Market Ideology
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What Is More Natural Than Markets?
Reflections on The Great Transformation, Chapter Three: "Habitation versus Improvement" Central to Polanyi's argument is that markets are not natural, that contrary to the assumptions of classical economists, to "truck and barter" is not something that has been a central element in human social activity for thousands of years. He argues that the market economy is
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Concentration of Power
Presents a greater danger to the public good than concentrations of wealth, but where there is concentration of wealth, concentration of power follows. Libertarians get upset with the idea of power concentrated in governments–and that can be a very serious problem–but the real problem in America has always been the way power concentrates in the
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The Contradictions of Market Conservatism
Tom Frank puts his finger on something here: The movement’s greatest idealists often turn out to be its greatest scoundrels—think of Jack Abramoff, or of Oliver North, or (as Rick Perlstein has pointed out) the gang of hard-right purists who signed up to do dirty tricks for Richard Nixon. In truth, there seems to be no
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Deneen on Polanyi
Deneen is one of a handful of cultural conservatives that understands that "liberalism" is first and foremost about how culture adapts to the market economy: Hobby Lobby—like every chain store of its kind—participates in an economy that is no longer “religious” or even “moral.” That is, it participates in an economy that arose based on
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Mike Konczal on the History of the Welfare State
My argument in my overly long piece posted over the weekend is similar to the one Konczal is making here in this important, informative essay in The Atlantic. His point is that the development of the welfare state during the Progressive and New Deal eras was organic–that it was not the work of social engineers, but
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Neoliberalism and Public Education 2
It's interesting to me that whenever I do a post on public education, the pageviews go down. My guess is that it seems like such a niche issue, and when people read me squawking about Charter Schools or the Common Core, they think that's my problem, but not theirs. But if anything I've been saying
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Neoliberalism and Public Education 1
I recently posted that the Democrats will be useless in supporting economic justice issues until being called a Neoliberal has the same stigma as being called a homophobe. Neoliberal ideology is just repackaged late 19th Century Social Darwinism, which is an ideological justification for social stratification that rewards winners and punishes losers, where the winners
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Socialism v. Neoliberalism
Corey Robin recently in a post entitled " Socialism: Converting Hysterical Misery into Ordinary Unhappiness for a Hundred Years" In the neoliberal utopia, all of us are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping track of each and every facet of our economic lives. That, in fact, is the openly declared goal: once
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Thoughtful Conservatives Hate . . .
"Individualism". Why? Because it creates a deracinated, anomic, atomized mass that looks to the State to solve its problems. Statism is the enemy, and individualism paves the road over which we will inevitably travel to get there. Here's Big Think's and PoMoCon's Peter Lawler on the subject: Modern individualism is the cause of modern statism.