Free Mkteer neolib

=capt 118see FREE MKT NEO_LIB2 1/18 age of trumpsee also regulation and deregulationalso neo-conwow, neglected 4/16WHO 3%<h2 class="A" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Discussion</h2><p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">What motivates experts and non-experts alike to pursue a position on climate change contrary to scientific consensus? The role of conservative politics, conservative think tanks, and industry efforts that make up the CCCM is well documented; however, our findings reveal other similarities among contrarians worthy of consideration.<p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">In particular, the data reveal that most individuals in our data are aged sixty-five or older. This age group, at least in the United States, is also the most likely age group to disagree with the climate consensus; conversely, 80 per cent of expert Earth scientists who agree with the consensus on AGW are under the age of sixty-five (Pew Research Center <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref59" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">2015</a>). Although many individuals in our sample were non-experts, the experts were also aged 65 or older on average, with an average birth year of 1944. [1964 GOLDWATER, DIVISIONS ON VIET NAM ETC IE ORIG CTR-CULTURE] While we expect contrarian experts to hold views different from most of the scientific community, this age distinction suggests there may be other reasons that led these individuals to align with contrarian efforts. Individuals' experiences, for example, may impact their views of science and government. As a result, this may help explain why both experts and non-experts alike participate in a movement that hinders climate change mitigation efforts.<p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">
<p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">Behavioral research suggests that experiences during individuals' formative years (that is, teens and twenties) are the most important; collective memory association determines how individuals may apply past experiences to later behavior (Goffman <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref23" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Goffman1974</a>; Gongaware <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref24" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Gongaware2011</a>; Mannheim <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref39" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Mannheim and Kecskemeti1952</a> [1928]; Schuman and Scott <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref67" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Schuman and Scott1989</a>). In theory, the memories of contrarians aged sixty-five and older would, then, have been defined by events of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This period not only marked significant changes to the study of science, as well as the rise in scientific and technological advances, but also saw an increase in institutional deceit (Atkin and House <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Atkin and House1981</a>; Miller <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref49" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Miller1983</a>; Piller <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref62" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Piller1991</a>).<a class="xref fn" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#fn13" style="font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Footnote<sup class="sup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; position: relative; bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 0.75em !important;">13</a> Relative to events of this period, trust in government declined among the US public in the mid-1960s; trust in science  [WHY? A H BOMB? NAPALM?] also declined, particularly among conservatives, in the 1970s (Gauchat <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref22" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Gauchat2012</a>; Pew Research Center <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref61" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">2020</a>). Relative to contrarians in our data, these events happened during the time when most received their degrees.<p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">
<p class="p" style="font-variant: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">While one might assume that many contrarians in our sample would have higher trust in science because of their scientific degrees, prior research has found this not necessarily to be the case. Specifically, while higher education has a “positive” effect on the views of climate change for Democrats/liberals, educational attainment has a “<span class="italic" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-style: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">weaker or <span class="italic" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-style: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">negative” effect on the views of Republicans/conservatives (McCright and Dunlap <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref43" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference McCright and Dunlap2011a</a>, 175, emphasis in original). As a result, and considering the conservative nature of contrarian efforts, we believe this period may have led to unique views on government and science—specifically, government intervention into scientific matters. In other words, despite older contrarians' scientific knowledge and/or education, their subjective concern about government intervention in science may surpass objectivity regarding mainstream consensus, especially considering the pervasiveness of neoliberalism during this period.[TWO FREDS OZONE SST?]<p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">
