In pragmatic terms, what is wrong with neoliberalism?

2 degrees by the end of the century nigga, we aint gucci but we aint fucked either

>Shit won't hit the fan in my lifetime so it don't matter

That's largely due to the development of Asia, which does not work in the neoliberal framework.

>environmental degradation,
Right, because it was the communists who invented electric cars and declined energy per capita usage to below 1970s levels. And it was the liberal capitalists who deforested the largest forest area in the world and hunted whales to extinction to fulfill pointless quotas.

It doesn't work. Neoliberal experiements consistently produce bankrupt states and push the median income into the abyss.

Neoliberalism is the most rational ideology.

>Forcing free trade on the developing world and acting surprised when they don't develop
You know how I know that you've never met an actual Chinese or Indian person?

The hubris of being able to look at a map and a graph of 'poverty' and then decide that your ideology should be considered better than a religion.
>and it was made by boomer scum so you know you're getting fucked over

>Free trade
>China

The only successful countries that fell for the free trade Jew were the UK in the halcyon days and entrepot ports like Singapore. Free trade is what destroyed Latin America and keeps Africa from rising.

>mean instead of median
Useless chart, also useless in the sense that I have no context for how valuable that sum is in China or what kind of goods and services are available for purchase.

This.

>those dates
>freetradejew

>Argument about the role of free trade in economic development
>Dates where the nations in question industrialised

I don't see the problem.

Nothing. It has created the safest, most stable world ever. Literally unprecedented in human history.

People will reply calling me a cuck, but won't have actual arguments

"Free Trade" is simply Imperial protectionism. The British Empire was a protectionist trade bloc, USA was a protectionist trade bloc, and now the "International Community" uses the IMF/World Bank/etc. The EU is a protectionist trade bloc.

The objective of every nation is to protect their own markets while forcing open the markets of its competitors (see: Opium Wars). Where once this was achieved with tariffs, now this is achieved with regulation. China, the EU, and the USA have very low tariff barriers to entry, but enormous webs of regulatory barriers.

The Neoliberal imperialists force Africans countries to sell off their nationalised industries, redistribute land to the wealthy, and open their markets to American goods and FDI. Now, "foreign direct investment" includes government borrowing for consumption, American companies asset stripping industries, and unproductive huckstering. When the governments refuse they are simply ousted by CIA intervention.

Neoliberals are hypocrites, they argue that they're "champions of liberty and justice" and so on, but they are nothing more than useful idiots of a rapacious plutocracy.

Goalpost = moved.

Oh look. Modern liberalism crediting its backwards social theories for the progress achieved by technology. How unfamiliar.
It's the scientists and engineers who are actually responsible for those graphs. Not the philosophers you revere.
Why do you think slavery was abolished? Because humans saw the errors of their ways? Because we suddenly grew a conscience? Nonsense. It's humans, formerly the sole means of production, were supplanted by industry.
Every increase in prosperity has not been brought about by liberalism. It has occurred because technology enabled that prosperity to occur. The liberal-democratic system of governance is not beneficial, it is simply less parasitic than the alternatives proposed in the 1930's: fascism and communism.
Try to have an honest debate about nuclear energy, climate change, the utility of space exploration, or nature versus nurture. You can't. Rather than remaining the sole property of scientific inquiry, these have become hot button issues. Impartial studies seeking objective data do not get grants. When the popular vote determines policy, and anyone can manufacture consent whether retarded or not, the pursuits of science (the real driver and correlate of human comfort) sometimes get crushed. This is not as bad as the USSR's Lysenkoism, or the racial theories of the Nazi regime, but it still an impediment to scientific development with little to no bonus. "Mostly leaving science to its devices" is not "helping" it's just "not being a parasite all the time."
The singularity and post scarcity economy will clarify this error in the minds of all but the ideologues. When the human condition as we know it is erased and politics of class and resources cease to be relevant, not due to any political solutions, but technological ones, it will be much easier to see who was REALLY responsible for the betterment of mankind.

Like earlier lassiez-faire liberalism, it disembeds markets from social/cultural constraints, damaging community and nonfinancial motivations such as a sense of reciprocity, duty, etc and starts widespread intrusion of markets to the point where almost everything becomes commodified. People *hate* this, and a backlash develops to the erosion as people seek to reembed markets into society. In the 20th century, that came in the form of calls for socialism on the left and fascism on the right. In some countries whose leadership didn't have their heads buried in the sand that resulted in social democracy/Keynesian measures to quickly reembed liberalism before disaster struck, where unlucky we ended up with fascist death cults.

The danger of neoliberals is when they get a stranglehold on nominally left wing parties by forcing out the anti-neoliberals and thus leave the only major opposition on the far right, which typically wrongfully diagnoses the problem and scapegoats their way into fascism.

