If you've ever wanted to understand what neoliberalism is, this is the series for you. Neoliberalism is an economic ideology that exists within the framework of capitalism. Over four decades ago, neoliberalism become the dominant economic paradigm of global society. In this video series, we'll trace the history of neoliberalism, starting with a survey of neoliberal philosophy and research, a historical reconstruction of the movement pushing for neoliberal policy solutions, witnessing the damage that neoliberalism did to its first victims in the developing world, and then charting neoliberalism's infiltration of the political systems of the United States and the United Kingdom. Learn how neoliberalism is generating crises for humanity at an unprecedented rate.
But millions of people who grew up in the post war era took embedded Keynesian liberalism, the Golden Age of Capitalism, for granted and let it go.
If you've ever wanted to understand what neoliberalism is, this is the series for you. Neoliberalism was a reaction. It was an effort to disassemble a previous vision of society that once held sway over most of the world. In order to understand neoliberalism, it’s important to first understand the world before neoliberalism; the world which neoliberalism considered unacceptable, and in need of urgent reconfiguration. Learn about the world of embedded liberalism.
“Disassembling the previous vision of society that once held sway”, wasn’t an entirely unproductive exercise, at least in the UK. The “previous vision” in the UK consisted to significant extent of pouring taxpayers’ money into defunct, loss making industries. The excuse given by politicians was to “save jobs”. The real reason, at least arguably, was to buy votes.
ReplyDeleteNeoliberal Margaret Thatcher than came along and said “Stuff this. From now on only businesses which can pay their way will survive”.
Of course I’m not saying all aspects of neoliberalism are great, but SOME ASPECTS were OK.
Many of the nationalised industries were overmanned, but rather than neolberalise the economy, they should have brought in the shorter hourly week. Industry was already getting very automated then.
ReplyDeleteThe end of political economics
ReplyDeleteComment on BarakalypseNow on ‘This Is Neoliberalism’
From Adam Smith/Karl Marx to the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” economics claims to be a science but it never was. Actually, economics is political agenda pushing that abuses the prestige of science.
There is political economics and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, the goal of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works. (ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed.
Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years.
Economists have NOT figured out to this day how the economy works. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the foundational economic concept profit wrong.
“In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)
There is no true, i.e. materially and formally consistent, economic theory. Fact is, therefore, that economic policy guidance never had sound scientific foundations since Adam Smith. Economics has never been more than ‘educated common sense’ or ‘personal opinion’. So, the political concepts of Liberalism, Socialism, Keynesianism, Neoliberalism are hanging in midair and have no valid economic foundation.
Orthodox economics claims that the market economy is a self-regulating system that produces optimal outcomes. This assertion, though, has NEVER been proved. Worse, Keynes’ question: “... is the existing economic system in any significant sense self-adjusting.” has to be answered in the negative.#1
Keynes spotted the problems of Orthodoxy and he was right in initiating a paradigm shift, i.e. of moving from microfoundations to macrofoundations. But due to his scientific incompetence, he messed things badly up.#2, #3 The lack of scientific legitimacy, though, did not stop him from political agenda pushing.#4
Because both the microfoundations approach and the macrofoundations approach are axiomatically false, roughly 90 percent of the content of peer-reviewed journals is scientifically worthless.
Strictly speaking, economists cannot provide scientific input for the great political debates about how society and economy should be organized. Historical fact is that economists’ policy advice tends, more often than not, to make matters worse.#5 Economics is a scientific failure and economists have never been anything else than blind agenda pushers/useful political idiots. This holds for the whole spectrum from right to left.
To get these stupid and corrupt folks out is the precondition for economics to eventually become a science.#6
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Could we, please, all focus on the key question of economics?
http://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/05/could-we-please-all-focus-on-key.html
#2 Where economics went wrong (II)
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/10/where-economics-went-wrong.html
#3 From false microfoundations to true macrofoundations
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/02/from-false-microfoundations-to-true.html
#4 Legitimacy lost
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/09/legitimacy-lost.html
#5 As Napoleon said: don’t listen to economists
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/04/as-napoleon-said-dont-listen-to.html
#6 #DrainTheScientificSwamp
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/12/drainthescientificswamp.html
Neo-liberalism could be cut off from the source of its power by de-privileging the banks - a solution that somehow does not often, if ever, occur to Progressives and the MMT gang.
ReplyDeleteThis video so entirely dishonest and stupid. As you people remind us repeatedly, WE HAVE A MODERN MONEY FIAT FUNNY MONEY SYSTEM. Everything that happens in society and in the economy happens because of that system. To blame the current system upon Hayek who vigorous opposed it and called for its abolition is simply dishonest and stupid. As is anyone who promotes or buys into this stupid "argument" about the nature of "neoliberalism" such as the producers of this pathetic video.
