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Posts Tagged ‘neoliberalism’

Comment on Ted Nordhaus: ‘The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse’

February 24, 2020

Mr Nordhaus’s article ‘The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse‘ is challenging and interesting. Any summary of it will probably not do it justice, but hopefully I’m not distorting it too much.

Ted Nodhaus hails from the Breakthrough Institute (not to be confused with Breakthrough: National Centre for Climate Restoration), that is generally pro-corporate, anti-carbon price and pro-nuclear in its approach to climate change, so his argument that mainstream ‘left’ climate action proposals, are not really that left wing, or anti-capitalist, is interesting and worth engaging with. He is largely correct; environmental action has largely been adapted to not challenging capitalism. Neoliberalism is both all-pervasive, unable to take action itself, and inhibiting of any action by others.

Lets begin with his final point:

“we are all neoliberals now. Some of us just haven’t realized it.”

Neoliberalism is about protecting and promoting corporate dominance. A neoliberal is a person who talks about free-markets and small government, but is quite happy to have government intervene to crush workers’ rights or popular protest, to protect companies when they engage in pollution and harm, and to distort or regulate markets in favour of established corporate power.

In neoliberalism, anything established companies do is perceived as the ‘market in action’, and hence wonderful; anything which anyone does to curtail corporate dominance or to protect livelihood, or even existence, is acting against the market, and is evil and to be suppressed. Neoliberalism is both fundamentally anti-democratic and pro-corporate liberty. Corporations do not need democracy, or generate democracy. Profit and financial power are the only virtues neoliberalism recognises. If destroying ecologies makes profit, even if there are any laws left to protect ecologies (which neoliberals will attempt to remove), then ecologies will be destroyed.

Neoliberalism is inherently boring and real world problem avoiding. Neoliberals pretend that what they call free markets bring liberty rather than corporate dominance. Their only solution to every problem is even greater corporate dominance and less government acting on behalf of the people.

It is not surprising that after forty years of neoliberal ‘free market’ talk most people feel alienated from a politics which has become about corporate subsidy and corporate freedom, while considering most of the electorate expendable, or mindless, and to be manipulated rather than listened to.

Neoliberalism creates the conditions of its perpetuation by preventing any challenge emerging, by ensuring critical politicans generally get little funding, by funding fawning politicians, by owning the media and ensuring you get bombarded with neoliberal talking points, by enforcing the market, and dismissing whatever challenge becomes known as ‘anti-market’, and markets are inherently good. It also sabotages its conditions of existence by removing responsibility for the destruction of the ecologies it depends upon.

It is not a surprise that neoliberalism cannot deal with climate change, as recognising climate change demands changes in the behaviour of dominating corporations, a recognition of their responsibility for ecological destruction, and a reassertion of the rights of those ordinary people who are going to suffer severely from climate change. All of this, like any other democratic action is simply branded an interference in the market and unworkable as a result.

Most people (including neoliberals) deny they are neoliberals in this sense, but this is the way neoliberalism works. It forms the destructive background of our crisis

“Many conservatives have attacked the Green New Deal as socialism”

Neoliberals attack everything that does not give the corporate sector more power and wealth, as socialist or communist, suggesting it will lead to mass death. That is their main shtick. It also shows the poverty of their arguments – a slur is enough to satisfy them and prevent any further thinking.

But, as Mr Nordhaus says,:

“what is striking about the Green New Deal and similar proposals coming from climate hawks and left-leaning environmentalists is not their radicalism but their modesty.”

Yes. The left is now what would once have been called economically right wing. The solutions which are being proposed in our parliaments to the problem of climate change, are moderate capitalist, not socialist. They are not radical. The fact that they are attacked in this way, rather than discussed, shows the intensity of the neoliberal desire not to trouble the established and dominant corporate sector. The right is always attempting to push us further to the right.

“almost no one, in either electoral politics or nongovernmental organizations, seems willing to demand that governments take direct and obvious actions to slash emissions and replace fossil energy with clean.”

For the mainstream left, this is pretty accurate. From the 50s to early 70s direct government action would have seemed the sensible and obvious thing to do to almost everyone, as survival is more important than corporate power or markets. Markets have no necessarily beneficial teleology, other than seeking profit at this moment; their long term processes can easily lead to destruction, or the crash. Its not as if we don’t know that markets do crash, and bring many people down with them. Markets always require custom and regulation to work.

“the apocalyptic rhetoric, endless demands for binding global temperature targets, and radical-sounding condemnations of neoliberalism, consumption, and corporations only conceal how feeble the environmental climate agenda actually is”

He is right again. Neoliberal dominance or free market fundmentalism, crushes all innovation and potential innovation (unless it renders profit). Mainstream environmentalism yields, possibly to keep funding and avoid full-on media attacks.

The left’s agitation boils:

“down to some variant of either regulating corporations to stop them from doing things that produce carbon emissions or subsidizing them to use energy and other technologies that reduce carbon emissions”

As he is arguing, this is pretty minor stuff considering the potential scale of the disaster, yet it is vehemently opposed.

It is also true that as well as regulation and subsidy, some people suggest a carbon price as a solution. Not carbon trading, but a governmentally determined price with predictable increases, which gives the business world certainty (to the degree certainty is possible), and is given back to ordinary people to compensate for price increases. Again this is a mild impingement on markets, less of an impingement than sea level rises and so on. Its not hard to find this suggestion, as he recognises in his next paragraph. He continues:

“the primary frame through which climate change has been viewed over the past three decades is as a market failure.”

Yes. With the reservation that this is not really what is usually meant by ‘market failure.’ The term ‘market failure’ implies the possibility of ‘market success,’ yet the complete inability of neoliberal markets to deal with climate change is now reasonably obvious. It is not market failure. It is the nature of the neoliberal market itself that is the problem.

“Missing from this frame is the notion that abundant, cheap, clean energy and the low carbon infrastructure and technology necessary to provide it is a public good.”

Indeed because neoliberalism and its free market theory will not allow, or recognise, this. There is no such thing as ‘public good’ in neoliberalism, and talk of ‘public good’ is seen as a screen for ‘socialist dictatorship’ (lessening of corporate dominance). This again shows the poverty of neoliberal thought. Economics and exchange is a social activity, which depends on social order and a sense of public good. If it does not serve the good of the general public, what is the point? But, in neoliberalism, there is only the private good of the corporate class. No one else counts.

“Treating climate change as a public infrastructure challenge, not a private market failure, brings a range of advantages that pricing and regulation cannot provide.”

Yes again. This kind of action should recognise the inability of the market to work to save us, by itself. Dominant players in the market are currently profitting from the actions which lead to climate change, and they are not about to give those benefits up, without struggle.

“[Public action] enables long time horizons that private investors are unlikely to tolerate; planning and coordination across sectors of the economy to integrate technology, infrastructure, and institutions necessary to achieve deep decarbonization; and low-cost public finance that could make the price of the energy and climate transition far more manageable. And assuming a reasonably progressive tax system, it would arguably do so in a manner at least as straightforward and equitable as cap-and-trade or carbon taxes that aim at “correcting” market failures.”

Yes, but a carbon price may also be useful, as not everything would have to be done by government fiat alone. Perhaps a non-neoliberal market, in competition with central planning, might be useful. We have had mixed economies previously, and they worked quite well; certainly better than neoliberal markets.

“Green opposition to nuclear energy and hydroelectric dams has evolved into skepticism of centralized grids and infrastructure planning.”

I have not noticed this at all. This seems to be lazy thinking. It’s easy for the right to assume Greens are stupid (as they are not neoliberals) therefore they wouldn’t approve of grid planning.

However, as an example of reality, the Australian Greens argue they wish to:

“Establish PowerNSW. A new, publicly owned electricity company to generate, distribute and retail renewable energy for the people of NSW fairly and affordably.”

and:

“Upgrade the power grid. Build much-needed new public network infrastructure, connecting our abundant renewable energy resources to the National Electricity Market.”

So there is no skepticism about improving the grid. It should be fairly obvious that nuclear energy and Hydroelectricity present fundamental ecological challenges, and dangers, in ways that grids do not. Greens might prefer local people not to be restricted by neoliberal regulations designed to protect commercial grid operators at the expense of those local people, but if the grid became a national project, aimed at more than just private profit, then this might be much less of a problem.

“It was only the distortion of energy markets by policy-makers, at the behest of fossil and nuclear incumbents, [Amory] Lovins [chair of the Rocky Mountain Institute] has long insisted, that has stood in the way of the rapid adoption of renewable energy.”

Sadly this ‘distortion’ (which is not a distortion but part of the way the neoliberal market works) is inevitable in a society in which the official ideology only values profit. Massive inequalities in wealth allow massive inequalities in social power and in access to that power. The super-wealthy can, and will, buy and reward politicians for supporting them, and pay for think tanks to persuade those politicians that, in being bought, they are acting virtuously.

“the realities of renewable energy at scale look nothing like the distributed and decentralized utopia that Lovins and his environmental followers promised.”

Yes, again neoliberal ideology and action ‘distorts’ everything to perserve the powers of the corporate elite. Their aim is to prevent this elite having to change or respond to peoples’ needs or requests, and claim this is reputable because “the market knows best”. The environmental movement should not go along with any of these propositions, however dangerous this might appear.

“Most renewable energy today comes not from homes clad in solar panels but from enormous, industrial-scale wind, solar, and biomass facilities.”

This depends a little on where you live, but yes captured governments and renewable energy corporations, have tended to favour the enormous, and the centralised. They have favoured the structures which were good for coal energy companies and which removed local people from consideration or participation.

“The only remotely plausible path to the sorts of changes that many environmentalists now demand,… would require top-down, centralized, technocratic measures that most environmentalists are unwilling to seriously embrace.”