It considers liberal-capitalism as the final stage of man which will inevitably conquer the world. And if that is ever doubted we'll devote our $500 billion military budget to make some adjustments.

Engineers aren't scientists.

First define what you mean by neoliberalism.

It's just as silly to think scientific development occurs in a vacuum, like it has nothing to do with wealth, endowments to sciences, and the resources and infrastructure (and population) to pull off shit like the industrial revolution. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and that goes both ways (modern liberalism can't claim itself singularly responsible for those things, or pretend it's a sine qua non for development).

The pertinent question is whether or how those developments would have come about under another system, and there's no way to accurately answer it without being able to simulate centuries of human history, which makes the entire question of modern liberalism vs something else and development a huge waste of time for people like you and the guy you replied to who need to fit history into a mold that confirms their ideas.

>Where once this was achieved with tariffs, now this is achieved with regulation. China, the EU, and the USA have very low tariff barriers to entry, but enormous webs of regulatory barriers.
I never thought of it that way. I've gotten my food seized at US border that was cooked and preserved because danger that it had "diseases"

>we are all american
As an economic philosophy, neoliberalism emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s as they attempted to trace a so-called "third" or "middle" way between the conflicting philosophies of classical liberalism and socialist planning.

That's from the wiki.

That distinction was made at the very beginning of the post.
>It's the scientists AND engineers who are actually responsible for those graphs.
Scientists take precedence in the rest of the post because engineers depend on them to discern the workings of nature. Engineers exploit that knowledge and put it to use for mankind. But they can't do that without it first being discovered.

Neoliberalism is not some obscure doctrine, if you've somehow never heard of it I'm sure wikipedia has an article for you.

>The danger of neoliberals is when they get a stranglehold on nominally left wing parties by forcing out the anti-neoliberals
This is true of all ideologies, it's not like the Nazis tolerated other parties after they took over. Really the problem is oligarchy itself, any electoral system is going to be hijacked by the rich because their wealth gives them a greater say in the outcome than other citizens do, this exacerbates the problem of ideology because as power gets more and more concentrated into a tiny elite, so the parties need to stress ideological differences in order to attract swing voters, and in order to divert the public's attention from the real problem and instead waste their energy in identify politics and futile gestures.

Not fair
slanted
corruptible
unstable

There are several definitions of neoliberalism, same as libertarianism and liberalism. Neoliberalism can mean social market economy and it what it originally referred to.

Kids literally would ring the bell in my house to ask for food when they tried neoliberalism in my country, not joking.

It is not presently testable, you are correct.
But consider the following: the thing about knowledge is that the more you know, the more you can figure out. It's natural that we should see a sudden explosion in the growth of scientific progress around now. Liberal democracy just appeared at the right time to ride the wave of the knowledge explosion. That is the case I will make.
Provided that there is something to fund scientific inquiry, whether it is industry, an autocratic state like Singapore as opposed to liberal democracy, or charity, scientific progress can be expected to occur in the same order, with speed correlating strongly to population and financial resources. I maintain that there is no "impossible" problem of science or engineering which cannot really be solved if you throw enough money, time, and bright minds at it.
>The pertinent question is whether or how those developments would have come about under another system, and there's no way to accurately answer it without being able to simulate centuries of human history, which makes the entire question of modern liberalism vs something else and development a huge waste of time for people like you and the guy you replied to who need to fit history into a mold that confirms their ideas.
I will personally see to the construction of a simulation specifically for this purpose. The ethical ramifications are less important than verifying that I am, in fact, correct. It may be of no consequence by that point, but if I cared about things of no consequence, I wouldn't post on the internet.
I suspect that an autocratic state like some modern city states, which enjoy great prosperity with minimal political expression, could achieve results comparable or superior to liberal democracy if implemented on a mass scale.

Haha been there, after social democracy they had cellphones that didn't necessarily have plans on them but they could play games.

Deindustrialized the richer countries, and forced poorer countries either to specialize in the import of raw materials (which have lower aggregate value and thus reward low wages) or to forcefully depress wages to attract foreign industries. Financial fuckups ruin your life and it also promotes mass immigration with the purpose of lowering wages even further.

Not to mention the impact of it in family life. We are working longer hours every time, people are starting families later and in some cases not even doing it, and when they do they don't have time to take proper care of their kids. Any sense of objective reality is being crushed by the omnipotence of subjective feeling being promoted in mass media (see: the current trans-mania which claims you can be any "gender" by simply saying you are it) which separates people even further because we aren't even living in the same reality anymore.

Its main merit is that it isn't genociding anyone.

That's just the undeveloped world technologically catching up to the West, which is why these countries like China had GDP growth of 30-40% pa.

