Friday, July 17, 2015

Neoliberalism - Everything you Wanted to Know (But Hoped Wasn't True)

Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste - How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Crisis

by Philip Mirowski

Neoliberalism.  It's what I've jokingly been calling "Free Market Fundamentalism".  I've only started reading it and, unfortunately, have to turn it back in today. 

I will say that the author's prose style is rather dense.  He obviously wasn't writing it for the average reader.

Neoliberals, recall, insist upon the thoroughgoing ignorance of everyone in the face of the all-knowing market.  Therefore, for them, accepting risk is not the find balancing of probabilities, the planning for foreseen exigencies and the exercise of prudential restraint; rather, it is wanton ecstasy: the utter subjugation of the self to the market by offering oneself up to powers greater than we can ever fully comprehend.  It is, quite literally, an irrational leap of faith, with the parallels to religious traditions intentional.
Guess I'll have to finish wading through this one sometime later.... 

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