
Neoliberalism: the deep story that lies beneath Donald Trump’s triumph - Pamar
http://evonomics.com/ruthless-network-super-rich-ideologues-killed-choice-destroyed-peoples-faith-politics/
======
Pamar
I posted the original article - I am European, so for me the most interesting
parts are not directly related to Trump's election, but to something that to
me looks very strange, and it's happening a lot around me. Nominally: people
who leaned towards Progressive/Democratic positions are being more and more
attracted by populist movements, and have started rooting for Le Pen or UKIP.
Something that no more than 10 years ago would have been absolutely
unthinkable.

This article is interesting (IMHO) because it mentions, at least, how the
neoliberism managed to co-opt political figures like Blair, Bill Clinton (and
a bunch of my own in Italy, too) - and how these started pushing for less and
less State in their plans.

~~~
teekert
I see it here in the Netherlands as well, one cause is that we had some
referenda in which the majority vote (no against a European constitution (we
got the Geneva convention), no against associating with Ukraine) was ignored.
This is of course food for anti Europe sentiment. That and then the never
ending stories of bureaucratic non sense like the monthly move of parliament
from Brussels to Strasbourg.

[0]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10565686/Th...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10565686/The-
farce-of-the-EU-travelling-circus.html)

~~~
Pamar
My current take on the Populist gains in the last few years (based on this and
other articles from the same author): I believe that State (capital S) main
function is to take care of the "average citizen".

And we are all "average" in a way or the other... i.e. I could be a good
coder, painter, car salesman, whatever - but this does not guarantee I have
perfect health, or above-average business savvy, or I am a good parent, or
ready to use a foreign language and move abroad to look for work.

The neo-liberist idea is to cater only for "superheroes" (and the rest will
adapt or perish)... so now more and more people try to back parties that claim
(or pretend) to have the "average" interests as their main goal... populist,
nationalistic, "social-right" movements.

And this is because the Left in general started aligning itself with the neo-
liberist ideals and pushed "freedom" above everything else (this has surely
complex causes, including the failure of Communism: European left parties had
to shift their goals to something that was as far as possible from the decline
of the Socialist/Communist ideals).

------
0x27081990
That's one way of seeing it.

Another way is people tired of career politicians, with a big government and a
yet bigger spending, who doesn't doubt bailing out big banks and big
corporations.

Rioters and thought police doesn't help, either.

~~~
tradersam
> people tired of career politicians

I've never understood this. Why would you want someone in office that doesn't
know what they're doing? I get that people are tired of _out of touch_
politicians, but wealthy people being elected doesn't solve the problem, only
worsen it.

~~~
0x27081990
Successful people can be successful politicians. It's true that Trump is no
expert, but he has a team of experts. He doesn't know about STEM but he
assembled a team of advisors which include Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. He
thought torture works, but James Mattis (Sec of Defense) told him it was
false, and he accepted it.

~~~
orev
Musk resigned and his entire cabinet is objectively the least qualified set of
people in American history. I fail to see how stacking all your positions with
people fundamentally opposed to the missions of every agency is somehow seen
as a team of experts.

~~~
didgeoridoo
1\. When did Musk resign? Everything I can find says that he is still a member
of the advisory board.

2\. "Objectively the least qualified" is not the same thing as "doesn't agree
with Democrats about the agency's proper mission."

~~~
orev
Yes, because Ben Carson is fully qualified, and people's only issue with him
is that they disagree with his approach. Get a life.

~~~
didgeoridoo
So you 1) did not address the fact that you completely made up the talking
point that Musk resigned from the advisory board, presumably hoping that
nobody here would check, and 2) apparently assume that I agree with every
single Trump cabinet pick because I refuse to get on board with declaring the
whole thing an unmitigated disaster. To address your specific example, of
course Carson is not qualified for HUD, although he would have arguably been
qualified for HHS. But I imagine you would not have been thrilled with him
being appointed for any position at all, because one of the world's foremost
neurosurgeons is some kind of barely-literate nincompoop, right?

I normally don't respond to trolls, especially ones that invent alternative
facts from whole cloth, but I'll make an exception for you. Feel special?

EDIT: after checking out the rest of your contributions to this site, it seems
your standard approach is to state your opinions as proven facts, from your
hilarious "Balloon Theory" of how blenders remove fiber from food, to your
dumbfoundingly ahistorical slander that the Second Amendment was written
specifically to appease slaveholding Southerners.

Please try to adjust your approach. You'll find a much more receptive audience
here if you admit that some things are just your personal perspective.

------
teekert
I find it strange that Ayn Rand is not mentioned, she seems to be at the birth
of this as well. I still believe strongly in her philosophy, her philosophy is
pure but it was corrupted by such things as lobbying.

The ruthlessness is the unethical part, not the free market part. Effort and
skill have to be rewarded. But when you add lobbying to the mix, you can be
rewarded without effort of skill or you can be punished even while you show
effort and have skill but lack a strong relation with those currently in power
(the deep state, for lack of a better term, I borrowed it from Zeitgeist (or
weltschmerz (a dutch podcast)), a documentary worth watching although I think
it goes a bit far near the end of part 2 (addendum).)

~~~
DarkKomunalec
Even without lobbying and corruption, economies of scale favor larger
corporations over smaller ones. This concentrates wealth, and power, into the
hands of ever fewer people - unconstrained, the free market leads to
feudalism.

~~~
teekert
Fast growing startups seem to prove you wrong, just like the fact that Linux
concurred the Server market or that Microsoft and IBM lost a lot of market
share to Apple which in turn lost market share to Google. I think these are
examples of fair competition: A large company grows stale or is aware of a
trend to late and someone else jumps into a market hole they missed. This is a
natural stop for monopolies (ok, the ISP situation in the US is something
else, I agree, the cost to enter that market is extreme and you don't "share
the copper/fiber" with multiple companies as other countries do).

The lobbying problem however pertains to companies such as Bechtel,
Halliburton (construction), Raytheon (weapons manufacturer) and Monsanto
(Genetically engineered crops) and many other operating at a level known in
"Confessions of an economic hitman" as the Corporatocracy. In general these
are companies further removed from the voters, and politicians serve as their
proxies in order to obtains funds to be an influential politician in the first
place.

~~~
DarkKomunalec
So you would be in favour of an otherwise free market, but with the government
breaking up companies that grow too* big? I.e., you agree excessive
concentration of money and power is harmful, and would be willing to
compromise free market ideals to prevent it?

Also, just because -some- companies can outperform larger ones in some areas,
does not mean greater size does not have significant advantages. There's a
good reason there's no mom&pop car manufacturers.

*E.g. so big that consumers no longer have a meaningful choice, or so big that they start to benefit from monopoly pricing or price collusion, or are able to make use of anti-competitive practices, such as stores selling their own brands more prominently.

~~~
teekert
I'm not arguing for intervention at all. I arguing against lobbying. Lobbying
makes a market non-free, you know, when voters have to save an investment bank
that is too large to fail while said bank cost them their jobs and their
house. Such things can only happen in a corrupt society. I'm not claiming to
have the solution I'm merely claiming that we should decouple politics from
the wealthy and recouple it with everybody else.

------
throwayguestman
s/Neoliberalism/Vote Rigging/ ???