Those dudes in the 30s meant neo-liberalism as in a new/revised liberalism, not necessarily "less government interference in markets". The contemporary understanding of the word is the latter and often implies neoconservative attitudes and influences.

>the thing about knowledge is that the more you know, the more you can figure out
That's an oversimplifying heuristic, because..
>Provided that there is something to fund scientific inquiry
...scientific inquiry requires people who can go to a competent educational infrastructure which may or may not be stifled or biased by censorship, and its implementation into infrastructure or economic production requires material means, human capital, people who can oversee economic plans and manipulate the intricately complex structure of the economy to achieve desired goals given no free market.
So many things can go wrong or not completely right, because of AND in spite of the system and people in charge of governing, because people aren't chess pawns who can be set in motion to do a given task and accomplish it by sheer intent. The real world is too complex to have long term outcomes of development deterministically driven by any one factor, and yet almost every factor you can think of has an impact that is part of a cumulative effect. Unfortunately, the complicated soup of shit that is human society doesn't adhere to any single narrative, even if you or someone else wants it to.

Hence, the "provided that there is" list would have to be too long for you or me to really encompass in an imageboard discussion, and if anyone claims to have the exhaustive list of optimal conditions for development the only reasonable reaction is to be skeptical.

In short, under a neoliberal system, governments will intervene in the economy on behalf of the rich, but not on behalf of the poor.

Interventions suggested by academics, unions, citizens groups, and other relatively representative institutions will be rejected as impinging upon the free market, whereas interventions on behalf of businesses, billionaires, and corporate lobbies accelerate because muh market solutions.

"Muh free market" is simply an excuse to concentrate meaningful political power in the hands of political insiders, and justify it as a natural consequence of the market rather than thievery by the upper class.

>forced poorer countries either to specialize in the import of raw materials
The exporters of raw goods tend to be poorer than the importers of raw goods. Richer countries are still industrialized, it is just that the factories there produce more with less (but more skilled) workers. See Rhine capitalism and nordic model, for reference.

Low-skilled workers in the poorer countries get better jobs, even if these jobs are worse from our standpoint, since they earn more and voluntarily opt to do them instead of farming rice or mining diamonds or whatever they would otherwise do. This doesn't do good for wages in the richer countries, but the wages will go a longer way as the costs of manufacturing stay relatively low.

I think welfare programs for industrialized countries should focus on education and worker training.

It is not a coincidence the industrial revolution, and the spurt of scientific progress came at a time when liberalism was ascendant

The merchant, the scientist, and the libertine all embraced a similar set of principles, a faith in rationalism, in numbers, and that they could do their best if the government freed them to unleash their ideas and energies.

While they are quite distinct now, these ideas shared a similar root

that isn't a problem with neoliberalism so much as its a problem with governments, since they tend to side with the powerful interests under any system

I suppose I should like to add sufficiently advanced mathematics to that list.
I suspect a not insignificant reason that Rome did not successfully industrialize is because their system of mathematics was so limited compared to our modern system.
I would still contend that technology is foundational to all those efforts, and that science, as the means of discovering new technology, remains the keystone in the arch of human progress. Civilization cannot develop without agriculture. An economy of scale cannot occur without infrastructure. Regardless of whether society is conducive to scientific development, I think it is clear to see that its absence would be more damaging than the absence of any other societal factor.
However, it would be obviously intellectually dishonest of me to also contend specifics beyond that are neither debatable nor wishy-washy. It is true that there is plenty of good reason to be skeptical of my specific claims.
I am surprised you have bothered to reply to somebody who is clearly baiting by STEMposting in Veeky Forums. I didn't expect to be given the time of day. Then again, even if I have stated a mild parody of some of my beliefs, I do sincerely believe this more than I don't.
Semi-related: are you familiar with Mencius Moldbug, and his conclusions on the memetics of modern liberalism? I think he can be hit or miss, but I thought that part of his broader argument (that democracy is bad) was interesting. I'm most familiar with classical history, and have an introductory knowledge of medieval/modern history. He had enough to connect some dots that I didn't. I had noticed some superficial similarities between ideologies from different time periods, but I couldn't discern where and when transmission occurred. He charted that over the course of a few different essays.

If we go by the schema for definining neoliberalism as presented by Colin Hay, subscription to the mindset leads to politics that voefully lacks tools to engage in all the problems present in a public sphere, which in a democratic system starts a system of dysfunction as long as electorate votes for anti-neoliberal candidates.

Neoliberalism is explicitly about market solutions to social problems, this means the people who own and run the market are the ones who dictate what laws get passed.

The existence of a government-like entity is pretty essential for neoliberalism and capitalism in general. Doesn't matter what it's called.

You say that, ignoring that 20-35% of all western nations GDP is spent annually on providing welfare that largely benefits the few.

Under a neoliberal system, the powerful interests are almost exclusively corporate interests.

