The idea of government picking winners and losers (under accelerationist policy) isn’t a good way to run an economy. Because when the government picks losers there are fewer winners. Also, no one is wise enough to decide who should lose. In a market economy, the market decides winners and losers based on profits and losses. When the government tries to replace the market, based on what consumers want, need and can afford, with government influence exchanges, you end up with all kinds of wasted potential. Because influence testing isn’t as good as market mechanisms. When you get carried away with picking losers and then add cancel culture for political reasons, you start eliminating whole swaths of potential economic contributors.
How did accelerationist policy come about? It has been through buying influence in government. People with more money buy influence. When influence is for sale in our government, it increases the number of factions that vie for power. In the neoliberal era, big money access has spawned some big winners that are always buying influence for a surer win, but it has led to a lot more losers than we would have had.
When you go looking for a job right now, there are a lot of websites that advertise phony positions which aren’t really available. Also, the jobs are advertised from the perspective of employers not employees. In fact from the employees’ perspective phoney job ads are really terrible and they persist because it makes employers look more prosperous than they really are. That’s very discouraging to job seekers and it makes online job ads into unattractive time wasters. I keep hearing that there are a lot of jobs that need to be filled and also that American job seekers are discouraged more now than ever. As AI screens out applicants, people who don’t get a call-back begin to wonder how they would ever know what to do to get hired.
Neoliberals like making everything into a profit-center. They want globalization and financialization. They want organizations to be dominant over individuals. They want unrestricted global capital flows and they like warfare. They like economism where everything has an economic motivator. They like big monopolies and big government and smaller-always-less-important individuals and families. They hate religious motivations and ethical behaviors. They don’t like restrictions on big power.
To make our society better, I think it helps to see neoliberalism’s shortcomings. We need strong families because the family is a great place to nurture children and grow them into society’s doers. We need ethics in society and the family is a great place to teach the difference between right and wrong. We need to be motivated by our caring hearts and our connections to each other. We need rule of law to apply equally to all: even the most powerful. Neoliberals don’t support what we need and in fact work to undermine it.
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The neoliberal economy creates too many losers. It’s a wreck. Taxes keep going up but economic activity is down. We have numerous unfilled jobs. We have failing universities where credentials serve money interests instead of the public good. Prosperity overall is waning as the rate of economic exchanges slows and fraud increases. Investors owning real estate has led to monopoly price influence raising the prices of houses. Bigger hospitals and medicare and medicaid have led to price increases in healthcare. Government and corporate grants in our universities have led to research conclusions that are up for sale from climate change to covid drugs. Crime on our streets has grown as homeless and unemployable people become renegades and people in city government try to make political dividends out of desperation.
In a better economy, economics doesn’t overshadow our lives in the way the neoliberals are trying to do. Our healthcare has been taken over by greedy profiteers who want people to be sick. Our neoliberal money making goals don’t allow doctors to cure disease anymore the way that they should. Everyone needs a place to live that’s affordable and investors in our real estate markets keep raising prices beyond what any one person or family can afford. We need affordable food but inflation in food is making it too expensive for many to eat properly.
The neoliberal economy is a disaster that will continue to fail as long as capital is emphasized over wealth, rule of law spares the powerful and influence money is more important than markets. Neoliberalism is power for power’s sake. Unlimited partnerships between government and corporations leads to failure.
Political Catsup with Economy Fries: Liberalism, Pragmatism, Opportunism 