Monday, January 23, 2017

What Is Neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism has a multitude of meanings. In economics, neoliberalism is any type of capitalism that unjustly redistributes income to the top or to other allies, from laissez faire economics to the Third Wayism of the New Democrats. (Marxism also unjustly redistributes to the top or other allies but that is a topic for another day.)

In broader meanings of the term, neoliberalism mixes these economic policies with militarism and cultural Marxism. Neoliberalism's adherents usually label their redistributions as something else: merit, equality, freedom, democracy, etc. Almost anything that conflicts with such redistributions gets demonized as racism, class warfare and other dysphemisms. Neoliberalism is a comparatively transparent ruse, but attracts followers because of its simplicity, because many of its supporters profit from it and because its supporters control massive amounts of propaganda power. Neoliberalism accepts de facto affirmative action because boycotts, lawsuits, and negative publicity interfere with redistributions to allies. Neoliberalism pretends to oppose welfare but in practice supports tax entitlements and other stealthy forms of welfare.

Neoliberalism is tricky for New Democrats. Most New Democrats cannot support tax shifts from allies to nonwealthy workers or future generations without losing millions of votes and donations, though some neoconservative and Blue Dog Democrats did so without severe repercussions.

New Democrats unjustly redistribute using policies that voters don't understand: by accepting legalized bribery, by supporting pro-Wall Street policies, by creating austerity while pretending to be anti-austerity, by tolerating monopolies and oligopolies among their allies. Many voters remain unaware that more money gets redistributed by the combination of these other methods than by tax shifts. Austerity, for example, redistributes to the top by increasing unemployment, which decreases worker bargaining power. Austerity also makes some products of financial engineering more valuable.

How do New Democrats get away with it? First, by overemphasizing the minor benefits of trivial reforms. Second, New Democrats claim that they would do the right things if only the Republicans weren't stopping them. But the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House in 2009 and 2010, yet still governed using neoliberalism. Third, New Democrats use cultural Marxism, especially hostile migration, for divide-and-rule strategies.

Almost all supporters of neoliberalism also support globalism, ignoring massive counter evidence while emphasizing comparative advantage and economics of scale.

Almost all neoliberals support cultural Marxism, a faith based belief that if whites treat nonwhites as equals or superiors, nonwhites will reciprocate the altruism, though nonwhites in power have seldom behaved with such fairness. Nonwhites and white multiculturalists are quite willing to kill the proverbial geese that lay golden eggs, as has happened in Zimbabwe and numerous other places.

Why globalism and cultural Marxism? Because they are profitable for those engaged in free riding. Realtors make money every time you buy and sell. Realtors don't want you living in the same house for the rest of your life. They want white flight. Realtors call it block busting, wanting whites to move regularly. Software manufacturers want nonwhites to move to the West, where nonwhites are less likely to pirate software. The marginal cost of each additional software copy to software manufacturers is comparatively tiny. Most donors in the ruling groups reap short term benefits from globalism and cultural Marxism. But in the long-term, the results are war, mass destruction, and genetic dystopias, even for the ruling groups.

Militarism distracts the population, helps neoliberal war profiteering, and helps suppress alternative belief systems. Libertarians often claim to oppose militarism but since Libertarians support legalized bribery and defense industries do massive amounts of bribing, Libertarian rhetorical opposition is largely a small gesture.

Most living Westerners have grown up under neoliberalism and many conceive of little else. They know little about public policies and thus reflexively recoil at different ideas unless the establishment propaganda machines hop on board the different ideas.

Many opponents of neoliberalism reflexively flee to socialism, having never studied the real history of socialism and having never lived under socialism, leading to even worse results.

Since few individuals admit to their ruthless behaviors, even to themselves, neoliberalism come up with tokenistic altruistic policies to hide scams and "prove" themselves as good people. In the 1980s, it was the Earned Income Tax Credit. In the 1990s, it was Marvin Olasky's compassionate conservatism. In the 2000s, it was George W. Bush's aid to Africa and Barack Obama's Cash for Clunkers, to name but a few. The wealthy typically donate about two percent of their wealth to (mostly) crooked charitable activities, another way for them to feel good about themselves while not actually being good.

What else is wrong with neoliberalism: free riding. Every type of neoliberalism creates massive free rider problems, especially for future generations. It is not sustainable for individuals and environments. Neoliberals would see nothing wrong with flooding the West with several hundred million welfare and affirmative action seeking nonwhites. Their easily indoctrinated hostility toward whites is worse.

In all types of neoliberalism, productive workers end up worse off than those engaged in parasitic activities. Since most humans think they are ethically better than most other humans, multicultural neoliberals will invent multitudes of rationalizations to justify parasitism. Wall Streeters, who contribute far more harms than benefits, described themselves as Masters of the Universe. Ethical work is highly taxed socially and economically. Negative externalities are supported or lightly taxed. The financial industry causes umpteen trillion dollars per year in direct, indirect, and opportunity costs, yet the search for killer comets and asteroids starves for want of a few million dollars. The result is increasing chaos combined with increasing tyranny to prevent the chaos from spilling into the lives of ruling groups.

Thousands of important policy issues exist. Neoliberals offer few good solutions, except to give more money and power to those who already have too much money and power and to those who have little interest in the people.

Neoliberals care more about the label democracy than the reality of kleptocratic kakistocracy.

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