Reconsidering NeoLiberalism (code word for return of idiot-savant-conservatism & class war)

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

NeoLiberalism is basically the code word for war on the Middle Class.

Neoliberalism is Alive and Well

(Hat tip John Hemington)

excerpt:

"Neoliberal policies aim to reduce wages to the bare minimum and to maximize the returns to capital and management.

They also aim to demobilize workers’ organizations and reduce workers to carriers of labour power — a commodity to be bought and sold on the market for its lowest price.

Neoliberalism is about re-shaping society so that there is no input by workers’ organizations into democratic or economic decision-making.

Crises and austerity may not be intentionally sought by most state leaders and central bank governors, but they do contribute significantly towards pursuing such ends.

Consequently, these politicians and leaders of the economy do not strive to put in place new structures or policies that will reduce the recurrence of crisis."

Anyone see a problem with this? Yes, for some, NeoLiberalism is a superficially attractive hypothesis, but it makes no biological sense whatsoever.

It's quite obvious where it all goes wrong. It assumes simplicity where complexity exists.

In a 1st-pass at systems logic, it's true that right-sizing component maintenance processes does makes systemic sense. However, having no idea where the sustainable tolerance limits are for all those diverse processes, and then blindly - and relentlessly - pushing past any and all tolerance limits ... that's just plain stupid and non-scientific - and suicidal to boot.

Toyota wouldn't be in business if it tried to build cars that way. All they'd churn out would be Yugos, Chevy NoVas, and Ford Pintos.

The prime failing of NeoLiberalism is simply complete ignorance, about when to stop.

They cannot in the slightest way recognize when they've gone too far. 

That simple point reveals their ignorant obsession, and their resulting inability to see simple solutions.

The 1st rule of parasitism is "don't kill your host."

Similarly, you'd think that the 1st rule for all OCD Control Frauds and self-styled Aristocrats would be to "enslave the serfs, but don't starve them to death." You'd think that even a sociopathic numbskull would quickly realize that well fed, trained & educated slaves are more productive than constrained ones. If you're smart enough to even start down that path, you might eventually - depending on how intelligent you were - recognize that the pinnacle of wealth is attained by unleashing the serfs, by setting them free.

He is richest who has motivated, capable, free people with a reliable affinity for him.

Who else can do a BETTER job of watching your back, or the backs of your family & children?

Instead, a cultural tourniquet is exactly what NeoLiberalism embraces. Sequestering maximal current fiat FROM an existing generation, while remaining blind to implications for future cultural options.

That is NOT how multi-level (i.e., cultural) evolution works. Rather, system or cultural evolution works via a dynamic, 2-stage optimization task. Those that over-adapt to transient context hasten their own extinction. The actual goal is to constantly re-chart a course that optimizes the dynamic sum of [current fiat PLUS future options], not either one in isolation.

Anyone who stops & thinks about this for 30 seconds agrees - even Mutual Fund investment advisors. The goal is to stay in the adaptive race for decades, not to "win" today - because "winning" or out-hoarding everyone else today is going too far, over adapting to transient context, and reducing future options. What does it take to get NeoLiberals to actually stop & think for 30 seconds?

Do the NeoLiberals love all the grandchildren of America? Even if they think they do, are they really so arrogant to think that THEY know what's best when it comes to planning for the generations yet to come?

How ironic that unfettered, unthinking, runaway capitalism and the class war that results constitutes just another form of the Central Planning that they profess to abhor? What part of tollerance-limits versus going too far do these dimwits not understand? When it comes to constraining cultural adaptive rate, does it matter whether the Central Planners claim Divine Right, Communist Committee, or oligarch authority?

Culturally, NeoLiberalism is analogous to putting a tourniquet on each foot, to squeeze MAXIMAL quarterly productivity out of them. Doh! The result isn't systemic progress, it's cultural gangrene that's soon fatal, if continued unchecked.

Here are some additional, entertaining articles about NeoLiberalism. If only the dimwit NeoLiberals could learn the difference between a useful tactic and unnecessary, suicidal overkill - they could then be progressives. Then we could go back to safely firing the dumbest of the dumb upstairs, out of the way.

Four Signs Neoliberalism is (Almost) DeadThough Margaret Thatcher is no longer among the living, her ideology lives on. That ideology – known today as neoliberalism ... is strikingly unique.

Barack Obama and the Neo-Liberal CoupDefenders of the policies of President Barack Obama have correctly pointed to the difficult circumstances he and ‘the nation’ faced when he entered office and the dim intransigence of Congressional Republicans while they fail to address that his actual policies have derived almost exclusively from the political-economic theories of neo-liberalism—the economics of the radical right.

The Origins of the Neoliberal War on the PoorIn November of 1994 two years of ramshackle government, breached pledges and the Clinton administration’s frequently manifested contempt for its traditional base, exacted their price.

