Links for Friday, August 4
If you thought neoliberals were free market proponents, you'd be wrong. That's just their cover story.
Today’s theme is neoliberalism, the belief that it’s government’s job to make the world safe for the rich and their ambitions. The key insight is that neoliberals aren’t free-market types at all. They think government should play an active role in making the world exactly they way the rich that benefit would want. (See below for more.)
A simple example: Contrary to common belief, the U.S. does have an industrial policy. It’s to make its rich people richer at the expense of the citizens whose welfare it claims to promote. Thus the U.S. does nothing to prevent, and much to promote, the moving of American manufacturing abroad. The goal is to make people like Phil Knight, CEO of Nike, as rich as possible, while impoverishing all of the U.S. citizens he no longer needs to employ.
China’s industrial policy, in contrast, is to take full advantage of self-destructive U.S. industrial policies in order to bring its own billions of citizens to middle-class status.
It’s a perfect deal for the Chinese. They bribe a few rich Americans with millions, and the Americans transfer billions to China in exchange.
Neoliberal philosophy justifies all of this. No wonder rich people — and their enablers — love it so much.
Links
Here are six links for your reading pleasure, and a musical treat.
• Saudis DRAINED Arizona Water As Politicians Did Nothing (Breaking Points)
The Washington Post has more:
A Post investigation — based on government documents and interviews with public officials, ranchers in the valley, farmworkers, and townspeople who live near the alfalfa fields — found that Arizona’s lax regulatory environment and sophisticated lobbying by the Saudi-owned company allowed a scarce American resource to flow unchecked to a foreign corporation. To advance its interests before the state, Fondomonte hired an influential Republican lawyer as well as a former member of Congress. And it sought to win over its rural neighbors, providing a high school with donations that included Fondomonte-sponsored sports bags and face masks emblazoned with the company logo to protect students from covid.
Life in the world of global money. When only a few have it, everything is for sale, including scarce water in the United States. We’re as ripe for global picking as anyone.
File under “I drink your milkshake.”