This is the fundamental paradox, but a centralised system which responded to, and involved, local communities could well have a different dynamic, if that was built into the planning. Again the problem is trying to adapt to neoliberalism.

“That is why the rhetoric of climate emergency in recent years has not been matched by explicit and specific proposals to do the sorts of things that a climate emergency would seem to demand.”

He should perhaps listen to some of the climate emergency declarations, and then realise the practical difficulty of acting against the endlessly wealthy elites…

This radicalism is

“fundamentally lacking any well-formed idea of what such a world would look like, in either its institutions, its actual social and economic organization, or most of its specifics—rationing, nationalization, or even just preempting local resistance to action… what most environmentalists, including radical greens, are basically demanding is capitalism with carbon regulations and lots of windmills.”

Yes true, and yet what visions there are, are still rabidly opposed by neoliberals, because it might set a precedent to challenge unfettered corporate power. There is no agreed on vision, because neoliberals refuse any negotiation, at all, even with this dilute environmentalism.

“there is little reason to believe at this point that we are capable of arriving at or sustaining the sort of political consensus that such an undertaking would require.”

This all suggests that the time for compromise with neoliberalism has passed. Neoliberals, as Nordhaus almost recognises, have obstructed climate action at every turn; no matter how mild the suggested action, they still claim it is too ‘socialist’. Over 40 years of neoliberal dominance there have been pretty much no neoliberal ‘free market’ suggestions for a solution to climate change that neoliberals have been willing to actually act upon. Perhaps because there cannot be.

Climate survival clashes with fundamental neoliberal principles.

The left may have to gain the kind of intolerance displayed by the neoliberals and not bother about further attempts at dialogue. Neoliberal markets do not work. Challenging neoliberals will be painful. Not challenging neoliberals will be death. Possibly this needs to be the fallback realisation of the environmental movement, left and right. Neoliberalism is not conservative at all.

Nordhaus ends with a kind of solution, which is probably yet another avoidance of the problem of neoliberal love of destruction.

“technological change will likely continue to prove more easily seeded and sustained than political change.”

Possibly, but again technological change and the way it is used, needs to be removed from neoliberal hands, or we will have more of the fracking disasters, and the leaking of methane in to the air. Fracking might “have significantly reduced the role of coal in the US electricity market” but it is doubtful it has reduced emissions, or preserved ecologies. It just reinforces the destructive system.

Technology has unintended consequences, but neoliberal technology will be designed and organised to benefit neoliberal power and wealth structures, before it will be designed and organised to improve quality of life or ecological stability.

Attempts to accommodate neoliberalsim and keep corporate support, may explain the incoherencies I have discussed in Australian climate policy, as neoliberalism is essentially hostile to ecological preservation and loss of any established corporate power. There is, and can be, no neoliberal effective climate policy. Consequently, neoliberalism must be defeated. We can begin by recognising that Neoliberalism in all its forms, is:

essentially anti-democratic
inherently destructive
unable to deal with ecological problems or climate change
reduces everything to maintaining profit
uninterested in most peoples’ survival, if that might lessen corporate wealth
controls the media, and hence what most people know
attempts to destroy information which is true, but might affect it
formidable as it is a form of plutocracy or rule by wealth
attempts to take over the state, through buying politicians, lobbying, privatisation, and positioning corporate people in government departments responsible for regulating their corporate activities.

Challenging neoliberalism will be difficult. Perhaps the only alternatives are revolution or death. I’d much rather they weren’t, but when established power seems bent on destruction and ignoring the problems, then perhaps that is the only option.

Fighting neoliberalism will be painful, but it is the only course of action that will get us anywhere.

Tags:Anthropocene, neoliberalism, technology
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Confusion in Australian Energy Policy….

February 10, 2020

This is a two part post. News from the last week helps capture the total confusion and incoherence of Australian energy policy. The first post discusses the incoherences and the second discusses the consequences of those incoherences.

Firstly, Australian electricity prices are falling. This is supposed to be of great concern to the Coalition government, which campaigns heavily on the idea of cheap electricity, and of blaming renewables, or a repealed carbon price, for any price increases…

However the reason the prices appear to be coming down is because of renewables…

In its Quarterly Energy Dynamics report for the fourth quarter of 2019, the Australian Energy Market Operator says spot wholesale electricity prices averaged $A72/megawatt hour (MWh), marking a 19 per cent fall from Q4 2018, and the lowest prices since Q4 2016….
The market operator said that a “key driver” of this fall in spot prices was increased supply from wind farms and solar farms, whose combined output increased by a massive 39 per cent compared to Q4 2018.

The largest fall in price occurred in the renewable rich state of South Australia, “where the average price for the quarter was $68/MWh”

The Energy Security Board, which reports to the Council of Australian Governments is expecting further price reductions:

Looking forward a downward trend in retail prices is noted. Over the period to 2021-22 a decrease in prices of 7.1% (about $97) is expected. A decrease in wholesale prices is the main driver and this decrease is in turn driven by new low-cost renewable generation entering the system.
ESB Health of the National Electricity Market Media Release

There were also a large number of coal outages in 2019 – we have old coal power stations which are unreliable in the heat – so much for the stability of coal power. The system used to collapse quite regularly when the generators where young as well, as many older people can tell you. What is worrying about the breakdowns is not the breakdowns of the old lignite fired power stations, but of the most recent and biggest power station, built in 2007, Kogan Creek. These collapses, and other factors, lead the AEMO to say:

black coal-fired generation around the country decreased by 1,061MW on average compared to Q4 2018, its lowest quarterly level since Q4 2016

So more black coal is not needed all the time, even now. Gas can also be problematic. RenewEconomy reports:

Origin [a major electricity provider] has been hit by a long-term outage at its Mortlake gas generator in Victoria, and at its Eraring coal generator in NSW. These outages alone slashed $44 million from its first half earnings, while a 7 per cent slump in volumes due to the growth of rooftop solar and expired business contracts cut profits by $46 million, and price controls in Victoria and federally cost another $55 million.
Renew Economy 20 Feb 2020

This apparently cost Origin $170 million in electricity earnings, an overall drop of 11% for second half of 2019.

There was so much renewable energy around, that not only did it reduce profits for some corporations, but prices were occasionally negative and some renewable sources were told to curtail production.

[R]enewable energy curtailment across the National Electricity Market – the main grid covering the eastern states – increased to 6 per cent of total output in Q4 2019, the highest amount on record.

With typical realism, former minister Matt Canavan (who left the ministry to support Barnaby Joyce’s leadership bid) declared that “Renewables are the dole bludgers of the energy system, they only turn up to work when they want to“. The reality is that they have to sometimes be laid off to keep the coal energy industry in business. He continued to argue that Australia apparently needs coal for our remaining manufacturing. Supporting manufacturing has not been something the Coalition has been that interested in for a while.

As the article quoted above states, it is close to “impossible to name a single federal Coalition MP that recognises the potential of wind and solar”, even with the latest research from the CSIRO and AEMO stating that renewables with storage are cheaper than coal, and far cheaper than nuclear. Some other research suggests storage and “dispatchability” could potentially no longer be a problem; a report from the ANU states that there are around 22,000 potential pumped hydro storage sites in Australia, and Professor Blakers from the ANU Research School of Engineering says:

“Australia needs only a tiny fraction of these sites for pumped hydro storage – about 450 GWh of storage – to support a 100 per cent renewable electricity system…”

There are large scale plans to sell renewable energy generated in Australia to Singapore, or to generate hydrogen gas and export it instead of methane (especially in South Australia), but the Federal government appears to ignore these ideas, or realities. Coal is still its god, and needs taxpayer support. So it is not surprising that:

The Australian Coalition government has announced a new $4 million grant to pursue a new 1GW coal fired generator in north Queensland in one of the first acts of the new pro-coal resources minister Keith Pitt.

Taxpayers’ money is being given to Shine Energy to conduct a feasibility study for a proposed 1GW HELE coal plant at Collinsville in Queensland.

Let’s ignore the probability that Northern Queensland already has more energy than it needs.

“The problem is it makes little commercial sense to build more generation in Queensland at the moment. The state is in oversupply. Queensland’s 13GW of conventional generation has been augmented over the last decade by more than 5GW of new rooftop solar and large-scale renewables. There’s more on the way”.
Australian Financial Review

Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute commented:

there is absolutely no evidence suggesting that marginal electorates are the cheapest or best places to build new power stations. …
The former resources minister Matt Canavan even pulled out the schoolyard defence of ‘they started it’, arguing on Twitter that: “I see some are saying that we should not help coal-fired power stations provide jobs because we should leave it to the market. Well if that’s the view be consistent and argue against the billions we give to renewables every year!”….
First, no federal government has spent billions per year on subsidies for renewables. None. While it’s true that the government mandates that minimum amounts of renewable energy are supplied to the grid, such obligations don’t cost the budget a cent.
Australian Financial Review 24 Feb 2020

Denniss also points out that:

Only one coal-fired power station is being built anywhere in Western Europe, North America or Australia; a German plant that is nine years overdue. Even in Trump’s America, no coal-fired power stations are under construction.
as above

What this grant to Shine shows is that nobody is prepared to even look at building coal power in Australia without subsidy. Just as Adani is constantly demanding subsidy for its coal mine (free water, royalty holidays, train lines, apart from straight money gifts), and this mine is unlikely to benefit any Australians at all, and likely to damage a few.

