Neoliberal Pseudo-Science

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Also published at  Online Opinion.

The Global Financial Collapse, which is rapidly becoming the Global Economic Collapse, is provoking deserved criticism of the neoliberal ideology that has dominated the world for three decades. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in his recent debunking of neoliberalism in The Monthly, says markets need to be managed, but clearly many free-marketeers will resist reforms. We therefore need to be very clear. This was not an imperfection. It was not an unfortunate episode in an otherwise glorious record. Neoliberalism is flawed at its core, its performance was mediocre at best, and its failure was inevitable.

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Book Extract: Fears and Desires

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You might say our present dire condition is just the consequence of human nature, about which not much can be done.  To this I say yes, but it’s due to the worst of human nature, not the best of human nature, and that implies there is something we can change:  we can shift the values by which we live.

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Last Call on Climate

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I tried this on The Monthly magazine over a year ago, twice.  Some of it is a little dated, but the essence is not.  It covers not just the science and the economics (already unusual), but the nature and culture of science, and the feedbacks that so alarm scientists at present.  They didn’t deign even to acknowledge receipt of course.  OK, so their writing is excellent, but mine’s not so bad.  And if that’s their primary criterion then they’re only providing a form of entertainment, however sophisticated.

There is a discernible pattern in the trajectories of many vanished societies and empires.  Their lives were not long, graceful arcs with a gradual rise, a plateau and then a slow decline.  Rather, their demise was sudden, and their greatest accomplishments came just before their collapse.  The grandest Mayan temples were built near the end of the Mayan civilisation.  The pattern of such societies was acceleration into sudden disaster.

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GDP Shrinks. Hooray!

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In a sane world, a shrinking GDP would be greeted with relief.  However the world is not sane, and people suffer when the GDP shrinks, mainly by losing their jobs.  Meanwhile, insanity has faltered slightly and disturbing thoughts are being put about.  However our leaders are working to ensure normal insanity is restored as quickly as possible.

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Nuclear power: UDDELI unjustified

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Professor Leslie Kemeny’s nuclear spruiking regularly appears in Australian newspapers. Readers might take note of the acronym UDDELI, which stands for Unnecessary, Dirty, Dangerous, Expensive, Late and Insufficient. This can provide some balance to the very narrow view offered by Professor Kemeny, whose undoubted expertise on the technicalities of nuclear power is offset by an apparent near-total ignorance of other options.

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Neoliberalism was always nonsense

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Neither Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s recent debunking of neoliberalism in The Monthly nor various commentaries (e.g. here,  here, and here) have identified the core of the problem with neoliberalism.  The core problem is that there is no justification, in theory or in evidence, for the claim that free markets produce desirable results, let alone optimal results.  This claim arises from the neoclassical theory of free markets, and is the foundation of the neoliberal ideology.  Very few seem to be aware of this foundational weakness of the radical right. Continue reading →