That idea, that the market ensures that only the most efficient prosper, is a central message of neoliberal ideology, and it has held UK and US governments under its sway since the time of Thatcher and Reagan. But that ideology contains a large and deep internal contradiction, which applies particularly to large firms like Carillion. To see what that contraction is, we need to talk about ordoliberalism and Ronald Coase.Asymmetrical powers enable rent extraction.
Ordoliberalism is widely known as the German version of neoliberalism. It too celebrates the benefits of the market. It, like neoliberalism, ignores many of the failures of markets that Colin Crouch eloquently outlines and which economists spend a lot of time studying. But ordoliberalism does recognise one potential problem with their market ideal which neoliberalism ignores, and that is monopoly. Crouch makes a similar distinction in talking about market-neoliberals and corporate-neoliberals.
One of the paradoxes of liberalism is that limiting the power of government limits corruption. But corruption is not limited to people in government. As Adam Smith observed, business people have not only an incentive to collude but also a tendency toward it if not restrained.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. — The Wealth of Nations 1.10.82Freedom entails responsibility, and responsibility depends on accountability.
Evonomics
Neoliberalism: How Seeing Markets as Perfect Turned into an Ideology Justifying Crony Capitalism
Simon Wren-Lewis | Professor of Economics, Oxford University
Simon Wren-Lewis | Professor of Economics, Oxford University
4 comments:
That idea, that the market ensures that only the most efficient prosper, is a central message of neoliberal ideology, and it has held UK and US governments under its sway since the time of Thatcher and Reagan.
This has to be the dumbest of the pathetic and dumb arguments you guys have employed. If "the market" is so "efficient" in the eyes of Reagan, why wasn't the Fed dissolved? What was the necessity of the war on drugs? This is the functional equivalent of Russia Russia Russia.
Pitiful.
Your 55 gallon drum of B.S. has been empty for years and now you are just scraping rust off the bottom of the barrel with your little spoon.
Though I usually whine about too many posts here, there are a couple of recent articles by Marshall Auerback at Alternet that much of the MMT gang seems to have missed.
Here is a keeper quote from the first one, on bitcoin:
"Seen in this context, the idea of “denationalizing” money, as Hayek advocated, makes about as much sense as divorcing childbirth from procreation."
Bob Roddis- IIRC Auerback once was an Austrian, too. There is a lot to recommend that school in terms of outlook and way of thinking. But the theory of money is "wrong" - it analyzes things too coarsely. What you called "preposterous" last time we talked - MMT - shows gold has only ever been valuable because one could get fiat money, credit for it - is right.
At least I feel I got through with a bit of what MMT is saying when you said "preposterous". I even hope that some critic might read some Mitchell Innes etc , giving the "philosophical" understanding of it.
If "the market" is so "efficient" in the eyes of Reagan, why wasn't the Fed dissolved? What was the necessity of the war on drugs?
Because the whole system is gamed to serve a few. Those people don't believe their bullshit any more than we do - they just profit from it. As to the war on drugs, the primary purpose was to staunch the massive outflow of cash, and it quickly became a lucrative industry in its own right serviced by the MIC (which never met a war it didn't like).
It's like what the billionaire vitamin manufacturer said when asked if vitamins really work. "They do for me."
The war on drugs had the added benefit addressing the "race problem" with expanding incarceration, which had the further benefit of spawning the private prison industry that is now a major lobby against de-criminalization.
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