L'idea che il neoliberismo si sia imposto grazie ad una manciata di figure chiave (Reagan, Thatcher, Pinochet) è a sua volta una fantasia neoliberale, perché rinforza l'idea che gli individui da soli (grazie al loro carisma e alle loro abilità) riescano a cambiare il mondo.
In realtà l'ideologia neoliberale si è imposta (e continua ad imporsi) grazie ai think-thank e alle fondazioni degli ultra-miliardari (e a tutto un reticolo di centri di potere). Dietro singoli rappresentanti ci sono sempre grandi gruppi.
Quando dite di voler pisciare sulla tomba di Margareth Thatcher, lei vi sorride dall'aldilà, perché è riuscita a colonizzare anche il vostro dissenso. È quello il segnale: hanno vinto loro.
#UK#London#Goldsmiths#Universities#Humanities#HigherEd#Neoliberalism#Austerity: "The most immediate and seemingly tangible rationale for these closures and reductions in provision is falling student numbers. But to focus on this is as if it was just a matter of student ‘choices’, market forces and the ebb and flow of fashionable and unfashionable subjects, is to obfuscate a series of interrelated factors that have made so many institutions and departments vulnerable to cuts. Turning to my own institution (where I am an active emeritus professor), there is a poignancy running through the words that follow. Quite independent of the intricacies of managerial decision making, Goldsmiths, University of London exemplifies all the admirable strengths and now the fragilities of the sector. It is not so much that Goldsmiths is such an exceptional case that it deserves singling out for special support (though that would be welcome). But rather, with a large number of compulsory redundancies announced in the last week alone, we not only need to pay critical attention with people’s livelihoods and family lives on the line, but we also need to take stock of what the future of higher education looks like in this increasingly bleak landscape. It is shocking news to us all, as the management are looking to lose 130 full-time equivalent positions across 11 departments. With so much at stake there must surely be other ways to secure financial stability. The reality is that Goldsmiths is a microcosm. It has always been something of an experiment in higher education (in the best possible sense) and now it stands to lose much of its identity and of the wider value it has delivered as an egalitarian institution dedicated to combining international research with a socially inclusive education." https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/a-goldsmiths-diary
#EU#EC#Neoliberalism#Antitrust#Competition#BigTech: "In 2019, a year after the GDPR came into force, Johnny Ryan appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and told them that “things I think are looking very bleak for our colleagues at Google and at Facebook … it is highly likely that they will be forced to change how they do business.” At the time, he was working for Brave, a privacy-focused web browser founded by the author of the Javascript programming language.
I asked Ryan what happened. “I was a naïve young man,” he chuckled. In fairness, at the time he added the caveat that the Europeans had yet to enforce their own policy. The Commission shipped out enforcement to member states’ data protection authorities, without much pressure to apply the law as written. Tech platforms quickly realized that if they headquartered in one EU country, they could funnel all GDPR regulatory enforcement there. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta set up shop in Ireland, and Amazon in Luxembourg; both are notorious tax havens with incentives to be friendly to Big Tech. Ryan made a public records request asking how many Irish investigators were working on GDPR, and was told the agency didn’t even have records to find out who was investigating.
“If you have free movement within the EU but strong national state authorities in their territories, it’s obvious that corporates will play them against each other,” said Repasi, and that’s what happened. A parallel problem is that the GDPR didn’t focus enforcement toward the biggest purveyors of data, meaning that the smallest website operators—“local sports clubs and dentists,” Ryan said—felt the biggest relative impact.
“When a member state doesn’t enforce European law,” Ryan added, “the European Commission is the guardian of the treaties of the EU and they should take that state to court … [but] 10 to 15 years ago the Commission stopped taking cases against member states. It’s love instead of power.”" https://prospect.org/world/2024-04-03-eurocrats-on-the-brink/
"Governments since 1979 have either promoted neoliberalism and austerity (Thatcher, Cameron), or promoted neoliberalism and increased spending (Blair). Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour offered an end to neoliberalism, and more spending. Keir Starmer’s Labour is offering something radically new: a turn against neoliberalism, combined with a worsening of austerity. Nothing like this has been seen before in Britain"
James Meadway
"...we backtracked on our election pledge to remove the surtax on superannuation. Because morally I couldn't justify to myself that we would give a tax concession to the wealthy retirees - which removing the surtax would do - while we were taking some off those who were in much poorer circumstances."
Arguably, the neoliberal era in NZ electoral politics began with the Wall St crash of 1987, and ended 2 decades later, with the property crash of 2008. Key's govt reacted out of habit, with bailouts for the owning classes, and austerity for the working classes. But the 2017 Labour govt won on the promise of "transformational" change, and in the context of Ardern and Hipkins condemning neoliberalism. Although policy didn't always reflect this;
@CarolynStirling
> How quickly could they implement Neo Liberal economics. It was brutal
Alister Barry made a series of documentaries about this period. Someone Else's Country covers the Rogernomics Labour government and In a Land of Plenty covers the Ruthenasia Nat government that followed it.