We now know:

The only physical trace of Shine Energy, which wants to build a $2bn coal-fired power station in north Queensland, is a small post office box next to an Asian grocer at a suburban Brisbane shopping complex….
Company documents show Shine Energy is worth a nominal $1,000 on paper. It has no registered financial obligations, and no physical office at its listed address.
On its website, Shine describes its business as providing “renewable energy solutions”, but the company could offer no evidence that it or its directors…. has ever previously worked on an energy generation project.
The Guardian 29 Feb 2020

Superficially, this looks like a strange company to entrust with the task.

The PM justified all of this by saying “We listen to all Australians and we listen to Australians right across the country, not just those in the inner city.” I suspect they only listen to Australians who sponsor them, or agree with them, after all “60% of a sample of 1,083 voters believes Australia should be doing more” and 64% of another poll see climate change as the prime critical threat to Australia, and most of them think we should act even if it involves significant costs. Quite a few people, including Coalition voters, think their lack of climate policy is problematic.

And of course this spending on coal is being justified as it will “help drive down prices for businesses and their customers.” The Prime Minister apparently said: “we won’t be bullied into higher taxes and higher electricity prices.” Barnaby Joyce argued that the government needs to ensure that “the poor people can get affordable power, and that we can get dignity in people’s lives.”

However, prices are already going down without coal, and coal emissions will have disastrous effects on poorer people in fire and flood zones – they won’t be able to afford the insurance hikes. No one in the Coalition seems at all concerned about the cost to the ecology in terms of climate change. The future costs of the loss of agriculture, loss of water and through storm, flood and fire damage appears completely opaque to them. It does not count. Effectively fossil fuels are being subsidised by ignoring the costs that will fall on ordinary people and the economy in general.

We already have problems of too much energy for the market, subsidised coal will not solve that problem, and if it is more costly to build, then without even more taxpayer subsidy, it will cost more and pollute more, and take more water and damage climate even more. Coal is a loose/loose situation.

And then we learn that:

Renewable Energy Partners has been given $2 million in funds from the Coalition government to advance a feasibility study into a project that would combine 1.5GW of pumped hydro, with seven hours storage, along with up to 1.3GW of solar PV, 800MW of wind energy and a 200MW hydrogen electrolyser, fuelled by the green energy sources.

The CEO states:

“Our initial studies have already shown that our site is well suited for solar generation, the topography is ideal for the construction of a large-scale wind farm and a recent study by the Australian Energy Market Operator has confirmed the need for a large pumped hydro facilities in North Queensland, the Urannah Renewable Hub is the battery of the north,”

There is no evidence of coherency in this policy. The government could strongly point out that they are trying to find the best system, by linking or comparing the projects, but they don’t and probably can’t.

The government has also apparently started leaking that it would prefer to “favour technology over taxation” because, according to the PM:

“currently no one can tell me that going down that path won’t cost jobs, won’t put up your electricity prices, and won’t impact negatively on jobs in the economies of rural and regional Australia.”
PM Transcript 18 Feb 2020

We have seen electricity prices seem to be coming down and the CSIRO working with other people such as the National Bank and other businesses (so this is not some ‘crazy’ left wing report) have argued:

Australia faces a Slow Decline if it takes no action on the most significant economic, social and environmental challenges. But, if these challenges are tackled head on, Australia can look forward to a positive Outlook Vision. This could mean higher GDP per capita, ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, strong economic growth and energy affordability, and more liveable major cities
CSIRO Australian National Outlook 2019

They go on to suggest that this could lead to 2.75–2.8% annual growth in GDP (ok there are possible problems with this, but from the Coalition’s point of view this is good), 90% wages growth by 2060, and $42–84 billion increase in returns to landholders (Executive Summary p.9). This is much better than the option of failing to “adequately address the global and domestic issues, resulting in declining economic, social and environmental outcomes.” So the Prime Minister can’t really say that nobody has told him that going renewable would be good for the economy and the country.

The PM continues his argument by suggesting that:

There’s a lot of people at the moment wanting us to put more taxes on people to solve problems. I don’t believe higher taxes are the solution to our problems.
PM Transcript 18 Feb 2020

He does not say who these people are, but another commentator in the not leftwing Australian Financial Review remarks:

far from being mutually exclusive, technology and a carbon price can be complementary in driving down emissions. …
without a market-based carbon price to incentivise lower emissions technology and private sector research and development, the government will resort to heavy-handed interventions to try to spur new emissions-reduction technology. It’s remarkable that on climate and energy policies, a Liberal government favours big government picking winners instead of market principles.
Australian Financial Review 22 Feb 2020

In a later speech the Prime Minister seems to assume that:

“hazard reduction for keeping people safe as, frankly, as important as emissions reduction when it comes to addressing these climate issues…. And, you know, rural and regional Australia is tough. They’re resilient. And it’s a great place to be.”
PM Transcript 17 Feb 2020

You almost certainly cannot reduce the hazard from 3-4 degree temperature rises and and sea level rises, enough to keep people safe.

Then we hear there are:

Record levels of investment in renewable technologies, beating our Kyoto emissions reduction target by 411 million tonnes.
PM Transcript 17 Feb 2020 b

Ignoring the Kyoto accounting trick [2] [3] [4] [5] and its effects, in this statement, the government, with Labor support, are running down the finances of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which helps fund the establishment of renewable energy systems and research into renewable energy. ARENA expects to exhaust its funds by the end of the year. This is simultaneous boasting of spending on renewables and inhibiting that spending. It is not coherent. Unless of course, by technology, they do not mean renewables, or greenhouse gas free technologies.

Indeed we have to assume that incoherency is the standard response of Australian politicians when faced with climate change. The Labor deputy leader responded to all this, by saying:

“I absolutely support coal mining jobs and coal miners, and the role that that plays within our economy, and it will continue to play a role for a long time to come,… [we should] acknowledge the significant role that coal miners play and the communities play within our economy” [but] “A Labor government is not going to put a cent into subsidising coal-fired power. And that is the practical question as to whether or not it happens”

Yes look after the workers, but don’t poison the planet. This is not a difficult idea; the climate movement has been talking about “just transitions” for a long time. A few days after this, Labor leader Anthony Albanese said, in response to questions about coal fired energy plants:

You may as well ask me if I support unicorns…. I don’t think there’s a place for coal-fired power plants in Australia, full stop… The truth is no private sector operation will touch a new coal-fired power plant with a barge pole
Canberra Times

However,

Business and industry groups are urging the government to commit to zero carbon emissions by 2050…. Mr Albanese refused to give a clear answer when pressed on whether Labor supported their calls, saying his party would cement their climate policies closer to the next federal election in 2022.
same as above

Later Mr Albanese objected to the proposal to give Shine Energy taxpayer’s money, saying:

“they are using $4m of taxpayers funds to give to a private operation that has no record of building a new power station anywhere”

However, he went on to support the Adani mine saying:

“It’s a good thing those jobs have been created. I support jobs regardless of where they are [and, he supports] and the economic activity that will arise from them…..Our priority is jobs and jobs here in Queensland, and we make no apologies for that.”
The Guardian

As I have argued on several occasions there are not that many jobs in the Adani mine, and there are severe disputes about the economic flow on benefits, especially granted the royalty holidays, taxpayer subsidies and risk of destroying water flows. It might be cheaper just to use the subsidies to start new local industries in Queensland to provide real jobs.

Late last year Albanese also said:

“the proposal that we immediately stop exporting coal would damage our economy and would not have any environmental benefit”.
Brisbane Times

Nobody I am aware of, is arguing that we “immediately stop exporting coal,” so this is not a real point, but lots of people are arguing that we should not open new coal mines or expand the coal exports. This is because, climate change is a global systemic problem. It does not matter where the fossil fuels are burnt, they affect, and worsen, Australia’s climate, causing job losses in other parts of the country.

In an interview on the ABC’s Insiders, after the policy speech, Albanese agreed there was still likely to be coal mining and export in Australia after 2050. “[The target is] net, that’s the point.” He said that exported coal was not counted in Australia’s greenhouse gas budget. “You don’t measure the emissions where the original product comes from.” This avoidance of responsibility is despite him recognising the targets are economy wide, and not cutting back emissions affects the world.

If Labor supports the mining and burning of coal, they do not have an effective climate policy, they (at best) only have a ‘get Australia out of coal fired energy policy’.

Conservative Independent Zali Steggall has proposed legislation which would enforced zero net emissions by 2050, and give a series of targets on the way, but Albanese appears not to be keen to support her move, giving the excuse that the Government would not allow debate, leaving his climate change spokesman Mark Butler to try and say they would engage with the possibility of supporting the proposed legislation. Later Albanese said:

the world must achieve net zero carbon emissions by the year 2050…. [so that] the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere is no greater than the amount we absorb which can occur through agriculture, forestry and other means.
Speech: Leadership in a New Climate 21 Feb 2020

Nothing in this speech, or in what he has said elsewhere, gives any interim targets to get to “net zero carbon emissions by the year 2050”. This indicates little planning, or expectation of planning, and the apparent refusal to take on Steggall’s interim targets suggest this lack, is part of the policy.

He continued:

We pride ourselves on always pulling our weight. And we have seen climate change be a factor in our devastating bushfires. We could see it, smell it, even touch it. Our amazing continent is particularly vulnerable. So we have a lot to lose. But the good news is we also have a lot to gain. Action on climate change will mean more jobs, lower emissions and lower energy prices….in recent months we had some foreshadowing of the costs of inaction.
Speech: Leadership in a New Climate 21 Feb 2020

So, we are told both that action on climate must be sacrificed for jobs and produces jobs. And that we can sell climate change elsewhere and suffer here, and not suffer here. Labor is not coherent either.

One problem with neoliberalism, and Australian politics is primarily neoliberal, is that because it only recognises the virtues of profit, and preferably profit by established companies, it looks like corruption. Neoliberals will always support established corporate power and give it handouts, but they don’t have to be bought, they just do it anyway.