ReplyDeleteFurther, as I repeatedly remind everyone, no Keynesian or "progressive" has the slightest understanding or familiarity with even the basic concepts of the Austrian School or libertarianism.
That includes Egmont "Profit Function" Kakarot-Handtke. If you thought you could refute Austrian School analysis, you would. You know you cannot so you don't even try. Name calling is so much easier.
Lest Progressives seem to have a monopoly on being wrong:
ReplyDeleteCode Name Cain
Bob Roddis
ReplyDeleteYou say: “If you thought you could refute Austrian School analysis, you would.”
Yes, give me the Austrian profit law and I will refute it.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
Bob Roddis
ReplyDeleteThis is Austrian Profit Theory: “The ultimate source from which entrepreneurial profit and losses are derived is the uncertainty of the future constellation of demand and supply.” (von Mises, 2007, p. 293)
The axiomatically correct macroeconomic Profit Law is given as Q=Yd+(I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M). All variables are measurable, the Profit Law is testable.
Austrians never understood what profit is. Austrianism is scientifically as dead as a doornail and has never been anything else than political blather/agenda-pushing.#1
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 See also
Hayek ― agenda pusher or scientist?
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/06/hayek-agenda-pusher-or-scientist.html
Hayek and other informationally retarded proto-economists
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/04/hayek-and-other-informationally.html
Forget Hayek
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/forget-hayek.html
Austrian idiocy ― the case of Hayek
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/12/austrian-idiocy-case-of-hayek.html
Why Hayek was not a scientist
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/12/why-hayek-was-not-scientist.html
Hayek was not an economist
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/03/hayek-was-not-economist.html
Hayek: mad, bad, or just another incompetent economist?
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2015/11/hayek-mad-bad-or-just-another.html
Hayek, or, How economists miss their subject matter since 200+ years
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/05/hayek-or-how-economists-miss-their.html
Pareto-efficiency, Hayek’s marvel, and the invisible executor
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2015/02/pareto-efficiency-hayeks-marvel-and.html
You wrote:
ReplyDeleteWalrasian microfoundations are defined with this axiom set: “HC1 economic agents have preferences over outcomes; HC2 agents individually optimize subject to constraints; HC3 agent choice is manifest in interrelated markets; HC4 AGENTS HAVE FULL RELEVANT KNOWLEDGE; HC5 observable outcomes are coordinated, and must be discussed with reference to equilibrium states.” (Weintraub)
Austrian School (Hayekian) price and information theory has nothing to do with Walras and it certainly does not suggest that humans have “full relevant knowledge” about anything. You haven’t the slightest familiarity with Austrian School concepts or analysis. And there is and can be no “profit law”.
Bob Roddis
ReplyDeleteYou say: “Austrian School (Hayekian) price and information theory has nothing to do with Walras and it certainly does not suggest that humans have ‘full relevant knowledge’ about anything.”
That, of course, is correct. The Walrasian axioms HC1/HC5 are different from the action axiom: “The action-axiom is the basis of praxeology in the Austrian School, and it is the proposition that all specimens of the species Homo sapiens, the Homo agens, purposely utilize means over a period of time in order to achieve desired ends.”
The common denominator of Walrasianism and Austrianism, though, consists of two lethal methodological blunders. Both approaches are (i) behavioral, and (ii), microfounded. Because of this, both approaches crash against the wall of the Fallacy of Composition, that is, all propositions about the economy as a whole are false.#1 This holds, in particular, for the NEVER proven proposition that the market economy is a stable self-regulating system. Just the opposite is provably true.
Worse, both approaches do not get the foundational concept of profit right. To say that an economist who has no clue about the foundational concept of his subject matter is an imbecile moron is NOT an insult but a correct diagnosis.
Scientific methodology tells one that if the foundational concepts are false the whole analytical superstructure is false. Austrianism has a scientific content of zero, that is, it NEVER has been anything else than unadulterated brain-dead political agenda pushing.
Behavioral microfoundations constitute the methodological common denominator of Walrasianism and Austrianism which, in turn, constitute the building blocks of Neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism has zero scientific content. It holds always and everywhere: political economics is proto-scientific garbage. What has to be done is to expel all these stupid/corrupt agenda pushers from the sciences and to abolish the public-relations fraud called “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”. The first who gets the posthumous dishonorable discharge from the sciences is Hayek.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Austrian blather
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/04/austrian-blather.html
British Industry wasn't allowed to modernize.
ReplyDelete