<p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">Neoliberalism emerged as a driving force to oppose government oversight and regulation, largely related to backlash from Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies and subsequent expansion of the federal government. While tenets of neoliberalism (that is, a laissez-faire approach to the market with a heavy emphasis on deregulation and free trade) would become central to CCCM objectives, the ideology pervaded academic circles far earlier (McCright and Dunlap <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref43" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference McCright and Dunlap2011a</a>; Oreskes and Conway <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref56" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Oreskes and Conway2010</a>). In fact, while the ideology is most notably associated with the creation of the Chicago School of economics, it was not unique to just Chicago. Neoliberalism was transnational in nature, permeating into other academic and political circles with the help of several institutions established solely to push this ideology (Mirowski and Plehwe <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref50" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Mirowski and Plehwe2009</a>). As a result, by the 1950s, there was “an all-out assault on virtually every aspect of Keynesian economics” led, most notably, by Milton Friedman (Yergin and Stanislaw <a class="xref bibr" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#ref80" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Reference Yergin, Stanislaw, Yergin and Stanislaw1998</a>, para. 8). By the 1960s and 1970s, neoliberalism was a prominent theory within economics and other disciplines. As a result, much like collective memories pertinent to older contrarians' formative years, it is reasonable to believe that neoliberal ideology would have impacted contrarians' attitudes toward science and government prior to the emergence of the CCCM.<a class="xref fn" href="https://www-cambridge-org.oca.ucsc.edu/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/who-are-the-3-per-cent-the-connections-among-climate-change-contrarians/A4664E239F0774A37C20FE03689B34DD#fn14" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><span class="show-for-sr" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -1px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; width: 1px; position: absolute; white-space: nowrap;">Footnote<sup class="sup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; position: relative; bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 0.75em !important;">14</a><p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">
<p class="p" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: var(--vertical-spacing); margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; word-break: break-word; hyphens: manual;">...Perhaps one of the most interesting findings to come from this research is the cohesion among climate change contrarians when it comes to their age and the period in which their degrees were obtained. Although there are some individuals who are younger in age and/or were educated later, it is clear that a majority of contrarians are from a particular era. In addition, closer examination finds that distrust in both science and the government were growing at the same time that neoliberalism was gaining in prominence—not just as an economic theory, but because of a concerted effort to shape the political narrative regarding government involvement in the market. As a result, neoliberal thinking prevailed during most climate change contrarians' formative years. Among experts and non-experts alike, individuals who subscribed to tenets of neoliberalism during their formative years, we hypothesize, are now dedicated to efforts that push a laissez-faire approach. As a result, they may reject a mainstream consensus on issues like climate change even when most evidence points otherwise.=<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/neoliberalism-taking-steep-toll-entire-generations-mental-health-study">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/neoliberalism-taking-steep-toll-entire-generations-mental-health-study</a></div><div>
</div><div>Are you a millennial prone to self-criticism? Is your sense of worth inextricably bound to your professional standing and achievements? Do you suffer from acute social anxiety or are otherwise fearful of being judged by your peers?The source of your unhappiness may not be chemical or emotional but a product of our economic system. According to a <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/under-neoliberalism-you-can-be-your-own-tyrannical-boss" style="text-decoration-line: none;">study from Psychological Bulletin</a>, neoliberalism is producing generations of young people who are increasingly demanding, both of each other and themselves.So what is neoliberalism, anyway? Despite what the pundit class might have you believe, it's more than a <a href="https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/how-neoliberalism-became-the-lefts-favorite-insult.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">glib pejorative</a> for the policies of corporate Democrats and the GOP, although both parties have embraced a neoliberal model to varying degrees. <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/18/15992226/neoliberalism-chait-austerity-democratic-party-sanders-clinton" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Mike Konczal offers the following definition at Vox:</a><blockquote>"'Neoliberalism' encompasses market supremacy—or the extension of markets or market-like logic to more and more spheres of life. This, in turn, has a significant influence on our subjectivity: how we view ourselves, our society, and our roles in it. One insight here is that markets don’t occur naturally but are instead constructed through law and practices, and those practices can be extended into realms well beyond traditional markets."</blockquote>As <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/under-neoliberalism-you-can-be-your-own-tyrannical-boss" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Meagan Day points out in Jacobin</a>, meritocracy and neoliberalism often go hand in hand. If the whole of society can be reduced to a series of market transactions, then individuals become commodities in direct competition with one another."Since the mid-1970s, neoliberal political-economic regimes have systematically replaced things like public ownership and collective bargaining with deregulation and privatization, promoting the individual over the group in the very fabric of society," Day notes. "Meanwhile, meritocracy—the idea that social and professional status are the direct outcomes of individual intelligence, virtue, and hard work—convinces isolated individuals that failure to ascend is a sign of inherent worthlessness."Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill, the authors of the study, attribute these feelings of inadequacy to a rise in perfectionism across the culture. While perfectionism is generally understood as the rejection of anything that fails to meet one's own exacting standards, Curran and Hill assign the term distinct categories: self-oriented (holding unrealistic expectations of oneself), other-oriented (unrealistic expectations of others), and socially prescribed, the "most debilitating of the three dimensions." Day describes the latter as "the feeling of paranoia and anxiety engendered by the persistent—and not entirely unfounded—sensation that everyone is waiting for you to make a mistake so they can write you off forever."For those born in the United Kingdom, Canada and the U.S. after 1989, Curran and Hill observe a marked rise in each category, but especially in socially prescribed perfectionism, which has become twice as prevalent as it was a generation ago. This can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders and suicidal ideation, not to mention an increased dependence on social media."[Curran and Hill] cite data showing that young people today are less interested in engaging in group activities for fun, attending instead to individual endeavors that make them feel productive or fill them with a sense of achievement," Day continues. "When the world is demanding that you prove yourself worthy at every turn, and you can’t shake the suspicion that the respect of your peers is highly conditional, hanging out with friends can seem less compelling than staying in to meticulously curate your social media profiles."Ironically, social media itself tends to produce feelings of anxiety and alienation. A <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201710/is-facebook-making-you-depressed" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wealth</a> of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/04/08/new-study-links-facebook-to-depression-but-now-we-actually-understand-why/#69a8a7e01e6d" style="text-decoration-line: none;">research</a> has linked an overreliance on Facebook to depression, so the pressures of neoliberalism and the stresses of social media appear to work in concert with one another, if they're not one and the same. (What are these sites, after all, if not platforms for personal branding?) Either way, the results are deeply troubling."Even young people without diagnosable mental illnesses tend to feel bad more often, since heightened other-oriented perfectionism creates a group climate of hostility, suspicion, and dismissiveness—in which the jury is always out on everyone, pending group appraisal—and socially prescribed perfectionism involves an acute recognition of that alienation," Meagan Day adds ruefully. "In short, the repercussions of rising perfectionism range from emotionally painful to literally deadly."Until we can begin to imagine an alternative, the destructive cycle seems destined to repeat itself. <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/under-neoliberalism-you-can-be-your-own-tyrannical-boss" style="text-decoration-line: none;">H/T</a> Jacobin</div><div>
</div><div></div>=<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/one-word-guaranteed-make-corporate-pundit-class-squirm">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/one-word-guaranteed-make-corporate-pundit-class-squirm</a>Neoliberalism is not particularly hard to define. It’s not only an ideology or a set of principles; it’s a system of practices, and an era, the one we’re living in now. What it means, over and above everything, is untrammeled ruling-class power, an end to the class-collaborationism of the post-war years and a vicious assault of the rich against the poor. This is achieved through market mechanisms, fiscal austerity and the penetration of capitalist relations into every possible facet of human life. It doesn’t mean that the role of the state vanishes—an essential precondition for neoliberalism is the destruction of working-class power and collective bargaining, and this has to be achieved, often brutally, through laws and their enforcement. There isn't just "some role for market forces" either, but their invasion into every fathomable social situation....whole:Technocratic elites and their apologists once justified their social standing by claiming simply to know more about the things that matter than everybody else. Maybe it was even a better time. But now it's gone, and ignorance is power. <div class="the_body body_news-politics clearfix" style="line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A ruling class, dizzying itself with the simultaneous beliefs that most people are fundamentally stupid and don’t know what’s good for them, and that one can exert influence by appealing to the vague cultural markers ordinary people like, has decided to become vigorously, monumentally stupid. You can see this process play out whenever one of its leading journalists is forced to reckon with the word "neoliberalism."The same people who love to dream up strange and senseless new <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/opinion/web-people-vs-wall-people.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">conceptual systems</a>, who pore over the minor details of insurance law with a philatelist’s perverse giddiness, who think that "innovation" or "aspiration" are good and worthwhile concepts, will suddenly slacken their jaws and cross their eyes, and insist that one of the most studied and documented concepts in modern sociology simply has no meaning. Do you really expect ordinary people to know what you mean if you start talking about something as dry and academic as neoliberalism? Do you really think you could use it to "to strike up a conversation with some strangers in a bowling alley in Toledo"?That line belongs to New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who recently penned a <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/how-neoliberalism-became-the-lefts-favorite-insult.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">diatribe</a> titled "How ‘Neoliberalism’ Became the Left’s Favorite Insult of Liberals." He claims that "neoliberal" has become a term of abuse, by which socialists try to distinguish themselves from good moderate liberals. It’s a meaningless term, he claims, entirely useless "as an analytic tool." But by using this epithet, the left can pretend that the Democratic Party was once the home of a robust New Deal social democracy, but has been hijacked by right-leaning forces. Exactly how all this happened is never actually discussed. As a political columnist, Chait has his admirable qualities. His output is prodigious: on an average day, he’ll pump out around three articles for the magazine, which is certainly more Jonathan Chait than any reader could possibly handle. But this creates its own problems. He tends to repeat himself, as with a <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/reminder-liberalism-is-working-marxism-failed.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">series</a> of <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/oh-good-were-arguing-whether-marxism-works.