Under social democracy or social market economy, there are also powerful unions, regulatory entities, and citizens groups that can balance corporate power and give individual citizens a meaningful impact on policy.

Neoliberal economics naturally tends towards oligarchy as a result of its political economy.

I am curious. Before the enlightenment, how regularly did states go out of their way to obstruct scientific progress? I am not asking examples of when it happened, I'm just asking for ballpark guesstimate of how much time scientific development wasn't attacked by the state.
If this did not happen often, then I would attribute it much less to their philosophy of government and much more to the victory of the rationalist community.

>Neoliberal economics naturally tends towards oligarchy as a result of its political economy.
Capitalism naturally tends towards neoliberalism.

A dangerous economically unstable system that produces disastrous economic collapses. People starting looking at brutal alternatives like Nazism and Communism, depending on how deep the economic collapse is. The Great Depression is an example of this. If an economic collapse on the scale of the Great Depression ever happens again people will start electing actual Nazis and Commies.

Your mother naturally tends towards my dick

It's just a phase.
It will balance out.
Good to a certain point, before and after that point it is bad.

You have an incredibly reductionist understanding of human society by attributing all change to technology. It's putting the cart before the horse.

...

-Creates massive instability with increasing amounts of larger financial crises
-Transferred massive amounts of wealth to the wealthy from the lower classes and brings the problems that come with large income inequality
-Mass migration and social instability
-Empowers businesses who have no concern for social policy which undermines popular support of the democratic process
-Despite the great increases in technology people are having to work longer hours in more precarious employment conditions

Really the only thing it did well was beat the excesses of unionism and inflation.

obstruct isn't the word, in some cases they encouraged science, or what passed for science before the scientific method was formalized.

Though in an age when theology, magic, science, philosophy and even the occult were not really thought of as separate entities, people did and were careful about what they published.

But my point was you cant separate modern science from the history of ideas such as humanism and liberalism.

Why do we always have these threads and no one defines their terms? Chances are, when OP says "neoliberalism" he is probably thinking of something slightly different than many people in the thread. Why does this board not make it an unwritten rule to "define your terms" for most threads?

>-Transferred massive amounts of wealth to the wealthy from the lower classes and brings the problems that come with large income inequality

>people are having to work longer hours i
can u back this up with data

The 80's were sure a ride...

Same user.
Was it the tech-boom?

Fucking Reagan. Second worst thing that ever happened to America. Trump will be the first.

ITT: Economic illiterates who would lead us on the road to serfdom

Instability in general tends to make us go tribal fast. Just look at the race war that erupted in some areas during hurricane Katrina.

Apparently not in Western Europe.

>Calls others economical illiterates
>Takes seriously the Austrian School

>not sure if you're referring to laissez faire or socialists

Probably the revolution in Finance industry brought over by
> Deregulation of the industry which allowed natural pairs to form (Insurance/Investment/Banking)'
> Technological and theoretical innovations that benefit banks largely
> Relaxation in income taxation
> Increased capitalization of markets and sophistication of the consumer capitalism

It requires infinite growth on a finite plane, turning into a blood-soaked altar that devours more and more lives, to feed itself.

This spawns wars for resources, despite those resources already being abundant, coercive replacement and dispersal of populations, repression of democratic freedom, monopolies and mismanagement of public funds.

Thank you.
Ευχαριστώ.

>free trade os what destroyed Latin America
>the only Latin American country to actually implement free trade is the most successful
Based Chile and based Pinochet
t. Chilean

...

neoliberalism undermines the left wing's other stated goals. You can't have free trade and protect workers.you can't have mass immigration and protect workers.

capitalism that happens to be cool with gays, colored people, and welfare.

> from an economic materialist pov
centralizes power to international oligarchies instead of actual free trade
>from a social point of view
encourages globalism including consumerist culture and the destruction of traditional culture, encourages migration and degrades both countries in the process.

>Neoliberalism or neo-liberalism refers primarily to the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism. Such ideas include economic liberalization policies such as privatization, austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.

Only problem I see is the chaos created by the lack of regulation it promotes.

>Moldovan denialism

What's that?

t. moldovan

>providing welfare that largely benefits the few.

And they do so because they need a consumer base to buy their products.

MOSSACK! DISHA, DISHA.

Neoliberalism isn't even an ideology you utter faggot.

This is politics, get the fuck out.
Calling it 'ideology' doesn't make it not politics you vapid cunt.

That is not what neoliberalism is.
>Welfare
Where did you even get this?

Everything.

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"Poverty" and "Wages" are Capitalist definitions.

Circular statistical argument.

>Capitalism is good because Capitalism

Marxist criticism of capitalism is also circular.

Honestly, the world's fate was sealed the minute coal engines and the factory were invented.