"Our economic ruin means freedom for the super-rich" by George Monbiot at the Guardian
Our economic ruin means freedom for the super-richby George Monbiot at the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/30/economic-ruin-super-rich-totalitarian-capitalism
"SNIP..................................
Above all, the neoliberal programme has closed down political choice. If the market, as the doctrine insists, is the only valid determinant of how societies evolve, and the market is dominated by giant corporations, then what big business wants is what society gets. You can see this squalid reality at work in Cameron's speech last week. "We have listened to what business wants and we are delivering on it. Business said, 'We want competitive tax rates,' so we are creating the most competitive corporate tax regime in the G20 and the lowest rates of corporation tax in the G7 ". What about the rest of us? Don't we get a say?
The neoliberal hypothesis has been disproved spectacularly. Far from regulating themselves, untrammelled markets were saved from collapse only by government intervention and massive injections of public money. Far from delivering universal prosperity, government cuts have pushed us further into crisis. Yet this very crisis is now being used as an excuse to apply the doctrine more fiercely than before.
So where is the economic elite? Counting the money it has stashed in unregulated tax havens. Thirty years of neoliberalism have allowed the super-rich to detach themselves from the lives of others to such an extent that economic crises scarcely touch them. You could see this as yet another market failure. Even if they are affected, the rich are doubtless prepared to pay an economic price for the political benefits freedom from democratic restraint that the doctrine offers.
A programme that promised freedom and choice has instead produced something resembling a totalitarian capitalism, in which no one may dissent from the will of the market and in which the market has become a euphemism for big business. It offers freedom all right, but only to those at the top.
.................................SNIP"
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)"Too Big To Fail" Crowd must succeed, regardless of how much it means that everyone else suffers, then a spin off corollary must also be acknowledged: too small to succeed.
But as more and more people understand the Doctrine and its spin off corollaries, there is more and more of a likelihood that there will be ongoing protests.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)Living behind a wall. The police will get in on this action if it gets bad enough.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)right up until the moment they vanish under it.
(* according to their definition of freedom, the definition currently accepted in the US and Western world generally, which is simply the ability to act with unlimited contempt for the needs and freedoms of others while pursuing your own material interests, without fear of retaliation.)
They reigned over the Earth, with its every beast as their prey, with nothing to fear - save another of their predatory kind, larger and more quick to murder.
kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)Finally, a good and just use for those expensive Marine Amphibious Assault Ships presents itself.
midnight
(26,624 posts)to get the economy going via the TARP money... They should be in front of a judge..