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">virtually</a> <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/100-years-after-the-revolution-communism-hasnt-changed.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">identical</a> screeds insisting that socialism is both entirely irrelevant and a mortal danger, or a <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/can-we-take-political-correctness-seriously-now.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">similarly</a> <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/chicago-and-the-anti-anti-p-c-left.html?mid=fb-share-di" style="text-decoration-line: none;">monotonous</a> <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">current</a> on the evils of political correctness. Or sometimes, he’ll be forced to write about things he doesn’t really understand. And Jonathan Chait simply does not understand neoliberalism.As a <a href="https://twitter.com/gavinmuellerphd/status/886761049978023937" style="text-decoration-line: none;">comrade</a> pointed out to me, "where most pundits simply rip off Wikipedia for their pieces, Chait doesn’t even bother to check it." The name Milton Friedman does not appear once in Chait’s discussion of neoliberalism. Neither do Friedrich von Hayek, James M Buchanan, Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. He also conveniently omits mention of Augusto Pinochet. (Chile seems to be a particular blind spot for Chait—in his most recent anti-socialist <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/100-years-after-the-revolution-communism-hasnt-changed.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">column</a>, he writes that "every Marxist government in history has monopolized power," which is not just nakedly false, but happily conceals what his friends in Washington tend to do to those socialist governments that don’t monopolize power.) Instead, Chait decides to spend the opening chunk of his essay talking about how a few fellow journalists decided to start using the word "neoliberalism" to refer to their own "moderately liberal" opinions. I don’t doubt that they did, but the neoliberalism of Chait and his Washington Monthly pals is not the one that despoiled the globe or crushed working-class solidarity or restructured social consciousness; it’s not the ideology that anyone who calls Chait a neoliberal now is talking about. The fact that Chait thought the term was coined in the 1980s, when its general sense was already in use (Friedman’s "Neo-Liberalism and Its Prospects" was published in 1951), only shows that his cluelessness hasn’t come on with age. Instead of "neoliberalism" denoting a specific set of economic and social practices that affect everyone, Chait uses it as a signifier for the strange, nameless feeling of hurt and frustration he experiences whenever someone lobs the descriptor at him.Here is how Chait defines neoliberalism. He notes, at one point, that "the widely publicized influence of neoconservatives within the Bush administration changed the connotation of 'neo'" and that "by the end of Bush’s term, it became an intensifier." "Neo" means bad, and liberalism means liberalism. A neoliberal, then, is a liberal who is more right-wing. But it also refers to capitalism as such. Chait writes:<blockquote>"'Neoliberal' means capitalist, as distinguished from socialist. That meaning has rarely had much application in American politics, because liberals and conservatives both believe (to starkly differing degrees) in capitalism. If 'neoliberal' simply describes a belief in some role for market forces, then it is literally true that liberals and conservatives are both 'neoliberal.'"</blockquote>He adds, "It is strange, though, to apply a single term to opposing combatants in America’s increasingly bitter partisan struggle."Except that it's not. Neoliberalism is not particularly hard to define. It’s not only an ideology or a set of principles; it’s a system of practices, and an era, the one we’re living in now. What it means, over and above everything, is untrammeled ruling-class power, an end to the class-collaborationism of the post-war years and a vicious assault of the rich against the poor. This is achieved through market mechanisms, fiscal austerity and the penetration of capitalist relations into every possible facet of human life. It doesn’t mean that the role of the state vanishes—an essential precondition for neoliberalism is the destruction of working-class power and collective bargaining, and this has to be achieved, often brutally, through laws and their enforcement. There isn't just "some role for market forces" either, but their invasion into every fathomable social situation.Warehouse workers are electronically monitored and made to compete against each other in efficiency rankings? This is neoliberalism. The young and unemployed are encouraged to build a "personal brand" and sell themselves as a product? This is neoliberalism. If you don’t like any of this, you’re encouraged to shop ethically, reduce your personal carbon footprint and consume vaguely antagonistic culture-commodities. This is neoliberalism.
It’s true that, as Chait points out, the term "neoliberal" can describe much of the broad spectrum of American politics. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s important to be able to give a name to the awful totality that surrounds us. Once it can be fixed as an object, something of which we have a shared perception, we can start to think outside of it. It was not always like this; once, capitalism took other forms. Without a concept that points out the grim sameness that seeps through a corroding politics, you end up like Jonathan Chait: obsessing over the differences between two parties, as one gives the rich their foot-bath and the other gently nuzzles at their scalps; being confronted with a well-developed theory of political and social conditions, and deciding that it must somehow exist only as an insult against you.The result of all this is that our society has become atomized: we see all our relations as essentially competitive, and the people around us as rivals for scarce goods; we are all, socially and existentially, alone. Everything we do is turned into a market transaction, a form of buying and selling. And this is because the free and unfettered market isn’t a neutral system for processing human interactions, but an instrument of class power.<div wibbitz="embed-main-player"><div class="bio-new body_news-politics" style="width: 630px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both;"><div class="author-bio">mombiot ukguard 4/16
Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007-8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

    Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.
Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us
Paul Verhaeghe
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Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.

With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as “a kind of neoliberal international”: a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement’s rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.
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As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek’s view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way – among American apostles such as Milton Friedman – to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.

Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In 1951, Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes’s economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarrassment, developing new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Friedman remarked, “when the time came that you had to change ... there was an alternative ready there to be picked up”. With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter’s administration in the US and Jim Callaghan’s government in Britain.

    It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice should have been promoted with the slogan 'there is no alternative'

After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised.”

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan “there is no alternative”. But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet’s Chile – one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied – “my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism”. The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.
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Naomi Klein documented that neoliberals advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted. Photograph: Anya Chibis for the Guardian

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Friedman described as “an opportunity to radically reform the educational system” in New Orleans.

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating “investor-state dispute settlement”: offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

    Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one

Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years of decline, rose rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation.

The privatisation or marketisation of public services such as energy, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons has enabled corporations to set up tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or to government, for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel.
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In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all phone services and soon became the world’s richest man. Photograph: Henry Romero/Reuters

Those who own and run the UK’s privatised or semi-privatised services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India, oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became the world’s richest man.

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, has had a similar impact. “Like rent,” he argues, “interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort”. As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.
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Slogans, symbols and sensation … Donald Trump. Photograph: Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters

Chris Hedges remarks that “fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the ‘losers’ who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment”. When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.

Judt explained that when the thick mesh of interactions between people and the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared is more likely to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that arises from the delivery of public services, are reduced to “cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them”.

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of anonymities.

The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry, has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the Tea Party movement. We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his thinktanks, noted that “in order to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be widely advertised”.

    The nouveau riche were once disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Today, the relationship has been reversed

The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they elucidate. “The market” sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What “the market wants” tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want. “Investment”, as Sayer notes, means two quite different things. One is the funding of productive and socially useful activities, the other is the purchase of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest, dividends and capital gains. Using the same word for different activities “camouflages the sources of wealth”, leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.

A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors style themselves entre preneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned income.

These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and placelessness of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know for whom they toil; the companies registered through a network of offshore secrecy regimes so complex that even the police cannot discover the beneficial owners; the tax arrangements that bamboozle governments; the financial products no one understands.

The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are influenced by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining – with some justice – that it is used today only pejoratively. But they offer us no substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they suggest that there is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or Friedman’s classic work, Capitalism and Freedom.

For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal project, at least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.

    The left has produced no new framework of economic thought for 80 years. This is why the zombie walks

Neoliberalism’s triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 70s, there was an alternative ready. But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic thought for 80 years.

Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 70s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.

What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it’s not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century.

• George Monbiot’s How Did We Get into This Mess
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Rich Fink is executive vice president and a member of the board of directors of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Industries" title="Koch Industries">Koch Industries</a>, Inc. (since at least 1989), in Washington, D.C. Through his involvement in Koch, its <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations" title="Koch Family Foundations">free-market foundations</a>, and various associated free-market think tanks, Fink is an influential, background player in free-market policy lobbying.

Since the 1980s, Fink has advocated a theory of "Ideological Entrepeneurship", or "Political Marketing", for selling free-market ideology to the public. Using <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friedrich_Hayek" title="Friedrich Hayek">Friedrich Hayek</a>'s models of the production process, he shows that to influence policy, you must first develop the intellectual "raw materials"; then develop these into policy "products"; and finally "market" and "distribute" them to "consumers". On this basis, Fink argues that conservative grantmakers should invest in three areas: university programs, think tanks, and implementation groups. Specifically through this line of argument, Fink has been credited with a major influence over the grant-making strategies of conservative foundations since the 1990s. <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/conservativephilanthropy.php" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.mediatransparency.org/conservativephilanthropy.php" rel="nofollow">[1]</a>

During his time as an academic at Rutgers University (where he instigated an undergraduate program in Austrian economics), Fink was on the editorial board of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Austrian_Economics_Newsletter&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Austrian Economics Newsletter (page does not exist)">Austrian Economics Newsletter</a>. For this involvement, he has been also been credited with a role in the revival of Austrian Economics during the 1970s. <a href="http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/okon.pdf" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/okon.pdf" rel="nofollow">[2]</a> While at Rutgers, Fink also founded the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Market_Processes" title="Center for Market Processes">Center for Market Processes</a>.

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