The Economic Apollo Program
 

Start here--read this: Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

So you know what you're clicking-on, it's George Monbiot in The Guardian. Not quite long form, but longish medium. Here's the subtitle: 'Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?'

Now, I'll quote his last paragraph:

Can we talk about what a new system could be?

1st, is a sustainable strategy achievable?

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Listening to Thom Hartman are we?

I too think understanding leoliberalism is critical to our understanding of the mess we're in. It is the economic manifestation of Randian Objectivism. It is "end stage capitalism". There's nothing left for Capitalism to devour but itself.

This cannot be stopped. The forces of neoliberalism are so powerful and so entrenched that nothing, short of a popular uprising on a global scale, will overturn the system. This will have to play itself out and it will not be pretty.

Before one replaces a system, one needs to have another system pretty much worked out in advance. Otherwise, anarchy and chaos reign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...6b1_story.html

In some, but not all, cases, the established system is so entrenched and the beneficiaries of the system so powerful that an orderly transition from the old system to the new isn't possible. As with the American Revolution, the old system became an insurmountable obstacle in the path to a new system. This leaves only two alternatives: either you wait for the old system to destroy itself, a process that took 200 years post revolution for the British empire, or you overthrow the system by any available means. Only then can you begin to put a new system in its place.

The Post article neglects to mention that out first go, the Articles of Confederation, was a bust and that we had to scrap it and start over in 1787. The Constitution, adopted 2 years later, was our second try and it failed to prevent the crisis our country faced 70 years later.

Yeh, it's worked out really well in the Mideast and Russia and it remains to be seen how the transition in the UK goes now that they've bought a pig in a poke.

What may be preferable isn't always possible.

See my late edit.

And Russia is still around 100 years later. China too.

'Destroying the old system' is not what got us to the moon.

Pol Pots revolution worked out poorly, and he did think he had a plan.

Question # 1 from Pio, was 'is a sustainable strategy achieveable?' The question assumes a sustainable strategy exists, and let's make that assumption for now. Let's say it's mainly a matter of getting investment in the right things. How can that be done?

The Apollo Program didn't require instituting an entirely new economic system. It existed within and was an integral part of the whole pre-neoliberal system. And look what has happened to NASA since Reagan. Your Apollo Program metaphor is inapt, not revolutionary enough for the current situation.

A bit overwrought, don't you think?

Personal investment or financial investment?

Pig in a poke/puss in a bag is not really applicable here. The people of England and Wales saw the depression of wages, their working class jobs advertised in Eastern Europe, the pressure on housing and the increase competition for scarce benefits brought on by very large influx of migrants coming from EU countries with lower standard of living and much lower levels of wages.

So they know things were going to get worse with Ukrainians and Turks around the corner and they wanted to have some say in the process.

Therefore the situation was not opaque, it was and is a clear and transparent one...no puss in a bag...no pig in a poke.