Then I guess there is the problem of existential crisis, and the difficulty of recognising that we cannot do what we have previously done, as it will harm us. This may well be affecting politicians and many high level business people, and if so then that leaves us in a storm without a rudder, clinging to what worked in the past and destroys us now.

The next post discusses the consequences of this confusion

Tags:disorder, Energy, neoliberalism, politics
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Climate change as religion?

January 26, 2020

One of the arguments put forward by quite a few people is that acceptance of climate change as being real is a religion. Thus Tony Abbott, ex Pm of Australia and authoritarian Catholic (he does not like the current pope), says:

If you think climate change is the most important thing, everything can be turned to proof. I think that to many it has almost a religious aspect to it.

A few years previously Abbott said

Environmentalism has managed to combine a post-socialist instinct for big government with a post-Christian nostalgia for making sacrifices in a good cause. Primitive people once killed goats to appease the volcano gods. We’re more sophisticated now but are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect…
so far, it’s climate change policy that’s doing harm; climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm.

Fox news host, David Web claims that

Climate change revision is the reformation of the new global warming cult. It’s the religion of the Left… America the prosperous is the Satan. Hey, every religion needs a Satan… [It helps] scaring the younger generations… They’re easy to frighten, just tell them their world is ending… but do all these climate strikers know what they’re protesting for? Seems the discussion is more often centered around [carbon dioxide] than the environment at large… Our environment is everything around us including and importantly, our economic environment. We have to be able to afford the things we want to do,”

We may have to be able to afford the consequences of doing the things ‘we’ want to do, as well. The economy depends on the ecology. Without a working ecology we will have severe problems. However, protecting the economy and its power structures from this ecological realisation, seems vital to this set of ideas. Perhaps it is the challenge to those structures that is the main problem for these people?

Sky News host James Morrow says climate change is “as much about a new materialist religion of globalism” than it is about anything else.

These kind of statements seem to be a fairly standard rightist line – taken to imply that climate change is irrational dogma. Strangely they don’t make that implication about ‘real’ religion, but it indicates how they think.

However, if the act of accepting that climate change is real is a religion, then its not a comforting religion, or a religion that promises salvation. The religion gets even less comforting as time and resistance to action by the power elites continues.

The faith that is comforting is the joint faith that climate change is not happening and that what neoliberals call ‘free markets,’ working through the “invisible hand” of their God, will deliver liberty and prosperity and solutions to all problems. This faith forms what we might call the ‘Religion of Mammon’. With this religion we don’t have to do anything, or we can fight to keep emitting pollution and poison, and can thank their Lord that the corporate power elite have our best interests at heart, so we can be joyful when neoliberals give these masters of the universe even more power.

We might wonder if characterizing this ‘Religion of Mammon’ as a real religion is problematic? That might be so, if it were not for the well known Protestant “prosperity gospel” or “prosperity theology” which seems quite related to it. Prosperity preachers often seem to have a predatory relationship to their followers, in that they can sometimes claim the more a worshipper gives to the Church financially, the more they will receive from God. Worshippers should finance their private jets for the Lord’s work. In this religion poverty is a sin, and God’s favour is measured by wealth and success. Holding onto the faith that the economy will serve you well is central.

The prosperity religion fits well with neoliberalism and anti-welfare, while psychologically compensating for the effects of neoliberalism and its massively unequal distribution of wealth, and the struggle of ordinary people to move up, or even keep their jobs. It assumes you can worship both God and Mammon (because Mammon is God), and that a wealthy person can get through the eye of a needle as easily as anyone else, perhaps more easily as God is rewarding them.

While I have not yet done the research, all the prominent prosperity evangelists I am aware of, seem unworried about climate change. Everything is in God’s hands; humans have no capacity to destroy the world without the consent of God. If climate change comes it is part of the end times and the faithful will be saved. For example, evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll stated that there was little need to look after the environment as Jesus was returning. He declared: “I know who made the environment… He’s coming back, and he’s going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV” (quoted in Veldman The Gospel of Climate Skepticism).

Australia’s Prime Minster has worked in marketing, and is an open follower of the Prosperity Gospel, attending the biggest Church preaching this kind of theology in Australia. It is unusual for Australian politicians to make a big public noise about their religion, so that marks it as special. He also appears to be unconcerned about climate change, and wishes to promote coal mining and coal energy for the benefit of the established economy. If Jesus is coming, then why bother trying to save the Earth? Saving the Earth, might even be going against God’s will and therefore be sinful.

In general, Mr. Morrison also seems quite comfortable with the conjoined Religion of Mammon. I certainly have never seen him criticise it at all, but if people can tell me where he does I will be interested.

Following on from these parallels, it seems fairly straightforward to assert the hypothesis that the prosperity gospel is both comforting, and supportive of the Religion of Mammon; it gives it backing and blends into more or less seamlessly.

The main, non religious, logic that backs the Religion of Mammon, is the idea that a consensus about the evidence from scientists who study the subject of climate change must be wrong, and that the lack of consensus from economists and social scientists about the evidence for benefits of neoliberal economics is irrelevant.

In both cases the Mammonist response is “sinister conspiracy,” and this seems to emphasise that faith in their doctrine comes first, before the evidence of the world.

With the Religion of Mammon life is easy. The correctness of science can be decided by whether it supports the elites of this religion’s favoured brand of corporate domination or not. If it does, it is real, and if it doesn’t, it must be imaginary. This position seems part of the way they try to make sure we all get ruled by their favoured big corporations and the few of the wealth elite, and never the people. Entrenched corporations must never be curtailed. They could well be the expression of divine will.

As David Web implies above, the most important part of our overall environment is the economic system, and that must not be altered. Any attempts to alter it can then be condemned as ‘socialist,’ because the neoliberals have spent 40 years telling us socialism is bad, and equals state communism. As he says “every religion needs a Satan.”

But if you think all climate scientists are socialists, you probably don’t know many scientists, or you think socialism is scientific – which I do not, although it is a better theory of life than neoliberalism, which would not be hard…

However, this politicization is unreal. The idea that the science of climate change is legitimate, is not exclusive to the left, there are quite a few people on the right who think it is worth taking note of, even though they get shouted down, and told they are not proper members of the Church of Mammon. A YouGov survey implies that only 15% of people in the US think climate is not changing or humans are not partly responsible for the change. A recent Pew Report claims that 67% of people in the US think the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of global climate change, and 77% think the US should be developing Renewable Energy in preference to expanding fossil fuels.

So there is a reasonable number on the political right who seem like they would support action, but then many Republicans do not seem keen on neoliberalism either, (or they protest against its effects), and many non prosperity gospel Christians are now facing up to climate change, and talking about the importance of not destroying God’s creation. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. The Religion of Mammon may be becoming more isolated, but that could make it stronger, as it clamps down on communication with sinners.

Perhaps because of the comfort provided by their religion, the Mammon elites do not seem interested in preparing for natural risks; this is a weakness which may affect support for them in the long run. They are capable of preparing for other risks, but not environmental ones. They even seem happy creating new risks as with releasing more poisons, such as coal ash and so on. This is odd. And the only explanation I can think of is that they feel they must support the corporate mining elite, or they are bought by that elite – so what if a few peasants get sick?

We are faced with the simple fact that because of their ideology, that Mammonists in Australia, cut back on fire prevention, refused to talk to worried fire chiefs, ignored all the warnings from scientists, ignored the severity of the drought, and hindered preparations… As a result the East coast burned, the worst it has apparently ever burned. Farms and forests gone. Rainforests that have not burnt in hundreds, maybe thousands, of years have burnt.

I guess they must be pleased that they ignored all the alarmists, and kept the faith with their comforting religion of free market denial, despite the fact it seems to be getting hotter every other year, and never returns to ‘normal.’

This is why they still want to violate their supposed ‘free market’ principles, and pour taxpayers’ money into coal energy and coal mines, because no private company will build coal power without subsidy, but it makes sure that taxpayers are subsidising the right people.

The system is self reinforcing, as it means that the reason for the solutions to climate change looking socialist is that, until recently, very few non-socialist types of solutions have been presented to the general public – other than leave it to the market, which it seems the Church of Mammon does not believe either. The question is whether those non-socialist solutions have been actively suppressed, or whether they have been ignored, with the aim of squeezing a bit more fossil fuel profit from the disaster. Of course it may be possible neoliberal theory is so inadequate it cannot deal with environmental disasters at all, and so its holders have to pretend it is not happening.

Oh, and on the other side of the business sector. The high employing tourism industry is estimated, by Australian Financial Review, to have lost about AU$4.5 billion, as a result of the fires. But they are mostly small business and so to be abandoned. The Religion of Mammon only respects the massively wealthy, as they clearly have the approval of their Lord.

Tags:climate change, neoliberalism, politics
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A failed theory

January 8, 2020

I’ve said similar things before, but neoliberal, supposedly free market economics, has not delivered the liberty, prosperity, general well-being or efficiency and responsiveness, that was promised and is still promised.

We have had 40 years of neoliberalism, and the world is getting worse. As a theory it has failed completely.

The Results

Neoliberalism has delivered:

massive taxpayer support for wealthy corporations;
tax cuts for wealthy people;
suppression of unions and workers’ representation;
cutbacks in government services to ordinary people;
the purchase of politicians and policy by wealth;
alienation of ordinary people from political processes, as their input is largely ignored, unless it can be made to support the power of wealth;
growing inequality of wealth distribution with lower amounts of GDP going to workers, and more going to the very wealthy;
wealth inequality reinforces dominance of politics by wealth and alienation of people from participation;
massive military spending provided by taxpayers;
privatisation of publicly owned property and loss of control or protection over that property;
privatised services which are less helpful and more punitive;
corporatised bureaucracy with no freedom for lower levels to actually help people;
economic instability and crashes;
larger and longer term unemployment;
increased insecurity of work, with longer working hours, and more vulnerability to the employer’s whims (market discipline for workers, subsidies for large corporations);
a precarious middle class which may well see its children being worse off than they were, and;
a tendency for business to become monopolies.

