber his critique of #neoliberalism as a system to suppress imagination. Any attempt to go beyond the limits it constrains us in, people are ridiculed (at best) or violently repressed. There Is No Alternative - by force if necessary.
Je me demande si au Québec il existe des médecins socialistes comme cette youtubeuse, Dr Zoé? (super bonne communicatrice)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itKi6j7YXs0
Et je me demande si la description du système débile de points boni et de tarification à l'acte qu'elle dénonce s'apparente à ce que subissent les médecins au Québec?
Why & how this fascist takeover?
US oligarchs had always existed, but, until the 1970s, they tolerated some democracy.
The four simultaneous uprisings of the 60s gave them nightmares involving guillotines, so they launched this now culminating fascist project.
The Powell memo of 1971 was the launch pad. Rockefeller founded TriCom to dismantle the "excess of democracy" of the 1960s.
#PowellMemo #Neoliberalism #USPol #Europol #TrilateralCommission #USFascism ..2
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