Tag Archives: Neoliberalism

Real Economies, Faux Economics and the Destruction of Universities

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[No taker for this yet. The number of outlets for seriously non-mainstream thinking seems to be shrinking.]

This year’s Nobel prize in economics spotlights a core deficiency in mainstream ‘neoclassical’ economics, one of many. It is pseudo-science. It needs to be banished from government, universities and our thinking. Defensible alternatives are available, but marginalised.

The prize was awarded for showing that higher pay can increase employment. This is a direct contradiction of the simplistic ‘law’ of supply and demand, a core concept of the dominant ‘neoclassical’ school of economics.

Supposedly, if the price of cabbages increases then fewer cabbages will be purchased. Similarly, if the price of hiring someone goes up, then fewer people will be hired. Well, not always.

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Dear Labor

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[Just out at Pearls & Irritations. Lately I’ve been avoiding politics, it’s bad for my health. Especially after the Eden-Monaro by-election, in which almost everyone retreated to their usual tribal habits. Never mind drought, six megafires, floods, virus … Hard to fathom.]

Andrew Fisher, three times PM

Dear Labor. Has anyone among your parliamentary cohort noticed that neoliberalism is a failure? Has it occurred to anyone that promoting selfishness and making people insecure is a recipe for people to turn on each other and shred the social fabric? Does anyone think it might be time to stop being Liberal-lite? Time to champion the battlers and stop pandering to the fat cats? Time for a Labor party to remember why it was founded?

The current lesson is stark. Private aged care facilities that are under-staffed, under-resourced and disgustingly incompetent at care. Insecure, untrained ‘security’ guards fail to maintain hotel quarantine, and become virus spreaders instead. That is where outsourcing and privatising has got us.

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The betrayal, corruption and capture of the Liberal Party

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[Published at Pearls and Irritations, 6 May]

The Liberal Party has strayed far from the vision propounded by its founder, Sir Robert Menzies, to the point of being captured by special interests.

According to former Senator Ron Boswell, Sir Robert Menzies, founder of the Liberal Party of Australia, said in 1970 

Australian Liberals are not the exponents of an open go, for if we are all to have an open go, each for himself and the devil take the hindmost, anarchy will result and both security and progress disappear

This is a clear repudiation of the idea of unregulated markets, an idea that came to dominate the world and the Liberal Party a decade or two later.

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Can labour parties reform, or will they drag their societies down with them?

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[Published 5 Jan as The Keating and Blair consensus has failed at Independent Australia]

Another election lost by labour, this time in Britain. The Blairites have their long knives out and will no doubt fight to drag the UK Labour Party back to the right. The Australian Labor Party is still gasping like a stunned mullet after its own loss, with no indication that it can manage anything beyond continuing to pander to anyone who might still reluctantly give it a preference. With their focus on tactics and personalities, most politicians and commentators miss the big news.

Neoliberalism has failed, comprehensively.

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Hawke and Keating Set Australia, and Labor, Up for Failure

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[Published at Pearls and Irritations 31 May.]

Labor failed, again.

It took on the most riven, brutal and monumentally incompetent rabble since Federation and still could not manage to beat them. This is a profound failure that requires a profound explanation. There is one, though it goes against decades of received wisdom.

The problem is the economic ‘reforms’ imposed by the Hawke-Keating governments are a failure. Our anaemic economy and divided society are their continuing legacy.

These claims are of course heresy. They sully the revered memory of Larrikin Bob. They contradict the economic and political mantras of the past thirty five years. Yet the evidence is clear and has been readily available for some time.

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The Myth of the Robust Deregulated Economy

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[Published at Pearls and Irritations 3 Dec 18]

The economic ‘reforms’ of the 1980s are supposed to have set Australia up for an unprecedented run of prosperity: 27 years, and counting, without a recession. The economy’s robustness is supposed to have saved us from the Global Financial Crisis. In fact our economy has been unstable, and its performance has been mediocre verging on anaemic. Any appearance of robust prosperity is due to a huge run-up of debt, some direct intervention, high immigration, overwork, selective blindness and over-active imaginations.

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The Political Instability is Due to a Pathological Regime

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[Didn’t get any takers for this commentary, then it got stale. There may be more opportunities before too long.]

SnakeOilIt’s not the salespeople, it’s the product. The product does not serve the people and the people know it, so they keep rejecting the salesperson.

You might think, after a parade of six short-term Prime Ministers, and counting, that this diagnosis of Australia’s political instability might be more commonly perceived, but much of the attention remains on more superficial factors like personality, technology, social media and so on. Even when the political product is questioned few seem to appreciate the depth of its inadequacy.

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The chasm between the society we are offered and the fair go we want

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[Posted at Pearls and Irritations, 20 July 17.]

Fair go?There is widely perceived to be a gap between our stumbling political system and the wishes of the Australian people. However those who look a little deeper into our Australian hearts see not just a gap but a yawning chasm.

In a 2016 study by social researcher Richard Eckersley, published in Oxford Development Studies, people were asked which of two possible futures came closer to what they expected, and which of the two they preferred.

  • Scenario one was ‘a fast paced, internationally competitive society, with emphasis on the individual, wealth generation and enjoying the good life’. Three quarters expected a future along these lines.
  • Scenario two was ‘a greener, more stable society, where the emphasis is on cooperation, community and family, more equal distribution of wealth, and greater economic self-sufficiency’. 93% preferred this scenario.”

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New eBook: The Rise and Failure of the Radical Right

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The Origins of Australia’s Political Disarray

The right-wing ideology of the past 40 years has failed. It was always going to fail, because it is based on nonsense ideas, and because it harms people and the natural world. Australian politics has been dragged far to the right since 1980 because both major parties embraced an agenda promoted by right-wing radicals. Now the radical right’s grip on power is finally slipping. We are poised for a major political re-alignment.

A BetterNature Short Book (14,500 words).

Released 4 May 2017. May the Fourth be with you.

Now available on Amazon.

See more about my books, existing and forthcoming, here.

ALP: Blocking Democracy and a Tolerable Future

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Arthur Calwell

Arthur Calwell

[Published at Independent Australia, 2 Dec]

Progressive reformers are attempting to take control of the major parties of the nominal left in the United States and the United Kingdom, in the wake of losses in national elections and the rise of reactionary forces. Even if the rebels do not take full control there is some prospect that the parties will at least be substantially changed.

No such fate threatens the Australian Labor Party. There is no flicker of unorthodoxy from within. There is little prospect of the plebian hordes storming it from without. The ALP stands, inert and impregnable, occupying the political space where a progressive party ought to be, the greatest obstacle in Australia to the constructive reform we  desperately need if we are to have a tolerable future.

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