It has also delivered corruption of truth, as information gets dominated by corporate PR, deception and hype.

Corporately funded ‘science’ is not independent of profit drives and thus announces findings which supports that profit, and suppresses findings which do not, thus building distrust in independent science and increasing uncertainty.

Its Successes

Neoliberalism’s main success has been to further plutocracy and the rule of wealth and misinformation, rather than rule by the people.

Wealth can buy, or shape, all other sources of power such as communication, information, laws, politicians, violence, organisation, religion, culture, rules of the markets, and so on. It does so in order to control citizens for the benefit of the powerful.

Neoliberalism limits the response to problems, as the only solution that neoliberals have for any problem is more neoliberalism, or ‘freer markets;’ more of the same which has generated our problem and which will probably make things even worse than they are now.

Given that neoliberals find it difficult to justify the results they have achieved in terms of their predictions and promises, they have to blame others and start culture wars to build loyalties, and prevent discussion.

Neoliberals seem incapable of taking responsibility for any of their actions, which is not surprising as the corporation has been designed to avoid responsibility, starting with limited liability and finishing with massive bonuses for apparently incompetent CEOs. There prime action is to always blame other (usually less powerful) people.

Neoliberalism is one reason we have not dealt with climate change, because action threatens the profits of powerful and profit-driven fossil fuel corporations.

Conclusion

The neoliberal experiment has been a complete disaster almost everywhere it has been applied. If these are the results of 40 years of application, we can assume that the theory has been applied, tested and found wanting.

However, as it benefits the large corporate sector and the very wealthy and, as they now control the political system and the media, it is improbable that it will be discarded, until complete social breakdown.

In order to change neoliberal destructiveness, we would have to destroy corporate power or the power of wealth, but that of course is illegal, and many people will tell you immoral. But if you don’t then you will remain governed, rather than governing.

Destroying the State, or reinstating the power of the people, without destroying the power of wealth would seem impossible.

Tags:neoliberalism, politics
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Neoliberals and Nuclear Energy

December 31, 2019

When discussing climate change with people on the political Right, you commonly get two responses.

The first is “You hate private enterprise and want to get the State to interfere with our lives and destroy our freedoms”

No I want people to be able to choose that they have a future, and that they do not have to be poisoned and disempowered by corporate profit seeking, and neoliberal politics.

It is true I don’t want to surrender the future to the corporate elite and their political representatives, but if business wants to come along and help save both the economy and ecology they function in, they are more than welcome to join in, and many businesses are. In many states in Australia, the renewables transition has been led by business and local councils, in the face of government opposition or intransigence. I can’t stop them, and don’t want to stop them.

Despite the neoliberal Right’s ongoing claims that the only options are to do nothing, or to accept massive government interference in our lives; this is not true. That is just their attempt to politicise the issue, so as to save profit, at the citizens’ expense, and make doing nothing, part of right wing self-identity by suggesting that only left wingers believe in climate change and all the solutions are evil, and worse than the problem should it exist.

The second response I get is “Nuclear power is the solution but you won’t let us have it“.

Nuclear power is an option, although there is little evidence that many people, including the neoliberal Right, actually want it.

From what I hear from people in the UK, the price of the power reactors produce has blown out, and they are slow to build safely.

To make [the Hinkley Point] project viable, the U.K. pledged to pay EDF [The company involved] 92.50 pounds for every megawatt-hour of electricity it produces, more than double the current market price, for 35 years.
Bloomberg

Let us reiterate the obvious position here. Hinkley Point is only going ahead because of government interference in the market, by guaranteeing an electricity price.

It is also probable that it is able to go ahead because the Government is providing tax-payer funded indemnity as private insurance companies will not cover the complete risk of accident.

I don’t understand why a government would offer this, as once relieved of the burden of responsibility for accidents the company building the reactor has an incentive to cut costs on safety to increase profits. And as safety problems are likely to happen years in the future when the high level executives and their bonuses have all disappeared, or the company may not exist, there is even less incentive to make sure it is safe.

So for some bizarre reason neoliberals support nuclear energy even though it appears unable to operate in a free market. They frequently argue that renewables cannot survive in a free market and therefore should be penalized, although this is not as obvious. The position is not that consistent. It must be because tax-payers’ money is being directed at the established corporate sector.

As far as I can tell, Gen IV nukes which there is a lot of noise about, don’t actually exist as commercially or developmentally ready. Even a supportive site points out that

the new technology will be challenged to expand in the open power market without a guaranteed cost savings [over renewables]. Gen IV will be more likely to expand in state-owned utilities willing to take the technology risk…. Investments to commercialization, continued international cooperation, government support, and multi-years’ worth of effort are needed, but by many indications, Gen IV reactors will be the next nuclear renaissance. [italics added]

Let’s not rely on marketing hype for our future: the tech may never arrive and, if it does, it may not be as good as hoped.

Thorium could be good, but I can’t find any significant present day research on this issue, and it failed in the 1980s in Germany. So we are looking at at least 15–20 years research before anyone starts building, and it may have significant problems anyway.

As far as I can see (which could easily be wrong as things change a lot here), few reputable private companies seem to be building nuclear energy reactors, and few politicians (no matter how much they mumble about nuclear energy being the solution) are keen to have them built in their own electorates.

The reality is that I don’t see any serious agitation for nukes from anyone, including from the political right, other than from nuclear power companies, although quickly forgotten suggestions are reasonably common, as is blaming the left for the lack of nuclear power. I also do not see any decent finished innovations in the field and we still face the possibility that reactors are no longer economic. On top of this, we still have not really solved the waste and insurance problems.

If there was any serious agitation, or interest, given that we live in a plutocracy in which corporations own the political system and the news system, then nuclear energy would probably be happening.

It seems that the establishment is still more interested in subsidising fossil fuels and eco-destruction, than they are in nuclear energy, for whatever reason.

So whatever the regulations are, that might obstruct nuclear energy, they do not seem to be the sole problem. And when things are dangerous, you might hope there would be some regulation, otherwise we just repeat the destroy the environment and poison the people, for profit thing, which is the main cause of our problems.

If all this is correct, then nuclear energy seems a displacement fantasy and a political pretense, rather than a valid solution.

When it comes down to it, I would rather support Renewable transitions which are happening anyway (however hindered by governments), than push hard to get something going which might not happen and probably would be a waste of tax-payers’ money.

Tags:neoliberalism, nuclear energy, technology
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Sacrificing Jobs to fight Climate change

December 26, 2019

People who want to do nothing about climate change, often ask how many jobs leftists are prepared to sacrificed to fight climate change. They are presumably trying to imply that fighting climate change will produce even more unemployment and misery amongst working people.

A true and accurate answer is difficult, as it is hard to predict the results of actions in a complex system. However, we can guess that the loss of jobs fighting climate change, is likely to be considerably less than neoliberals worried about during the great neoliberal revolution, or the birth of the computer age, or whatever.

This is because most lefists talk about something called ‘just transition’, in which displaced people like coal miners are helped to find new work, or set up new businesses, and are not left in poverty or whatever, as usually happens when the coal company moves out because they have dug up the coal and destroyed the fields and want to move somewhere more profitable.

People on the left also suspect there may be more jobs in renewables than in fossil fuels, particularly during the layout period, and especially if fossil fuels are brought in from overseas, or if automation continues to increase in mining. So far installing rooftop solar requires people and care, and I don’t see that being ended soon.

It would be nice to see people on the right worried about jobs lost through automation in mining, or automation in offices, through the expansion of decision making programs, or even through their anti-renewable legislation and activities. It might be nice to see them worry about money lost to the workers because people find it hard to negotiate good wages without unions. The proportion of GDP going to the population in general is declining, but that is apparently not a problem.

We might also wonder, how many lives are rightists prepared to sacrifice to preserve fossil fuel company profits? How much displacement of people from their homes will they tolerate through changes in environment or produced by mining? How many deaths would they like through pollution, and poisoning?

It is hard to predict how many people will die from climate change, but it won’t be none, and almost certainly will not be trivial, assuming that you don’t mind some people dying to preserve profits.

Not doing anything, is surely going to create massive misery amongst ordinary people, and may even destroy the economy that we rely on. So, while it is probable that if we do try and solve the problem we won’t develop any worse paid, and more precarious, jobs than most people have now, it is highly probable that people will be much worse off if we do nothing.

Doing nothing is a greater danger than doing something.

The weird thing is that most leftists have some faith in the capacity of capitalism to thrive through creative destruction, and in its ability to adapt to new circumstances, while most rightists just seem to want to preserve established profits, or have massive fear of change…. In general, people on the right don’t even propose solutions to the problem, just hope that it is not real or that it won’t be that bad, and we can keep on destroying things forever to make our money. Sad news, but the Earth is finite, and we are sure not ready to get into the space business yet.

Tags:climate change, neoliberalism, politics
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A Second Jeremiad on Neoliberalism and Climate Change

December 17, 2019

As a reminder: Neoliberals are those people who consider the capitalist market the most important thing in life, with the implied consequences that markets always produce the optimum results, wealthy capitalists are obviously the best rulers and the State exists primarily to make and enforce the laws that allow established capitalists to operate profitably.

