By equating freedom with free markets, libertarianism provides ideological cover for the practical program of restructuring governments to entrench corporate power
The damage to middle & working class people and their financial wellbeing over the last 30+ years will take decades to correct, if ever. The vast growth in inequality, the decline in public services and living standards is a cancer in society firmly the responsibility of right wing neoliberal libertarians who control our corporate world and the politicians we have to put up with.
Friedman, Hayek, and Von Mises were all embraced by corporations raging against the egalitarian effects of FDR’s new deal.
That corporate backlash, a.k.a. class warfare by the elites against all else, led to the neoliberal revolution as a result of the stagflation opportunity, championed by Thatcher and Reagan.
The effects have been exactly as intended: a re-distribution of wealth from the bottom to the top.
(I.e. income inequality, gini coefficient, and the United Nations rapporteur‘s assessment of the United States as a Third World country)
However, any efforts to change the system require two factors conspicuously absent in today’s society : 1) an educated and organized working class, and 2) political system divorced from money.
The predictable outcome will be more propaganda and divisiveness while the world burns in order to ensure corporate profits remain steady.
This is excellent article thank you and easy to comprehend. It will help me in writing my submission on the Regulations Standard Bill that wants to accelerate neoliberalism under the guise of Libertarianism that will shrink government significantly (and placing significant constraints on its future ability to act), assist the corporates with their profits and wealth accumulation while at the same time marginalise the well-being of the majority of people in Aotearoa New Zealand (including Maori because Te Tiriti and the accepted Treaty Principles are excluded) and marginalise the environment - the wellbeing of the environment is excluded. This is a subversive attempt to alter our social democratic Country radically, limit government and democracy and implant Libertarian and neoliberal values by Seymour and his ACT Party that only got 8% of the vote in the 2023 general election. It is untenable to think that a minor political party on the extreme right of politics (Atlas Network aligned) could shape the future of NZ because the eyes and ears of the majority of people are closed.
Even Friedman’s so called academic work, at least some of it, was riddled with bs, just much more deceptively, to justify bank bailouts in a paper he selectively omitted some geographic areas that had less credit contractions, and even worse, in some cases he dropped geographic credit data from the set and replaced it with imputations that were quite diff than the actual observations in ways that supported his thesis. And lol he even did these tricks to alter timelines in some placess in a way that made monetary contractions appear to precede economic downturns when, in some cases, economic deterioration had already begun before the alleged shocks.
And by the way i’m actually in large agreement with much of the monetary thesis regarding the event it just some details that are fishy. And he was a certifiable BSer…
I’ve had quite a few eye openers over the past five years, one the of the biggest ones, which was huge not only because of its implications but also because — like a few of the other ones the biggest of implications — its fully and indisputably provable, is that his singularly most personally championed project, 1970s Chile, was not in fact a “free market” project but instead was demonstrably to the absolute a project with true intensive economic central planning. Turns out thats actually their modus operandi, and holy smokes, it was exposed in the USA 200 years ago and theres brilliant analysis from then that described it to all and won the day during events that I never knew had occurred, but you have to read it directly to get it, and if you go then read “about” it you witness flagrant lies about history
Neoliberalism and libertarianism serve as the ideological vehicle to facilitate the transfer of public natural and labour resources globally, into the hands of a wealthy and powerful minority/oligarch class.
The Atlas Network, a prominent advocate for these ideologies including in NZ, receives substantial funding from influential US political donor oligarchs, (who also donate considerably to the fossil fuel lobby and AIPAC. Koch brothers, the Adelson Family Foundation, Tevi Troy, etc).
Whilst imperialism's expansion and resource acquisition (predominantly by the US), is often achieved through military proxies or covert operations in non-aligned countries, once a “friendly” regime is in place, neoliberalism and libertarianism, then provides the ideological cover to launder the resource grab, redirecting the country’s resources away from the people into the hands of local or foreign oligarchs. The country is then left poorer either financially or ecologically, often bearing the cost to clean up the mess afterwards. The neoliberal deregulation drive ensures any ecological cost is minimised or removed by the exploiting party.
all true, but for the last 50 years (really longer, I think I’ve found their proto forms in the late 19th century!) they have been operating in close cooperation with, and indeed as part of a deeply enmeshed whole with their supposed opponents in so the so called Leftists or Progressives, but historically America was never, ever Libertarian and almost all of progressives from so called Progressive Era were not only very different than most of today’s progressives (I mean the bug public ones, the professionally organized ones, etc.), just like the Libertarians were fringe back then as well, in some senses, both the national so called “right” and the national so called “left” in America are actually just the two factions of America’s old Whig party who' ended up having their revenge hundreds of years after their demise by sneakily taking over each of our two parties from within and creating a hidden Whig Uniparty
The damage to middle & working class people and their financial wellbeing over the last 30+ years will take decades to correct, if ever. The vast growth in inequality, the decline in public services and living standards is a cancer in society firmly the responsibility of right wing neoliberal libertarians who control our corporate world and the politicians we have to put up with.