The Human Equivalent of the $640 Toilet SeatCHUCK SPINNEY
Neoliberal economics has been an ideological mantra of Republicans and Democrats alike since President Jimmy Carter began the wave of privatization and deregulation that exploded during the succession of Republican and Democratic presidencies after 1980.

The Corporate State and Manufactured DependenceAn argument often heard in the 1980s and ‘90s by those favoring lower taxes on the rich was the rich could avoid paying taxes because they had the resources to do so, so why not be pragmatic and set tax rates low enough the rich would actually pay them? 

There is an alternative. Seeing our own population as our own, best force, for exploring our expanding national options. NeoLiberals claim to love the military. Therefore they should have no opposition to embracing "Force-Readiness" principles ... which requires optimal investment in the MiddleClass, the foot-soldiers of an adaptive culture.

Yet so far, NeoLiberalism argues that the best citizen "army" is one where the generals constantly strive to hoard all the weapons and ammunition. Good luck with that nonsense. NeoLiberalism is self-contradictory, not just bat-shit crazy.

If you think NeoLiberalism makes sense, then you'd have to also argue that adipocytes should "rule" the human body, and that "honey pots" should run all policy for certain ant colonies. That view is ridiculously simplistic, and also contradictory to our own, human history. The NeoLiberal intellect sees only static assets, and totally misses the dominance of dynamic assets - aka, teamwork.

Factional Politics: Includes Furthering The Myth That Economics Is Ever Separated From Political Policy

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson; hat tip to Chuck Spinney & Tom Hickey)



There IS no pure economics, only political-economics, aka, factional policy or, rarely, aggregate-policy.

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

Gareth Porter on the true history of Iran’s nuclear program

By Andrew Cockburn, Harpers

The emerging evidence about rampant & pervasive myths in both the social sciences and ongoing policy processes should trigger us to simply close down all economics departments ... or at least re-label them as "propaganda" departments set up purely to serve the interests of existing political campaign donors.

The whole premise of economics is to "study the human mind stripped of culture" ?

Impossible. Anyone saying that has never cracked open a biology-101 textbook, or even read many newspapers. At least not honestly.

Just google "feral children." People raised isolated from culture are NOT capable of developing what we think of as the human mind. For Pete's sake!

And orthodox macro-economics purports to study group behavior stripped of aggregate policy? Look, just quit bullshitting me. We are not an aggregate of feral-hermits or feral-communities. Aggregates operating isolated from Public Purpose are also NOT capable of developing what we would consider a group-brain or group intelligence. None of us is as smart as all of us, right?

Unless you flat out lie about the myth of Central Planning, while persisting in paying lip service to democracy.  (All Central Planning is equally fatal? It's just that Upper Class Central Planning is less fatal than than others? Is that the rationalization, among porkers feeding at the common trough?)

To me, them's fightin' words. It's past time to drive the stale numbskulls, rascals & idiot savants out of the temple of Democracy. The only survival option is to save them from themselves .... again. Anything less is long past boring. Their act was pathetic from the start. In fact, it's never been clear why an electorate this smart ever had any interest in the trap of gang, er "party" politics from the beginning.

It's amazing to consider how much ideological momentum it took to keep so much common-sense logic bottled up for hundreds of years, in so many fields.

It's simultaneously fascinating, frustrating & heartening to see these 3 articles in print, precisely for the rarity of seeing simple, straightforward, real thought actually slip through both "scientific," "political" and "journalism" industries.

It's nice to know that that can still happen - even if by accident. :) Yet it is also sobering.

One conclusion? Whenever something starts to be catalogued and systematized, then functionally adaptive wormholes through that catalogue-space begin to be denied, through sheer structural momentum alone.

Such institutional denial can have a strong effect on the herd minded.

Yet for evolution to continue, every herd must keep both it's conservatives and progressives operating safely within - not outside - adaptive tolerance limits. If all of us are smarter than any subset of us, then we need ALL of ourselves, to find ways to utilize ALL of our distributed talents, ALL of the time.

So does that mean having so-called conservatives sitting back and helping to CAREFULLY select from all the insanely great inventions generated by so-called progressives? Ya think? 

What on Earth is there to squabble about? We're staring at an expanding smorgasbord - one that can't run out, only grow, unless we knock the tables over while brawling - and it feels awfully stupid to waste time arguing about which dishes to taste first. As many as possible, ASAP? Then just share feedback, also ASAP, about how all the endless options taste? 

And then? Just follow the feedback momentum, instead of trying to grab some arbitrary option, and hoard it? This ain't rocket science. Hoarding slowly growing static assets instead of leveraging exponentially growing dynamic assets is a strategy of extreme ignorance. We're better than that ..... right?

How Do We Manufacture Public Purpose? Not Just Consent?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



We'd have to start all the way back in Kindergarten - and then maintain it? Because that goal pervades literally every endeavor we make, at all stages of life?