Neoliberalism corrupts culture, because culture is seen in terms of profit and power, and hence as produced through the falsehoods, advertising, hype, and PR which support profit and power. Only what is profitable and what contributes to plutocracy is valuable and good. Because Climate Change challenges some sources of power and profit, it becomes an unsolvable cultural and social problem, to be ignored, avoided or hidden for as long as possible.

Neoliberal politicians have no place for deep thinking, or hard virtue in facing reality, only thee word slogans, obfuscation and the promotion of established businesses. National pride is used to build racism, and loyalty to the corporate project. Economic theory is used to justify poisoning people and polluting environments, because any regulation of big business is foolishness and anathema. Culture wars are used to entrench their ‘common sense’, and to show that thinking will be excoriated and punished – doubly useful because if scientists or other experts say that neoliberal policies are rubbish and achieve the opposite of what they claim, then they are to be dismissed as part of the culture wars. The objections of others to their fantasies, are branded as politically evil, not attempts at trying to deal with reality, and people on the right know they face punishment should they turn. There is no need for neoliberals to listen to the opposition. Liberty of big business is to be preserved over your ‘accidentally’ dead bodies, and stultified minds.

Neoliberal inability is best demonstrated by climate change and ecological destruction. Rather than face up to the growing problems, to the growing knowledge we have about these problems or even to public demand, they run away.

They are faced with the problem that powerful and wealthy companies make massive profits out of selling fuels which are poisonous, through mining which is ecologically destructive, and through emissions which disrupt the global climate system. As profitable, it is taken for granted that these fuels are good. Challenging those fuels being burnt is evil, because it would threaten profit, or threaten the expansion of “free markets” and corporate domination elsewhere in the world.

There is nothing else to think, or which can be allowed to be thought.

So the problem is politicised. We get neoliberals claiming that climate change is a socialist plot – because people on the left see the potential desctruction of Western civilisation as a problem. We are told that it means the end of capitalism, when it probably means that some businesses have to change their ways of gaining profit, and adapt to reality. We are told that because the left has proposed solutions, the right is justifiably reluctant to propose its own solutions.

Neoliberals both cannot, and have not, proposed any solutions. They have managed to make this lack of thought and action part of their culture, because their culture is not geared to reality, but to maintaining existing profit and power. Neoliberal theory appears to have no way of beginning to think about this problem, other than hoping the market will solve it in time, and bear the cost of developing extensive new technology, even while they continue to pour subsidies into the fossil fuel industry to corrupt the market. This is the simple truth of the matter.

Hence in Australia, the East Coast is burning because of extended drought and high temperature. Sydney’s particulate pollution exceeds the recognized hazardous levels by a factor of 11. The neoliberals made the fires worse by ignoring warnings, cutting back on experienced fire fighting crew, refusing to plan for extended conflagrations, and refusing (and still refusing) to talk with fire chiefs. The Prime Minister refuses to go to the fire fronts, and instead apparently goes on holiday, to a place with breathable air (its secret you see).

[If you are Australian, you know that all previous prime ministers, including the neoliberals, would have been seen at the front, and would have emergency consultations, because it was their duty, even if they did nothing as a result. Now we have a marketing man in charge, and there is no duty. It is a sad day indeed, when one feels nostalgia for Tony Abbott.]

They are full of blame and displacement. The situation has nothing to do with them. They can take no responsibility, perhaps because they model their favoured form of social organization, the corporation, which is designed to avoid personal responsibilities and be potentially immortal.

Neoliberals misdirect as a matter of course. They claim it was the hostility of the greens to preventative burning that caused the fires, when that is not a Greens’ policy, Greens have marginal influence on government action, and in NSW the fire service exceeded government targets for preventative burning in a shorter period of time than expected (because the suitable periods of time are shrinking due to climate change). It was the fault of criminal people lighting fires, but this always happens, it just so happened that the drought and climate change made the consequences of fire-lighting worse. This is not exactly unpredictable. They say we always have fires in Australia. This is true, but these seem to be worse than we have ever had; instead of Black Friday, or Black Saturday, we have Black November and December, and the days of real heat and wind are still to come. Some of them still say climate change is not real, that all climate scientists are deluded – anything but think neoliberals might be the ones with a problem.

We have a country which is imperiled by drought. The drought is the worse I have seen. Even in the areas around Berrima, which are nearly always green the fields are dry and brown. However, in these drought regions some mining companies have unlimited access to water, or expect to be able to continue to take water from farmers and country towns, because they are big business and that is how it works. This is apparently not a problem for neoliberals.

Ecological destruction is not a problem for neoliberals; indeed sometimes it seems a triumph, as if they are transcending reality in their fantasy, and giving mortality and threat the boot, by producing this destruction.

Is this because they think enough wealth (the marker of proficiency and virtue) will save them? And if the rest of the people suffer, then, that is not a problem, as those people have shown they are not virtuous by not being rich enough to survive? Ordinary people are just labour-fodder to them?

Neoliberals seem paralysed by reality, because it goes against their culture of hoping that the market and big business can solve every real problem there is. They live in a world of delusion, of positive thinking, of PR, Hype, and advertising; in other words they live in a culture of lies.

Tags:climate change, neoliberalism, politics
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Introduction to Neoliberalism, Plutocracy and Liberty Posts

December 17, 2019

This series of posts investigates some of, what for most supporters of neoliberalism, are its unintended consequences. I am, however, not entirely sure that these unintended consequences were not predictable and were not intended by the power elites.

In particular, this series of posts focus on neoliberalism’s effects on liberty. Neoliberalism has been sold as increasing liberty and destroying the interfering State, but I argue that this is dubious at best, and that neoliberalism promotes the liberty of the power elites through capitalist plutocracy and declining liberty for everyone else.

The arguement proceeds by:

1) Discussing liberty and types of liberty. This is all very basic, but necessary to begin with. The suggestion is that changes which increase the liberty of the power elite and business, will not necessarily enable the liberty of other people. Liberty may need to be enabled to exist, rather than simply come into being through lack of restrictions on the ruling class. Furthermore, some argue that liberty involves self-knowledge and self-control, and that this is hard to gain in capitalism which encourages indulgence and false information, as a normal part of its operation.

2) We then look at Neoliberal ideas of liberty, and the reduction of liberty to action in a free market. The market allocates more freedom to those who are wealthy, and less to those who are not, and therefore boosts the opportunity for rule by wealth, or plutocracy. Capitalist markets make people dependent on jobs and obedience, turn liberty into consumption, and put extraction of profit before everything. Making the market both primary and good suggests that profit should be the main indicator of value, makes the interests of big business overrule all others, and strongly implies that people who demonstrate competence in the market are superior and should rule, which further encourages plutocracy.

3) Neoliberals demand a small weak state but they usually neglect to tell people that they mean a State which is weak at helping ordinary citizens, but strong in defending the power of wealth. They pretend that the State is the only form of oppression, but the weaker the State, the easier it is for big business to have disproportionate influence, and the more oppressed other people can become. Wealth enables plutocrats to buy and control all other sources of power from violence to information.

4) After setting out the problems and apparent dynamics of neoliberalism, I then discuss some suggestions for remedying the problems, including the Convention of the States process, and the people’s recapture of the State to break corporate power.

5) Finally there is a note on social mobility. I describe some of the problems with assuming that social mobility is a solution to plutocracy. Social mobility does not have to threaten plutocracy, if it does not threaten the modes of plutocracratic power – it might just change the personnel, at best, and it might not even do that, because the control of wealth is concentrated in so few hands.

Some Definitions:

Neoliberalism is a movement largely sponsored by the corporate sector through its funded think tanks (from the Mont Pelerin Society to the Cato Instute and IPA), media organisations (like the Murdoch Empire, but nearly all media is corporately owned, and sponsored, and neoliberal in orientation) and university chairs. The team-up between business and academics, just happens to consolidate corporate power and dominance. Neoliberalism involves a lot of talk of “free markets” but in practice involves the cutback of the participatory State that is mildly helpful to everyone, and the promotion of State protection for, and subsidisation of, the established corporate sector. It may actively promote the harm of ordinary people in order to reinforce the power and liberty of wealth.

In other words, neoliberalism seems to aim at making the State a tool of the wealthy ruling class. Those who promote the idea that the State is the sole problem, and the free market the sole solution, seem to act as unwitting supporters of this corporate take over of the State.

In practice, whatever they say to the contrary, neoliberals make profit the only good. If liberty conflicts with profit, then profit will win out. The short truth appears to be that neoliberalism has everything to do with maintaining established power and profit, and nothing to do with liberty or solving real problems.

In general, neoliberal, or other pro-capitalist politicians and theorists, do seem to find it easier to work with self proclaimed authoritarian fascists or religious fundamentalists than they do with democratic socialists, or people opposed to tyranny or oppression. The History of US foreign policy , and business support for Hitler, should pretty much demonstrate that. The tendency of capitalists to try and capture the State to suppress protest against their rule through hardening laws against protest (as is happening in Australia to stop climate change protest) also gives them that affinity. Arms manufacturers support military action, and massive unaccountable military spending, and this activity implies military action or threat of such action. Some argue that the US has engaged in quite a few wars to protect corporate oil supplies and property, not only to project the power of the plutocratic state.

Neoliberalism is often sold as conservatism but, as I have argued previously [1], [2], [3], it is not conservative at all, it aims at a radical transformation of society, and the destruction of all tradition that considers life and virtue is about anything other than profit.

Plutocracy is defined as as rule by wealth, and the direction of all policy to support the wealthy (or wealthy families) and increase their power and wealth, and to suppress, deliberately or otherwise, any other variety of power or counter-power.