Shame on the lot of them!
Friedman, Hayek, and Von Mises were all embraced by corporations raging against the egalitarian effects of FDR’s new deal.
That corporate backlash, a.k.a. class warfare by the elites against all else, led to the neoliberal revolution as a result of the stagflation opportunity, championed by Thatcher and Reagan.
The effects have been exactly as intended: a re-distribution of wealth from the bottom to the top.
(I.e. income inequality, gini coefficient, and the United Nations rapporteur‘s assessment of the United States as a Third World country)
However, any efforts to change the system require two factors conspicuously absent in today’s society : 1) an educated and organized working class, and 2) political system divorced from money.
The predictable outcome will be more propaganda and divisiveness while the world burns in order to ensure corporate profits remain steady.
This is excellent article thank you and easy to comprehend. It will help me in writing my submission on the Regulations Standard Bill that wants to accelerate neoliberalism under the guise of Libertarianism that will shrink government significantly (and placing significant constraints on its future ability to act), assist the corporates with their profits and wealth accumulation while at the same time marginalise the well-being of the majority of people in Aotearoa New Zealand (including Maori because Te Tiriti and the accepted Treaty Principles are excluded) and marginalise the environment - the wellbeing of the environment is excluded. This is a subversive attempt to alter our social democratic Country radically, limit government and democracy and implant Libertarian and neoliberal values by Seymour and his ACT Party that only got 8% of the vote in the 2023 general election. It is untenable to think that a minor political party on the extreme right of politics (Atlas Network aligned) could shape the future of NZ because the eyes and ears of the majority of people are closed.
Even Friedman’s so called academic work, at least some of it, was riddled with bs, just much more deceptively, to justify bank bailouts in a paper he selectively omitted some geographic areas that had less credit contractions, and even worse, in some cases he dropped geographic credit data from the set and replaced it with imputations that were quite diff than the actual observations in ways that supported his thesis. And lol he even did these tricks to alter timelines in some placess in a way that made monetary contractions appear to precede economic downturns when, in some cases, economic deterioration had already begun before the alleged shocks.
And by the way i’m actually in large agreement with much of the monetary thesis regarding the event it just some details that are fishy. And he was a certifiable BSer…
He was a master propagandist
I’ve had quite a few eye openers over the past five years, one the of the biggest ones, which was huge not only because of its implications but also because — like a few of the other ones the biggest of implications — its fully and indisputably provable, is that his singularly most personally championed project, 1970s Chile, was not in fact a “free market” project but instead was demonstrably to the absolute a project with true intensive economic central planning. Turns out thats actually their modus operandi, and holy smokes, it was exposed in the USA 200 years ago and theres brilliant analysis from then that described it to all and won the day during events that I never knew had occurred, but you have to read it directly to get it, and if you go then read “about” it you witness flagrant lies about history
Excellent article.
Neoliberalism and libertarianism serve as the ideological vehicle to facilitate the transfer of public natural and labour resources globally, into the hands of a wealthy and powerful minority/oligarch class.
The Atlas Network, a prominent advocate for these ideologies including in NZ, receives substantial funding from influential US political donor oligarchs, (who also donate considerably to the fossil fuel lobby and AIPAC. Koch brothers, the Adelson Family Foundation, Tevi Troy, etc).
Whilst imperialism's expansion and resource acquisition (predominantly by the US), is often achieved through military proxies or covert operations in non-aligned countries, once a “friendly” regime is in place, neoliberalism and libertarianism, then provides the ideological cover to launder the resource grab, redirecting the country’s resources away from the people into the hands of local or foreign oligarchs. The country is then left poorer either financially or ecologically, often bearing the cost to clean up the mess afterwards. The neoliberal deregulation drive ensures any ecological cost is minimised or removed by the exploiting party.
all true, but for the last 50 years (really longer, I think I’ve found their proto forms in the late 19th century!) they have been operating in close cooperation with, and indeed as part of a deeply enmeshed whole with their supposed opponents in so the so called Leftists or Progressives, but historically America was never, ever Libertarian and almost all of progressives from so called Progressive Era were not only very different than most of today’s progressives (I mean the bug public ones, the professionally organized ones, etc.), just like the Libertarians were fringe back then as well, in some senses, both the national so called “right” and the national so called “left” in America are actually just the two factions of America’s old Whig party who' ended up having their revenge hundreds of years after their demise by sneakily taking over each of our two parties from within and creating a hidden Whig Uniparty