It takes an electorate?  To keep manufacturing aggregate intent?

Meanwhile, this following approach step seems like one small, necessary but not sufficient step in the right direction, as long as the literal phrase isn't over sold. :)

Post Consumers

Finding the satisfaction of [personally] enough? 

How did we end up with so many voters who find the term "tolerance limits" so foreign?

"The Merchant of Avarice"

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Start Putting Human Sub-Species On The Endangered Species List? 

That May Be Our Most Viable Option At This Point!

Some candidates. The Middle Class? India's Girl-Child class? Women everywhere? Not to mention non-billionaire voters. Et tu college students?

Seriously. Getting EPA protection, stateside or in Europe, may be the quickest way to get protection legislated soon enough to matter. That means soon enough to prevent ourselves from lopping off too many parts that "WE" can't survive without. Even German voters care more about saving bumblebees than about saving the citizens throughout southern Europe, although they admit both acts are for the same, aggregate purpose. Huh?? Regardless. Show me another way to get the entire 28-nation block to make remedial adjustments that quickly!

You couldn't make this level of stupidity up.

In a cut-throat race to hoard "fiat" - and defer it's use to supposedly more important times - we may literally end up cutting one too many of the key cultural arteries that supply infrastructure supporting each of the competitive lobbies wielding an economic knife. If Shakespeare were still around, he'd have to re-write some themes, including coming up with "The Merchant of Avarice" - about an idiot intent on repeatedly cutting off a pound of his OWN flesh, to reduce expenses and thereby pay off old debts to himself. Doh!

Yet is that the ONLY way to stem the growing stupidity? 

Wouldn't establishing some simple tolerance limits on EVERY process be far simpler than clumsy, self-assisted suicide? 

We've already made mico/macro self-assisted suicide illegal, but like other declared wars, our avowed efforts expand the exact entity we purport to squash, thereby calling into question the very axioms we're using to shape our efforts.

Perhaps a bit more balanced thinking would do wonders?

To try that out, do we have to put quality of distributed decision-making on the endangered species list too?

The Very Fact That This Topic Has To Be RE-Introduced By Aging Grandparents Today ... Scares The Hell Out Of Me.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Where on Earth have these people BEEN for 150 years?

Let alone 4000 years?

"If you're worried that lions are eating too many zebras, you don't say to the lions, 'You're eating too many zebras.' You have to build a fence around the lions. They're not going to build it."

Judge Richard Posner Questions His Free-Market Faith In "A Failure Of Capitalism"

Ya think?

Show me anything between social-to-subatomic processes that are not hemmed in by regulatory tolerance limits.

BMHOTK!

The very fact that this topic has to be RE-introduced by aging grandparents today, in the AFTERMATH of court cases over disastrous behaviors ... scares the hell out of me.

Are we doomed? Can survive ourselves? Not looking good at this pace.

What Kind of Letter Might Immunology Students Write?

commentary by Roger Erickson

Or medical students?
  Law students?
    Math students?
      Engineers?
        ALL CITIZENS?

Open Letter by German Economics Students demanding change & an end of mainstream economics brainwashing.

(note, there's a translation button at the top of the page)

This is a healthy sign.  We need similar letters, from youth in all known and emerging professions.  Basically, all letters would be variants of the following:

***

"To accelerate our Adaptive Rate, keep all education & training faster, more succinct and context-relevant.

If a picture is worth 1-thousand words, then a sensori-motor experience is worth 1-million, and adequately distributed feedback & discussion from a coordinated group-experience is worth 1-trillion words. We never have time for enough words. Operational experience is far faster.

Just as very few emerging operations are financialized, 70% or more of all operational knowledge is never verbalized. Don't let too many words insulate or delay us from contact with evolving operations.  We need agile tolerance limits."

[In short: "Give us some minimal orientation, but then get out of the way!"]

***

Are we seeing the messy, 1st marriage of the OEs & KM?  Of Orthodox Economics, Operational Experience and Knowledge Management? That could make a great reality show, for those dull enough to be distracted by the slow pace.

Wake me when rthodox economics & KM have the same operational experience as Henry the VIII, or Elizabeth Taylor.

What kind of letter would teenagers write to those administering Marriage Licenses and Marriage Counseling? Sure, the median letter would be different from that that they would have written in retrospect - if still married decades later - but there's no one alive today who can write the right letter in time.  That's what makes life fun.   I'm beginning to think that life would be a whole lot more fun for all of us without either religious or economic ideologues.

Here's what's missing from economics, even more so than most other professions. Just as most products are progressively irrelevant to succeeding contexts (e.g., useless within 50 years), SO IS MOST ADVICE, THEORY AND PERSPECTIVE. Get over it.  Data, and advice, is meaningless without context ... and context changes.  Screw the theory, let's have some fun with the operations - and let the control-freak theorists worry about keeping up.  As long as they realize their limited utility, we can lead, and they can follow.