The neo-liberal, desperation and determination

To Brian Easton on Pundit

Hi Brian,

Good to look at policy and results on the subject of inequality.   But also the larger cultural / historical context can enlighten and alter the discussion about it.

Globally, the neo-liberal imperative pushing back egalitarianism began to take a hold in the eighties after two decades of revelation about existential threats to civilisation, primarily under the heading of ecosphere desctruction (climate change) and nuclear weapons, which exposed the centruries long (or millenially long) exploitation approach to be unsustainable.

Some anthropologists (e.g. Jared Diamond) have suggested that societies past have reached such an existential crisis, sometimes choosing to change to survive while others have decided they’d rather hold on to their world view.  The neo-liberals I would suggest recognize that the challenge to their world view is planetary and has a feeling of finality about it this time.  Money being what it is to our exploitation culture, there is a thrust to accumulate greater and greater wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer entities (corporations, individuals) as a way of bringing the cutural history of their world view to a some sort of glorious conclusion, approaching a sort of economic sigularity if you will.