
The Corporate Contradictions of Neoliberalism - milly1993
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/corporate-contradictions-neoliberalism/
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bjornsing
Can't say I agree with all of this, but the part about how ownership and
control is separate in a corporation - and how this can be a problem -
resonates with me...

Very briefly, my feeling is owners have become so faceless and indirect that
executives and boards have sort of "broken loose" and created "their own
class", effectively answering to no-one. I suspect that this breeds a
"political" work environment, and a kind of inequality that is more difficult
to accept psychologically (than the old owner-worker divide): that some people
are paid hundreds of times more for what is essentially their labor, and have
vastly greater opportunities, than others, mostly based on "who they know". It
incentivizes a "you scratch my back; I scratch your's (at the owner's expense
of course)" kind of economy.

Anybody feel similarly? Anybody better able to put it into words? :P

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zanny
I really am curious now how a corporation-free economy operates. None of the
fundamentals (investors, controlling interest, stocks and shares) seem beyond
the scope of basic contract law.

Corporate charters seem most like copyright. If its there, you might as well
use it to your own advantage, and you might as well expand it everywhere you
can get away with since its using the power of the state to your advantage.

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afsina
Not really related with the article but curiously I have yet to see anybody
calls himself a "neoliberal".

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krrrh
The term usually says a lot more about the person who uses it than it does the
person to whom it is applied. Much like "neoconservatism" it's often shorthand
for people who I disagree with, and used sloppily without reference to the
history of the few who self-identified under either term.

That said, with liberalism & non-populist centrism in general on the ropes in
advanced democracies, I could see the term being embraced and rehabilitated.
See the already mentioned /r/neoliberalism for an example that I couldn't have
imagined a few years ago. Does meme magic work on centrist compromises?

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aaron-lebo
It is neoliberalism itself that is on the ropes. Since Reagan every single
administration (Bushes, Clinton, Obama) has been neoliberal in degrees.

 _Early roots of neoliberalism were laid in the 1970s, during the Jimmy Carter
administration, with deregulation of the trucking, banking, and airline
industries.[76][77][78] This trend continued into the 1980s, under the Reagan
Administration, which included tax cuts, increased defense spending, financial
deregulation and trade deficit expansion.[79] Likewise, concepts of supply-
side economics, discussed by the Democrats in the 1970s, culminated in the
1980 Joint Economic Committee report, "Plugging in the Supply Side." This was
picked up and advanced by the Reagan administration, with Congress following
Reagan's basic proposal and cutting federal income taxes across the board by
25% in 1981.[80]

During the 1990s, the Clinton Administration also embraced neoliberalism[68]
by supporting the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement,
continuing the deregulation of the financial sector through passage of the
Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act,
and implementing cuts to the welfare state through passage of the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.[79][81][82] The neoliberalism of the
Clinton Administration differs from that of Reagan, as the Clinton
Administration purged neoliberalism of neoconservative positions on
militarism, family values, opposition to multiculturalism and neglect of
ecological issues._

You couldn't get elected in this country without being a neoliberal for the
last 30 years. Bill Clinton got elected precisely because he was a relatively
conservative Democrat from the south. The only reason nobody wants to identify
as a neoliberal is because it has the word liberal in it and people want to
get elected.

Saw a similar comment the other day about neoliberalism being a newfangled
nonpartisan movement (not accusing you of saying that), but the populist
movements are around because of its flaws.

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zanny
I think this brings up why the red vs blue dichotomy is woefully insufficient
when discussing ideology. The "center" right now is neoliberalism, even if
nobody wants to _call_ it that, because that is the status quo. Everything
people even want to discuss - from social democracy on the left to fascism on
the right - fit on that linear plane, but ideologies beyond neoliberalism like
anarchism, communism, or socialism don't fit because they start rejecting the
premise.

