A little PSA about the term "Neoliberalism".
This term can cause some confusion here in the US because here the term "liberal" has a different meaning in the US than it does in the rest of the world because of historical reasons, in the rest of the world "liberalism" means what we would call Libertarianism here in the US.
This is the result of different political histories in the US and Europe. Today American Liberalism and European Social Democracy are roughly equivalent, but they have very different ideological origins. European Social Democracy has its origins in "moderate" Marxist tendencies that moved to the center over time and eventually disconnected from it's Marxist roots. American Liberalism has it's origins in various mid-19th century ideological tendencies called "Left-Liberalism" that sought to curb the excesses of Capitalism while retaining an otherwise standard "classical liberal" framework (like support for free trade). The British philosopher John Stuart Mill is probably the most well known early left-liberal thinker.
= new reply since forum marked as read
March 20, 2015
Exclusive: Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and – from op-ed pages – he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia – and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.
This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks.
Prominent neocon intellectual Robert Kagan. (Photo credit: Mariusz Kubik, http://www.mariuszkubik.pl)
Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of War.
Continued:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/
And I know exactly what you stand for too.
Neoliberalism isn't Keynesian, but while it goes for a smaller state (meaning "less direct instructions and control"
it tries to have the state control the economy through manipulating supply, demand, money supply, that sort of thing.
As opposed to having some dweeb sit there and issue orders as to how many widgets to make, where the flube that is required to make them will be sourced from, and how much the flube will cost and what the widgets will be sold for. That kind of a state is huge, and I think most of us want a state smaller than that. If a C&C economy a few idiots can destroy millions; in a neolib economy or any that's got laissez-faire elements in it it's a lot harder--the few idiots bankrupt themselves and others move into the economic space that's left. Unless they're "too big to fail," but if companies are allowed to fail naturally they typically do so like the Ottoman Empire failed.
Keynesian economics is no more control and command, but also includes some of the same practices for economic manipulation. Just from the other side, mostly.
Some love the idea of a control and command economy mostly because they like either being in control and giving commands or like ritual humiliation of others. Even if it doesn't help them. (I've never gotten schadenfreude. Deriving joy from others' misfortune has a tradition in my family, one which, fortunately, I simply can't understand any more than I can give you the production specs for "flube". I try, and draw a complete _______________.) But they often like C&C because they simply don't trust others (and do trust government, at least when it's doing what they like) and don't recognize the huge downside and incredibly inefficiencies it produces. C&C is doomed to fail pretty much always. The exceptions are when an economy is being built out of nothing and large-scale production of a few simple products is necessary. Otherwise it's FUBARific.
