An opening salvo aimed at neoliberalism, deregulation, and the free market.

Let us start with a supposition put forth by David Harvey in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, namely that cultural neoconservatism in the United States is at least in part a response to jarring societal transformations enabled over the last thirty years by economic neoliberalism. I find the contradiction of socially conservative individuals supporting politicians advocating for corrosive neoliberal policies - policies that advocate for further deregulation, the dismantling of labor power (i.e. unions), and a quasi-religious belief in the ability of a 'free market' to resolve all social and economic inequality - to be endlessly fascinating. But in the end it is only one of many ideological inconsistencies inherent in American conservatism and its relationship to neoliberalism today.   

Under neoliberalism the theoretical mechanism by which wealth is shared is called 'trickle down economics,' a poetic little number that nevertheless conceals a gaping flaw in policy, that flaw being that no such mechanism actually exists - otherwise over the last thirty years we would have seen it at work, and we haven't. Instead we have seen the shrinking of the middle class and an increasing accumulation of wealth among a small number of individuals. Both Democrats and Republicans have since the early 1980s advocated for neoliberal policies, but unlike Republicans, the Democrats have not completely relinquished a belief in the importance of a social safety net, or a belief in the moral responsibility that those who are well-off in a society should help to ensure that those who are less financially fortunate (and their children) are not allowed to starve or live in boxes on the streets. It is sadly ironic that this point of view, which is in line with the sort of Judeo-Christian moral doctrine so frequently invoked by the neoconservative Right, is somehow found controversial by the very same people. 

I could be accused of oversimplifying a complex phenomenon - a conservative might say that they don't want the poor to be punished but that the government should play no role in creating the safety net. The free market should be allowed (through deregulation) to take care of those who are less fortunate, while taxation and redistribution of some percentage of the earnings of the wealthy through proactive government programs should be resisted at all costs. The problem is that we are decades past the point at which the question of the efficacy of free market policies (and trickle down economics) is up for debate and we have seen that without some level of governmental assistance the free market can be particularly cold and uncaring.

Tax rates for corporations and the highest individual income earners are at their lowest since the 1920s, union membership hovers around 11 percent (down from 20 percent in 1983), and corporations are encouraged to move wherever they like without a single concern for the communities left decimated in their absence (see most of the cities in southeast Michigan, like Flint, Saginaw, and of course Detroit). The list could go on, and on. The results of institutionalized deregulation is that despite corporate profits being at an all-time high, the skyrocketing profits are being funneled to a tiny fraction of the population. According to neoliberal ideology, the implementation of 'free market' reforms and policies of deregulation in United States over the last thirty years should have resulted in more jobs and more wealth for society as a whole. What we have seen, however, is that any wealth produced in the last three decades has been much more likely to trickle up than down.

And yet, still, to this day, and perhaps with more gusto than ever, Republicans and their mutant offspring the Tea Party insist that taxes should not go up on the wealthy; that, despite having a historically low tax rate, corporations should pay even less; and that what little regulation we do have must be done away with. Deregulation worked out great for some at AIG, Bear-Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, like the CEOs who made it out with their ballooning riches intact, but in the end everyone else (and we're talking tens of millions of people here) suffered. And that, David Harvey argues, is the whole point of neoliberal economic policy. In terms of generating wealth and restoring class power to Park Avenue, deregulation and the whole neoliberal kit and kaboodle is a great solution. The only problem - and it's a big one - is that along side the accumulation of wealth in a very, very small sector of society we can also see that the very policies allowing for such unencumbered growth make it very difficult to implement a mechanism ensuring that enough of that wealth is reinvested in the wider community.

Neoliberals have a response to this as well. These wealthy individuals and their business interests argue that if government would only get out of the way then the building or roads and the maintenance of shipping and transportation infrastructure would happily and adequately be taken care of by privately-owned corporations. They say the free market will take care of all needs without the oppressive interference of government, and it is possible to imagine a scenario in which that is the case, but only so long as 'what is necessary' aligns with 'what makes more profit.' There are inherent limits to pinning the needs of society-at-large to businesses that act according to their own profit-driven measurement of necessity.  Simply put, there are things the government can be compelled to do that a corporation in the same position would resist because it doesn't grow profit. It is unfortunate that this idea is anathema to most Republicans.  

Generally speaking, in the eyes of corporations the concerns of Mr. and Mrs. Average American don't form part of the financial equation, unless, that is, it has to do with how best to take their money. "And why should they be part of the equation!?" asks the politician sympathetic to big business and neoliberal policy. After all, according to Forbes we lowly peons making less than the 1% should be thanking the high-earners in this country for all they've done, and not the other way around. They owe us no thanks for, say, bailing out their collapsed institutions, funding the construction of their roads, and paying for the healthcare of their employees who, without employer coverage, make expensive publicly-funded trips to the ER instead of visiting a physician. 

