Monday, 17 May 2010

Neo-Liberalism - Ron Paul - Alex Jones

On neo-liberalism:
Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) is probably the single most influential individual economist or political philosopher to shape what is now understood as neo-liberalism, although he is best regarded, and considered himself, as a classical liberal. Hayek's own theoretical direction sprang out of the so-called Austrian School established by Carl Menger, Eugen Boehm-Bawerk and Ludwig von Mises during first decade of the early twentieth century.
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It was during the decade of the 1980s that Hayek's political and economic philosophy was used by Thatcher and Reagan to legitimate the neo-liberal attack on 'big government' and the bureaucratic welfare state with a policy mix based on 'free' trade and the establishment of the ‘open’ economy: economic liberalisation or rationalisation characterised by the abolition of subsidies and tariffs, floating the exchange rate, the freeing up of controls on foreign investment; the restructuring of the state sector, including corporatisation and privatization of state trading departments and other assets, 'downsizing', 'contracting out', the attack on unions and abolition of wage bargaining in favour of employment contracts; and, finally, the dismantling of the welfare state through commercialization, 'contracting out', 'targeting' of services, and individual 'responsibilization' for health, welfare and education. On this view there is nothing distinctive or special about education or health; they are services and products like any other, to be traded in the marketplace.

These policies, sometimes referred to as 'the Washington Consensus', were designed to ‘restructure’ or adjust national economies to the dramatic changes to the world economy that have occurred in the last twenty years: the growing competition among nations for world markets; the emergence of world trading blocs and new ‘free trade’ agreements; an increasing globalisation of economic and cultural activities; the decline of the postwar Keynesian welfare state settlement in Western countries; the collapse of actually existing communism and the ‘opening up’ of the Eastern bloc, and; the accelerated world-wide adoption and development of the new information and communications technologies.
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The Main Elements of Neo-Liberalism

For neo-liberals the commitment to the free market involves two sets of claims: claims for the efficiency of the market as a superior allocative mechanism for the distribution of scarce public resources, and; claims for the market as a morally superior form of political economy. Neo-liberalism as a political philosophy involves a return to a primitive form of individualism: an individualism which is 'competitive', 'possessive' and construed often in terms of the doctrine of 'consumer sovereignty'. It involves an emphasis on freedom over equality where freedom is construed in negative terms and individualistic terms. Negative freedom is freedom from state interference which implies an acceptance of inequalities generated by the market. Neo-liberalism is both anti-state and anti-bureaucracy. Its attack on big government is made on the basis of both economic and ethical arguments.
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Here's Ron Paul on the Austrians/Neoliberals:
Policy makers would have been wise to heed the warnings of the Austrian economists, and must start listening to their teachings if they want solid progress in the future. If not, the necessary correction is going to take a very long time.

The Austrian free-market economists use common sense principles.

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Alex Jones' Prisonplanet supports Ron Paul.....yet Jones wrotes critically of neo-liberalism. eg:Prisonplanet writes of the Trilateral Commission that:
Many of its members are also Bilderbergers with the same mutual interests for the development of globalization, the so-called economics of 'neo-liberalism' including wholesale privatization of anything that moves, the new world order and corporate capitalist totalitarianism.
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More of Alex Jones' attacks on Ron Paul's neo-liberalism.

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