"What the two of them so effusively believe about growth is more or less what I think about redistribution. Which is to say: when you redistribute wealth, you in fact hasten a present that is radically different from the one we currently know.

In an unequal society where the majority must invest the lion’s share of their time and energy into the labour required to obtain the bare necessities of life, individuals lose much in the way of personal freedom and life satisfaction. But we also collectively sacrifice unfathomable quantities of human creativity and potential. There might be abundant growth, but that can matter very little if its fruits aren’t broadly shared.

Redistribution does not equal, as Klein and Thompson assert, a mere “parceling out of the present.” In a very difference sense than theirs, it represents its own agenda of abundance — one reflecting the richest egalitarian ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries. The liberalism of the 21st might reject those ideas, but many of us on the left still see them as indispensable. Socialism, contrary to what many of its critics have historically claimed, is first and foremost concerned with human freedom: freedom to think, freedom to dream, freedom to create, freedom to live unburdened by toil
(...)
Klein and Thompson appear to believe distributional questions can be mostly elided if enough new technology is invented and a sufficient quantity of stuff is built and produced. Contentious debates about degrowth aside, I find this assertion vastly more improbable and utopian than the project of universal social welfare or the realization of social and economic rights. Scientific and technological innovations can be hugely beneficial, but until we live in the world of Star Trek: The Next Generation it’s unlikely they will ever compensate for the dearth of social and economic justice."

https://www.lukewsavage.com/p/the-paucity-of-abundance

For a communalist strategy
#Capitalism #Neoliberalism #Feminism #Ecology #Communalism #Strategy
https://ecologiesocialeetcommunalisme.org/en/2025/03/30/for-a-communalist-strategy/

"The problem, indeed, is a more general one. No populism, right or left, has so far produced a powerful remedy for the ills it denounces. Programmatically, the contemporary opponents of neoliberalism are still for the most part whistling in the dark. How is inequality to be tackled – not just tinkered with – in a serious fashion, without immediately bringing on a capital strike? What measures might be envisaged for meeting the enemy blow for blow on that contested terrain, and emerging victorious? What sort of reconstruction, by now inevitably a radical one, of actually existing liberal democracy would be required to put an end to the oligarchies it has spawned? How is the deep state, organised in every Western country for imperial war – clandestine or overt – to be dismantled? What reconversion of the economy to combat climate change, without impoverishing already poor societies in other continents, is imagined? That so many arrows remain missing in the quiver of serious opposition to the status quo is not, of course, just the fault of today’s populisms. It reflects the intellectual contraction of the left in its long years of retreat since the 1970s, and the sterility in that time of what were once original strands of thought at the edges of the mainstream. Remedial proposals can be cited, varying from country to country: Medicare for all in the US, guaranteed citizen incomes in Italy, public investment banks in Britain, Tobin taxes in France and the like. But so far as any general, interlocking alternative to the status quo is concerned, the cupboard is still bare. (...) Politically speaking, neoliberalism has been in no great danger from either."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/perry-anderson/regime-change-in-the-west

"Finally, in the 1970s, a group of people on the right and left, today known as neoliberals, attacked New Deal controls over finance and the corporation as silly. They argued, in an age of “microchips, robots, and computers,” mucking around with making things like t-shirts and steel was foolish.

This argument came into politics through both sides of the aisle. The Reagan administration was run by Wall Street, with men like banker William Simon and Chicago Schooler Robert Bork organizing policy. But it was preceded by Jimmy Carter’s deregulation of shipping, banking, trains, buses, trucking, airlines, energy, and even skiing, and his appointment of Wall Street-friendly Fed Chair Paul Volcker.

In 1980, the Democratic-led Senate Joint Economic Committee published a report titled Plugging in the Supply Side. Lloyd Bentsen, who later became Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary during the NAFTA fight, authored it. Everyone from Paul Tsongas, to Gary Hart to Robert Reich bought this frame, as did magazines like The New Republic. By 1980, neoliberalism had become consensus. Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter’s ostensibly “liberal” nemesis, fought to go further than Carter in ending rules on airplanes, and Ralph Nader aligned with Citibank on deregulating finance. Many of the unions, with the exception of the Teamsters, bought into deregulation.

The consequences were immediate. The U.S. manufacturing base took a major hit as the trade deficit exploded under Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton continued and expanded it, focusing on high-technology pursuits and a “Bridge to the 21st Century.” When you think about it, that’s weird. How can a nation keep importing more than it exports, on a permanent basis? Why would trade partners keep sending them stuff? The answer is in the part of the story that the proponents of this model suggest, which is services."

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-tariffs-abundance

There, fixed it for you.

@Remittancegirl ... Not so much in Canada...

SO MANY people struggling to pay rent or eat.

Depending on location ... may not have equal access to quality free healthcare.

Peacefully protest (fracking or pipelines, old growth logging, for a Free Palestine...) you may be harassed or arrested.

Privatizing services, failing to tax the wealthy; funding police to protect corporate interests over Indigenous People's Inherent Rights and the climate.

#Canada
#neoliberalism

Society Distracted by Off-Camera Spectacle

Hashtags: #CriticalTheory #Neoliberalism #FrankfurtSchool #Journalism #Spectacle #FakeNews #Situationists #Authentic #Photography

Source: https://take-note.com/note-takers/marshall--mayer/notes/society-distracted-by-off-camera-spectacle/view

Joseph Stiglitz argued neoliberal capitalism would eventually lead to fascism.

Friedrich Hayek argued social democracy would eventually lead to fascism.

I'm ready to call this one in favour of Stiglitz. #politics #economics #neoliberalism #capitalism

"In summary, the first globalization saw the rise of the West, the second the rise of Asia; the first led to an increase of between-country inequalities, the second to their decline. Both globalizations tended to increase inequalities within nations. The unevenness of countries’ growth rates during Globalization I installed most of the Western populations at the top of the global income pyramid. It is rarely recognized just how highly placed even the poor deciles of the rich countries were in the global income distribution. Economist Paul Collier, in his Future of Capitalism, writes wistfully of the time when English workers were on top of the world. But for them to feel high, somebody else had to feel low.

The second globalization drove some of the Western middle classes from these perches and produced a great reshuffling of incomes as they were overtaken by a rising Asia. This relatively imperceptible decline occurred together with the Western middle classes’ far more perceptible one with respect to their own national elites. It caused political dissatisfaction that found its reflection in the rise of populist leaders and parties.

Finally, we should note that the convergence of worldwide incomes did not extend to Africa, which continued on its path of relative decline. If that is not changed — and the likelihood of such change seems low — the relative decline of Africa will, in the decades to come, overturn the forces currently pushing global inequality downward and usher in a new era of rising global inequality."

https://jacobin.com/2025/03/what-comes-after-globalization/

Profit Over People - Neoliberalism and the Global (Rules Based) Order by Noam Chomsky, 2011

Chomsky reveals the roots of the present crisis, tracing the history of neoliberalism through an incisive analysis of free trade agreements of the 1990s, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund—and describes the movements of resistance to the increasing interference by the private sector in global affairs.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#neoliberalism

Ezra Klein's new "abundance" agenda explained:

Lowkey - Neoliberalism Kills People

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fu4j-aWCV0

neoliberalism is actually what lovelessness looks like in public

#Denmark: government plans to hand postal service to private #monopoly that uses precarious employees. #Union expects further price increases and service deterioration.

https://uniglobalunion.org/news/denmark-ends-letter-delivery-3f-uni-global-union/