It’s about the money
Posted on December 10, 2020 by Jeff
Money is the measure of value for humans; the only measure of value in our neoliberal, global culture. This was decided not by God, nor gods nor by natural law. Money as a value was, and still is, a human construct; money as the medium of exchange to procure life-giving resources for human survival and security…and now including non-essential consumer items having no connection to our security or survival, but only serving to promote unsustainable and unrestricted and cancerous growth.
Growth is the current measure of economic “success”. Growth that proceeds without limit, however, we define as cancerous; especially when such growth drains the life from the host. This is the current situation within our neoliberal economic system. The only value that is recognized by those who follow and support such a system is money; and monetary growth without limit. Any other value, including all life on earth, goes unrecognized under neoliberal, market driven finance capitalism. Any negative effects caused by practicing such cancerous growth go unrecognized by that system as “externalities”; not to be dealt with.
What is neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism is actually a misnomer. There is nothing “liberal” about it; at least not in the original sense of liberalism as set forth by Adam Smith, “father” of capitalism; Locke or Hume. Neoliberalism is a recent construct, dating to 1947 with the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society by Austrian Economist, Frederich Hyaek. It’s founding members were economists, philosophers, historians who ascribed to anti-Keynesian economic principles. It would not be inaccurate to understand their principles as driven by a desire to overturn FDR’s New Deal.
Policies of Neoliberalism
Classic liberalism was egalitarian and libertarian and promoted elimination of enforced social categories. They not only believed in freedom of the market (Adam Smith) from “feudal and absolutest states”, but all the freedoms prescribed in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Neo-liberalism turns this on its head. Under neoliberalism, governments are required to enforce the primacy of the “market” above the welfare of the people, a right guaranteed by the US Constitution which is ignored.
(more anon)
Inequality
Today our human culture, world-wide, is rife with inequality; inequality at an unprecedented level. Inequality, expressed at its many levels, translates into domination at each of those levels. Inequality of income allows those with the greater income to impose their will upon those without sufficient income.
Thanks Jeff, This post is edifying and to-the-point. This post took thought and considerable knowledge.
I’ll post something I wrote over a decade ago. See what you think. Peace, Steve
I’m confounded and skeptical about the term “economic growth.” Humans and animals grow, but we age and die. The tides rise as much as they fall. One of the most fundamental and accepted ideas of science is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The amount of matter on earth is finite and constant. And yet the ruling class, and the western capitalists, journalists, scholars, and pundits who serve them tell us that wealth depends on continuous economic growth, growth dependent primarily on high production and rabid consumption. I’m no economist, but this process doesn’t seem sustainable. Even the most gluttonous and materialistic of us run out of room for more things, and the millions of impoverished human victims of growth economics can’t afford shoes and food anyway, let alone iPods or those manly Chrysler trucks.
No, whenever something grows and thrives, something else shrinks and dies. I’m not using an old Underwood; don’t get me wrong, but nevertheless, the typewriter died when the computer industry thrived. I haven’t spent much time lamenting the loss of the horse and buggy industry to the growth of the automobile economy, but we’ve lost a lot more than horses and buggies because of the economic growth brought about by the auto industry. Much of that growth was negated by loss of human life, environmental damage, oil wars, and the neurosis of mobility. I’m not complaining; that’s just the way it is. When one thing grows, another recedes, when one gains, another loses.
Be wary when some suit goes on about the importance of creating economic growth. There are some good people out there with good ideas and unique and beneficial products to create, make, and sell, but the reality is that someone else or some other product in that similar market will simultaneously falter or fail. This is the way of life and nature and business. But be wary of most of the “economic growth” proponents. They are trying to induce you to confuse economic growth created by good products and innovation with huge wealth created for the few through exploitation of the many. Their idea of “economic growth” is unsustainable and lethal to humanity and to our planet. Their “economic growth” puts the American farmer and working person out of business, undermines labor, creates underclasses, undermines the ecology and our environment, stifles innovation, and pits citizen against citizen as it promotes spiritless consumerism and greed. Their “economic growth” chains proud peasants in China to machines designed to stamp out worthless trinkets, damages the rich and irreplaceable culture and agricultural heritage of India, and promotes global conflict over dwindling exploited resources.
No, I don’t think there is “economic growth.” There is the fair exchange of goods and services for money and other goods and services, and there is the ruling class’s ruse to get all they can at any expense. Their “economic growth” creates dramatic wealth on one end and death, environmental havoc, poverty, and the death of culture on the other. Their “economic growth” is built on the backs of humanity, our right to a decent life, and on our planet. There is no such thing as “economic growth.”