Rather than being an accidental feature of capitalism, I would suggest that crony capitalism, attempts at State capture and the imposition of plutocracy are an inevitable feature of that system. I know of no capitalism which is: not full of cronyism and collaboration; does not involve attempts at state capture and buying politicians; setting inheritance rules so that families (like the Bush’s and the Trumps) retain their power for as long as possible; and implementing market regulations that favour their established patterns of behaviour while preventing others from rising to challenge them. This arises because humans “team-up” for the benefit of their identity groups. Neoliberalism encourages team-ups in business, and in the politicians that speak for it, but not elsewhere.

Final Remark

I apologise in advance for the length of these posts and the absence of much empirical documentation. The lack of documentation is excused because it would make these posts about the length of a book. Besides, some highly influential forms of neoliberal economics don’t even give a nod to empiricism in their formulations either, and at least I’m not attempting a general theory of human action.

Next: Casual Remarks on Liberty

Tags:Disinformation, neoliberalism, politics
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A Note on Social Mobility and Neoliberal Plutocracy

December 15, 2019

The Argument

It is a common argument that social mobility, if present, could undermine plutocracy, or any other form of domination. However, social mobility is quite complicated, and that it ‘can‘ undermine some forms of domination, does not mean it always will, or that it can undermine plutocracy in other than rare circumstances; perhaps of the collapse of that plutocracy (say through, ecological change driven by the plutocracy, which is unable to find a way around the problem without facing the possibility of its decline).

By suggesting research questions in this topic, I am not trying to imply that other people have not done the research, simply trying to get a beginning perspective on what we would need to investigate an important issue and come to a conclusion. Other people might well do a better job.

There are at least four patterns of social mobility.

a) The regular rise of fortunate and talented individuals from the apparent bottom to the visible top. Modern, post world war II, US examples might inclcude Bill Clinton, or George Soros.
b) The regular rise of groups from bottom to visible top. This is usually confined to particular skills and celebrity rather than to power. Modern, post WWII US examples, might include black sports-people, rap stars, or white rock/pop stars. This can pretty much leave the power structures unchanged. To make this clear, we may need to rigorously distinguish between a cultural elite and a power elite, as they are not necessarily the same.
c) The abililty of people to rise from the bottom into the realms of real and largely invisible power, to what is in contemporary plutocracy often called the “0.1%” (even though one in a thousand is still a gross magnification of their numbers). As this mode of life is heavily protected, and does not allow much research, this ability to move is hard to measure. Having an income in the top 5% or even 1% may not cut it when there are truly massive imbalances in wealth and power. In contemporary society it is possible to have an income well beyond the dreams of ordinary people, and still not be in the wealth and power elites.
d) When the groups forming the elite change and bring new ideas, and abilities to face the problems of society in general. This is what I have called the Toynbee cycle, and usually involves a change in social organisation, technological organisation, or a revolution provoked by the collapse of established social functioning. This kind of dynamics implies that the more that society remains neoliberal in orientation, the less chance there is of this change occuring without collapse.

Merged into this there is what we might call:

a) The amount of general mobility. How common is it for people and groups to ascend or descend?
b) The degree of mobility. The levels of change (ascent and descent) which can be experienced by people and groups.
c) The ways that mobility is socially allocated. Is it commoner in some parts of the hierarchy than others? Do those near the top find it easier to ascend, or those near the bottom? Are people in the lower groups finding life more precarious, or less free, with less opportunities over time?
d) Is the difference in peoples’ placement in the hierarchy becoming greater or lesser over time? For instance are the people at the top getting relatively more and more wealthy than those at the bottom, or less and less wealthy with respect to those at the bottom who are ‘catching up’?
e) Is the hierarchy intensifying and being reinforced over time, irrespective of the degree and amount of mobility?

Mobility: Normality or Change?

Mobility can either: a) undermine; b) not effect, or; c) reinforce the social hierarchy and/or its patterns, standard ideas, ‘class interests’ and drives.

All societies have some degree of social mobility, even caste and feudal societies, especially at the middle and lower levels of the hierarchy. So the existence of social mobility, in itself, is not necessarily a threat to organisations of power or the team-ups of established wealth. But it could be. We need to find the circumstances in which it does make a challenge.

The patterns of hierarchy can be preserved in many ways, despite mobility. People can move up the hierarchies and then work, or team up and work, to prevent other people rising in similar ways, so there is less threat to them and others in their position from those currently ‘beneath’ them (mobility upwards, implies the possibility of their mobility downwards). People can change their interests, culture etc, to match that already accepted in their new milieu to hide their comparatively ‘common’ beginings. They can sever contacts and loyalties with previous people they knew for the same reasons. They can even attempt to outdo the more established people in their application of existing elite conventions and culture, intensifying the pathologies of the ruling groups. On the other hand, while their rise can appear dramatic, socially mobile people may never penetrate the upper hierarchies which remain largely unchanged, and whose favour they may have to court, if they know its importance, or ever get to meet them.

I’d propose, and its a comparative research project, that the more unified the basis of power the more this preservation happens, because people need to get on in their new class, build new relationships and pass social tests to maintain their new position.

However, when there are varieties of power there can be change. For example, in post Tudor UK you had the intermarriage and combining of the mercantile and aristocratic classes, and royal promotion (later State promotion) of talented outsiders, which changed all classes to a degree, but eventually the power of wealth won out over the power of land ownership, because land could only be owned with wealth – the traditional aristocracy and its values declined.

If social power is based in a single primary factor (such as wealth), then it is probable that the highest families will grossly outweigh the next levels in society, and seek to confine influence to themselves, and confine the sources of power to themselves. If the basis of power is wealth then, if they hire good advisors, they do not even need to know much about the sources of power (land, energy, business, communication media, technological structures etc) they own or control, they just use wealth to accumulate more wealth and more power. Even if they loose half their fortune through bad decisions, they may still control more wealth and property than 99% of the people, and they have connections to help them through ‘hard’ times, by not only giving them new projects, but changing market legislation to give them subsidies or a boost.

Even with high social mobility, if the conventions and interests of the rising factions are the same as the established factions, nothing alters. Communism remains communism, aristocracy remains aristocracy, theocracy remains theocracy, plutocracy remains plutocracy. The systems may even become more intense, as the newcomers demonstrate their firm adherence to the old principles.

Post World War II mobility in the West

After World War II up until the 80s, State provided education was a major path enabling social mobility – people could move from manual labour into admininstrative, scientific, technical, educational and business jobs without necessarily belonging to the old boys network. They still largely depended on jobs, with all the submission that meant, but they were much freer and more prosperous than previously. The UK and US working class Renaissance and political ferment of the late 50s, 60s and early 70s seems to have largely grown out of this availability of education and the resultant weakening of the old class barriers.

This mobility seems to have been seen as a massive threat to, and disrution of, the established capitalist/military arrangement of power and privilege, and had to be stopped. Hence the promotion of the neoliberal counter-revolution and the death of the generally participatory and enabling State. The rising working class may have formed a new cultural or even bureaucratic elite, but they were only precariously a power elite.

The education path now seems to have run out. Graduates no longer automatically get high paid work without class based connections. Money has poured into the Elite schools again, so that members of the elite can keep the educational advantage, and build connections to keep them in employment and power – and the fees have usually risen in an attempt to keep lower-class people without contacts out.

But these patterns of change need empirical investigation.

The research project needed

The big research questions here are:

1) Has social mobility increased or decreased after the 80s in capitalist societies? One theory is that social mobility should increase along with talk of “free markets”, and one is that it should decrease. Personally I would expect that it would either stay much the same or decrease. Certainly what I have read suggests general mobility, and degree of mobility has declined after 1980 in comparison to the post WWII period.

2) What are good rates of social mobility, and what are normal, or poor rates of social mobility? Without this kind of knowledge people can claim their society has a high rate of social mobility when comparitivly it does not. What ‘everyone’ thinks mobility is like, is often different from the reality, especially when it is a selling point used to justify hierarchies and make them seem good.

2a) In relatively egalitarian societies social mobility may not be particularly marked, as the difference between high and low is not that great. Nevertheless, influential people may change and influence not remain stable within groups of families.

It may only be needful for justifiers of the hierarchy to talk of social mobility when people are actively excluded from power, and while power and wealth supposedly express a meritocracy.

3) Are people’s chidren more or less likely to shift upwards, and to what extent?

4) What is the social mobility which is relevant? Mobility downwards and mobility upwards. Is moving upwards within in a quintile social mobility, or moving between quintiles, or are we talking about the likelihood of moving up into the stratospheric wealth realms of the “0.1%” from the middle quintile? If for instance the 01.% remain relatively stable over generations, coming from a specific set of families and they keep acccumulating most of the wealth, can we say there is effective social mobility, even if there is a reasonable rate of crossing from one quintile into a higher one?

There may be little to no circulation of power elites, even if there is circulaton elsewhere in society. People may rise from poverty to hip-hop stardom without vaguely challenging the plutocracy, or even through celebrating signs of wealth as signs of success and virtue. Again what we are measuring needs to be clear.

5) To what extent does social mobiity affect power and the treatment of those who rise? The most visible socially mobile figures of power in the US have been the Clintons and the Obamas and they faced massive attacks, resistance and portrayls of their power and wealth as illegitimate, suggesting the ease of cultivating a succesful political hostility towards social mobility when it crosses established powers of wealth. Whereas the Bushs and Trump seem face relatively little hostility because of their born privilege. Indeed one can be frequently be told that Trump’s wealth is a mark of his intelligence and aptitude, whether it was inherited or not, while the wealth the Clintons earned is evidence of their corruption and evil.

6) Does social mobility, in a particular country or social system, reinforce, challenge, undermine or not affect the patterns of power? And over how long a history are we looking at?

7) Do the ideas and techniques used to rule remain similar, or change radically? Do the “social and cultural patterns of society” stay similar or alter?