Just to be clear, I am not advocating for the elimination of private corporations and the ascendance of total government ownership. There must be a combination of the two working together.  This is how things have historically proven to work best. This is how the greatest achievements of this country were accomplished. To ignore the role of government in enabling all manner of technological and economic advances over the last eighty years is, quite simply, to ignore reality, which, it is true, is something so many in the Republican party and on the political Right in general see fit to do.  If you want to live in Ayn Rand's fantasy society in which everything is privately run, then neoliberalism is the way to go, but this means people not in the upper echelon of the businesses class (i.e. the vast majority of us) will benefit little from the success (measured in profit) of such businesses. 

After all, in capitalism the law of the land - that is, the law of necessity - states that a business will only spend as much (or as little) as is necessary to accomplish its goals, i.e. to further its profits. The concerns of the individuals in society not residing at the top of the corporate architecture - individuals who depend on a federally regulated coast-to-coast interstate system, safe bridges over canyons and rivers, and an aviation and rail system run so as to allow maximum functionality, safety, and efficiency - fall to the wayside when profit is the lone motivating factor to get stuff done. Paradoxically it is the individual who suffers within a political system built upon Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy, which is so much in vogue among the Republicans. 

But this contradiction shouldn't come as any surprise. Rand's philosophy is just as radical and extreme as the Soviet Communism to which she was responding and a profit-driven corporate government is just as dangerous as a government built on totalitarian collectivism. In both cases the individual is squashed, in Rand's case beneath the market behemoth, and in the case of Soviet Communism beneath a hulking state apparatus. If by 'good policy' we mean policy that allows for a citizenry free from want and oppression, then neither scenario makes for good policy. Thankfully we have not yet had to experience a United States in which the federal government is completely replaced by privately-owned corporations - Rand's frightening fantasy and the dream of many Republicans today - but for the last thirty years we've been headed in that direction and it has become a real problem. 

Entry Zero.

A short introduction before I begin. This isn't the first blog I've started, but unlike my other scuttled attempts at a literary presence on the internet I intend to write more than a single entry, like this one, explaining my intentions for a blog that in the end I'll never follow through on. Not this time, not ever again. I'm going to set myself a goal of ten entries. Ten, not including this introduction. I'm thinking to myself how this is a tall order, especially if I want the entries to not be crap.

Writing is challenging plus I don't really need yet another time-consuming activity that contributes nothing to my already meager occupational earnings.  I figure with my status updates I spend enough time acting au gratis as a social media participant keeping Facebook profitable, and I might as well, as so many of my generation are wont to do, spread my time and energy, my free labor, like butter (free butter), across the web in the form of a personal blog and not limit myself to humdrum posts on Reddit or the aforementioned Facebook. Think of how many more people I can connect with! Thus it is with Here Temporarily that I intend to send yet another voice careening across the digital frontier, hoping to reach a few readers ensconced at their computers, thinking, like I am, about how much time we spend on the computer and how little most of us have to show for it, besides a stack of small advertising windows on the right side of the screen that reflect back like tiny monstrous mirrors what I just looked at on Amazon.com.

I've written reviews and short special interest articles for a few different sites, to say nothing of my finely crafted Amazon reviews (my 'top reviewer' ranking is an impressive 2,419,032), and if I'm gonna give away my writing I might as well do it here. Because even though this blog is technically owned by Google, at least I got to name it, which is, as of this moment, enough for me to convince myself that this blog is special, even though there are probably many like it. It's kind of like Full Metal Jacket when the recruits name their rifles. It's exactly the same, actually.

And so, what am I going to write about? A lot of stuff. Many things. Politics, music (probably mostly various sub-genres of metal), art, books, movies, politics, philosophy, science, and more politics, and that recent obnoxious Huffington Post article "Why Generation Y yuppies Are Unhappy." Things like those things. Maybe that just sounds like a list of topics I like - which it is - but...I needed to make a list so I don't forget what I want to write about, especially if I want to meet my goal of ten (not crappy) entries. And for a while now I've had a fantasy of opening a combination record shop/art studio-gallery/concert venue/used book store, and since this monstrosity of obscure retail isn't yet for me financially feasible, this blog (god dammit I hate that word) will have to do.

Do check back in the near future, won't you?


Currently listening to: Wintersun, Time I