Both are essential viewing for anyone under 50 who wants to understand how #neoliberalism changed Aotearoa. Folks over 50 may remember pre-1984 NZ, but might still find these docos insightful.
In case you feel like climbing on board a 787 or 737 Max in the next little while... this might disabuse you of such a consideration:
“Discussing Swampy’s death and the whistleblower lawsuit he left behind, the longtime former Boeing executive told me, “I don’t think one can be cynical enough when it comes to these guys.” Did that mean he thought Boeing assassinated Swampy? “It’s a top-secret military contractor, remember; there are spies everywhere,” he replied. More importantly, he added, “there is a principle in American law that there is no such thing as an accidental death during the commission of a felony. Let’s say you rob a bank and while traveling at high speed in the getaway you run down a pedestrian and kill them. That’s second-degree murder at the very least.””
#ISDS#PoliticalEconomy#Capitalism#Neoliberalism#Globalization: "ISDS settlements are truly grotesque: they're not just a matter of buying out existing investments made by foreign companies and refunding them money spent on them. ISDS tribunals routinely order governments to pay foreign corporations all the profits they might have made from those investments.
(...)
Governments, both left and right, grew steadily more outraged that ISDSes tied the hands of democratically elected lawmakers and subordinated their national sovereignty to corporate sovereignty. By 2023, nine EU countries were ready to pull out of the ECT.
But the ECT had another trick up its sleeve: a 20-year "sunset" clause that bound countries to go on enforcing the ECT's provisions – including ISDS rulings – for two decades after pulling out of the treaty. This prompted European governments to hit on the strategy of a simultaneous, mass withdrawal from the ECT, which would prevent companies registered in any of the ex-ECT countries from suing under the ECT.
It will not surprise you to learn that the UK did not join this pan-European coalition to wriggle out of the ECT. On the one hand, there's the Tories' commitment to markets above all else (as the Trashfuture podcast often points out, the UK government is the only neoliberal state so committed to austerity that it's actually dismantling its own police force). On the other hand, there's Rishi Sunak's planet-immolating promise to "max out North Sea oil."
But as the rest of the world transitions to renewables, different blocs in the UK – from unions to Tory MPs – are realizing that the country's membership in ECT and its fossil fuel commitment is going to make it a world leader in an increasingly irrelevant boondoggle – and so now the UK is also planning to pull out of the ECT."
"Like most #neoliberal institutions, #Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs"
@inquiline do those two questions matter, tho? what im saying is the server you're using to speak out against #neoliberalism is a threat to a range of good faith actors who want to counter neolib.
as a further injury, prospect.org is on amazon..... or as some people like to call these days, #scamazon..... among the worst antitrust offender on earth.
Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education by Henry A. Giroux, 2014
An accessible examination of neoliberalism and its effects on higher education and America, by the author of American Nightmare .
Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education reveals how neoliberal policies, practices, and modes of material and symbolic violence have radically reshaped the mission and practice of higher education, short-changing a generation of young people.
Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader ed. by Alfredo Saad-Filho & Deborah Johnston
Neoliberalism is the dominant ideology shaping our world today. It dictates the policies of governments, and shapes the actions of key institutions such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank and European Central Bank. Its political and economic implications can hardly be overstated.
"[Honduran President Xiomara] Castro has deemed the forum, called the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID, to be an illegitimate usurpation of Honduran sovereignty and has hit upon an elegant solution: She has taken steps to withdraw Honduras from ICSID."
"So to put the ZEDEs in context: The radical 'free market' intervention was only jammed into law as the result of a military coup and the stacking of the Supreme Court. The ZEDEs were then enacted and implemented for the benefit of U.S. investors by two narco-governors."
Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique by Dieter Plehwe & Bernhard Walpen & Gisela Neunhöffer
Neoliberalism is fast becoming the dominant ideology of our age, yet politicians, businessmen and academics rarely identify themselves with it and even political forces critical of it continue to carry out neoliberal policies around the globe. How can we make sense of this paradox? Who actually are "the neoliberals"?
It reminded me how contested and poorly documented NZ's political-economic history remains. To the enduring benefit of neoliberal ideologues, who still claim that Rogernomics and Ruthenasia were an unavoidable fix to problems created by Muldoonism.
We live in a country where I can: go out in public with a highly infectious, deadly disease, intentionally (forcibly) infect, harm, and potentially kill my fellow citizens.
...And I'd never be charged with a single crime.
I'd been seen as a good, freedom loving patriot, backed by the government.
"By 2039, wars were raging simultaneously across Africa, South America, and Asia. In each conflict, the major powers were supporting opposing sides, while ramming into place draconian trade barriers."
#JohnRoche, '2115: The World Social Order, Two Months of Chaos', 2021
All the best #SciFi epics open with draconian trade barriers...
Like 'trickle-down', the phrase 'trade barriers' - or 'barriers to free trade" to give it's full title - is a doublethink phrase beloved of neoliberals.
Take subsidies on locally produced goods, intended to reduce carbon emissions from transport. Or levies on imported goods that lift the prices to those of local producers, who are held to minimum wage and environmental protection standards. These sorts of things are slammed as 'trade barriers'.