To reiterate, whether or not social mobility can undermine plutocracy is a complicated question, and may need considerable research. However, it would seem a priori unlikely.

Tags:neoliberalism, politics, Social change
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Neoliberal liberty and the small State

December 9, 2019

Continued from Neoliberal Liberty and the market

Most human societies have not required States, and according to James Scott that includes some early, fairly large scale, settled agricultural societies. Many of these non-state based socieites seem to actively resist those processes that lead to State formation, such as: a) accumulation of wealth by kinship or position; b) the monopoly of approved violence, or; c) the monopoly of religious positions. Fighting the accumulation of wealth to prevent the State forming, is vitally important as the wealthy can, as I’ve said previously, often buy other forms of power, such as being able to afford military specialists over many generations.

This point about resistance to power is important; these stateless societies are not the kinds of societies praised by neoliberals. They are not capitalist societies. In particular they are not corporate capitalist societies. And, they are not necessarily societies in which everyone is free. Old people often rule over younger people, men over women etc.

However, in all these societies (as is normal), people co-operate, or team-up to expand their, and others, capabilities and survival chances, and (in this case) to prevent the formation of a State, or power elite, or wealth elite.

‘Teaming up’ will always occur. To some extent, corporations and states arise out of this natural trait and, as a result, have many institutional similarities and weaknesses. Humans are both competitive and collaborative creatures, and a society which does not realise this active ‘contradiction’ will probably be suppressive in some way or another. The point is that organisation, and disorganisation, do not necessarily require a State. States may come about when the activities which prevent them from forming are suspended.

My supposition, based on the behaviour of historical States, is that the main need for States arises to protect people from other States, or other large scale organisations. Once military states are established they tend to spread to gain resources to feed their soldiers and support the expansion. Similarly, corporations tend to spread to gain resources, and again historically have used violence to do so if people are not interested in providing resources, buying corporate products, or selling their own labour. As implied elsewhere, crony capitalism and the take-over or an existing State, or generation of a new State, are normal parts of capitalism. Capitalism does not exist without States, so capitalists are never going to completely break up the States they own, so they can keep the laws and threats which enable them to operate.

However, States and corporations are not monolithic bodies but sites of conflict, with competing departments, friction inside deparments, conflicting policies, different linkages to insitutions outside the themselves, different problems of survival, and so on. This factionalism may help liberty, if it stops one faction from exerting complete control. Again, the more the sources of power are kept separate, and wealth is controlled, the greater the chance that one source of power will not dominate.

Neoliberalism and the State

Neoliberalism promotes the idea that the weaker the state the more liberty we get.

There are clearly limits to this after a State has been established. A collapsed state is a weak state, and unlike real stateless societies, the collapsed state tends to involve continual violence. In this situation there may be little constructive liberty. People are reduced to attack and defense, and organisation for attack and defense. Survivial compulsion is dominant over every form of liberty.

The idea of the weak state is a driving idea in communism as well as in neoliberalism. The State is supposed wither away after the revolution. Of course the communist state doesn’t wither away because it is needed to impose order after the revolution and protect the revolution and is easily hijacked by ruthless people who appear dedicated to the revolution. The same seems true of the neoliberal State, it does not dissolve after the revolution, but reinforces the neoliberal takeover, attempts to put down opposition, and is easily hijacked by ruthless people.

I would tend to argue, unless contrary evidence is provided, that the evidence suggests that the neoliberal weak state, is strong when it comes to defending and ‘nannying’ the established corporate sector, while weak when it comes to defending or enabling ordinary people. For example, the neoliberal State would much rather protect established fossil fuel companies, than attempt to do anything about climate change, no matter how costly it is to the general population. In other words the neoliberal weak-State argument seems to be a deceptive rhetoric used to help support plutocracy – or government by the wealthy classes

This is largely a guess, based on observation of what has been happening over the last forty years of ‘small State’ and ‘free market’ talk (and forty years is long enough to assume that we have attained as much of the aims of the movement as is possible or likely). However, the point is that rather than assume a small state is necessarily responsive to voters/locals we have to look at how corporations interact with smaller States. This requires research, which is beyond the scope of this blog.

In neoliberal capitalism, do people get more or less control over their lives as a result of weakening the State? Getting more control over their lives seems unlikely unless the State is particularly bad.

Corporations vs the State

Corporations both need, and support the State, to support their ways of action and accumulation. However, they can easily dominate the State rather than be dominated, especially nowadays.

Modern corporations are motile. The have ‘span’, they have wealth. They may need an area of land, but they rarely need a particular area for ever. They use it for as long as it is profitable, and can move on. They can be multi-sited, officially based elsewhere to transfer revenues and profits out of the places they operate in.

On the other hand ‘States’ are place bound, they are in competition with other states, and they may have less money than corporations.

In this cirumstances there is a definate power imbalance.

Corporations can promise they will set up in the place with the lowest tax rates, lowest restrictions on pollution and so on, setting up a competition between weak States. The people of those States can be bombarded with pro-company propaganda (media disinformation) which does not specifically have to be untrue, but it can leave out harms, and exagerate benefits – just as Adani (with the help of its politicians and the Murdoch Empire) has exaggerated the numbers of jobs and revenue its mines will bring, and downplayed the likely danger to the water table, and other damages to the ecology. Poorer small states are more likely to agree, and thus earn less and become more able to poison their people, or ignore the massive degradation produced by corporate activity. Often if the area is poor, they may consider that the price of pollution is worth the jobs they might get.

They may find they never get those jobs of course, people may be flown in from elsewhere, due to local skill lacks, or the expected lack of imported labours’ ability to unify and challenge the disruption to local lives, their allocated work practices and wages given . The company may also not pay the wages fully and just move out if there is trouble – as stated previously they are motile with no lasting relations to place or the small State’s exercise of power. Or they can destroy the environment, take all the minerals etc. and leave waste and destruction behind. This kind of normal and passing behaviour, with no longer term investment, can produce short term booms which destroy local economies in the longer term, as seems to be recurrent with fracking.

Often small states do not know the consequences of some forms of development, say mining, and it can be difficult to challenge the corporation in courts to get resitution for the destruction. It might well have proven more economic and beneficial to support local companies, but they can have less influence as less wealthy.

Neoliberal Privatisation

A major part of the neoliberal weakening of the State is for the State to hand over common (tax payer owned) property to the private sector, or to contract out state services to the private sector. This is known as privatisation. Experience shows that this almost never delivers better, more liberty respecting services cheaper. It just means that more parts of life get handed over to the control of business, and that the power of business over the lives of people increases.

It has also increased the potential for corruption, and handing of public property to ‘friends’ at knock down prices, also costing government revenue, but giving free revenue to businesses.

Often public needs become controlled by non-local forces, and the State, and the popular voice, has little power to change things, without alienating these powerful forces. Thus when the State privatises water supplies, we gain situations in which rivers run dry because of large private storage, and towns die because they cannot afford the costs of the water (just as people may starve if they cannot grow their own food and cannot pay as much for food as people in some other market). Perhaps the wealthy keeping the water for their own profit or agriculture was the prime requirement of the privatisation. In one circumstance I heard of, the company who bought the water, turned the local reservoir land into housing estates, made a quick profit, and left the area with a water shortage.

Private jails are best served by rescidivism, and returning custom, rather than reform of criminals, and so on.

If you really believed business was more efficient than government, you would rent out poorly performing and unprofitable government ventures to private enterprise, to see if they could provide better services for less cost and make money out of this. However, neoliberals usually sell off, or give away, the profitable arms, or properties, of government, making sure the State debt increases, while allowing the new owners to deliver inferior services, sack staff and massively boost the incomes of their high-level executives. It’s a redistribution of property and income away from the people.

The Useful Function of the State

The State is a site of conflict, and political process. A participatory State has the capacity to include people in the politics of organising themselves and co-operating with others. Without a open State, such processes can only happen at a small scale, and large scale processes will be controlled by the dominant groups.

The theory of the small state also depends upon whether you think of liberty as absence of compulsion, or as being enabled and requiring people to be able to participate in governance with others. In reality the neoliberal state only opposes compulsion for the wealthy, and perhaps those who support them.

As we can see in Australia, the financial industry and building industries can committ massive crimes against its customers, but that is of little concern to the neoliberal State. Corporations are not compelled to be honest, while neoliberals are seeking to make sure that unions can be deregistered for failing to fill in forms absolutely correctly.

The neoliberal State, like the communist State, is in practice only vaguely participatory. It needs to reinforce the dominance to lower the chaos it generates, and lower possible action on behalf of ordinary peoples liberties. You elect representatives and then leave them alone to get on with whatever they choose to do, or choose to sell out to. The small State is to be controlled by the corporate class and their representatives alone, which is why popular participation is discouraged.

Conclusion

In a capitalist system, given that the corporate world remains strong, then it is even easier for them to take over a weakened state and set up stronger plutocracy and reduce liberty to that form of life which is compelled by the market that they largely manufacture the rules of. This may well be why the corporate sector encourages the theory of the small state as liberating. – although they always use the State the strengthen themselves and weaken others, by such acts as increased military spending, suppressing anti-capitalist protests, encouraging pollution, suppressing constraints on corporate power and profit, and making workers weaker by removing non-capitalist enabling support. This take over is relatively easy when they almost completely control the means of information.

Small states may be particularly vulnerable to strong corporate power, because the power differential is higher, and because of the absence of non-pro-corporate ideologies.

I suspect that, in our societies, you have to weaken the corporate sector to if you really want to weaken the State and allow liberty. You may also have to strengthen places of potential opposition against plutocracy.

Continues in: Recapitulations of Neoliberal Liberty and ways to remedy it.