Neo-liberalism adherents favour small government and demand that government regulation of economic practice is reduced or absent; neo-liberalism demands an allowance of business as usual because business knows best and will do best, eventually, for people. Neo-liberalists prefer no counterweight of unionism, or organised workers’ counterweights to the practice of business. What neo-liberalist capitalism permitted in the 18th and 19th centuries – and increasingly now - is an exploitation of workers and growing inequality. The natural world was deemed [biblically justified] the dominion of man, available for our use and so we see the exploitation of natural resources.
Tag: Politics
Thoughts on the climate deniers
Have recently chosen to engage with the deniers. You do not, of course, need ask which deniers I refer to. So here is a list of my replies to some of their unreasoning; names have been changed to protect the approximately ignorant. I've used headings to cluster my replies. Greens started/promote bush fires: Duane, I … Continue reading Thoughts on the climate deniers
On the alleged death of homo economicus
If I am to take Nick Hanauer’s[1] advice and kill off homo economicus then what I fear I’ll be left with is – all that someone of a liberal-humanist bent can ask, I suppose – homo impotenticus. A person unpurposed: because I am not alone, because I am not reified individual, because I am part … Continue reading On the alleged death of homo economicus
To keep politics out, or not?
Should a writer avoid the topical, particularly the political, given that it dates work or that politics and the topical is considered by many to be as dull as dishwater. Take TRUMP. (Please take him and put him away somewhere dark and silent.) Given that he is at the forefront of our world's conscious, it … Continue reading To keep politics out, or not?
Our economic selves; the real enemy?
A question for any reader: does the argument below [introductory paragraph] make sense to you - as proposition, obviously, not fully reasoned essay... Naomi Klein argues in her 2017 No is not enough—among other things— that the Trump presidency is 'a naked corporate takeover' of the democratic process; corporations are 'doing what all top … Continue reading Our economic selves; the real enemy?
And now for something… different
Forgive the abridged theft from Monty Python... Lazy titling while on a mobile phone to blame. I've just read an interesting and affirmative piece in the New Yorker, entitled Citizen Khan, which prompted this response from me. "As a non-American I took much from this story; it reminded me of what has always been the great … Continue reading And now for something… different
Contempt for politicians
Came across this passage in a novel by Donna Leon entitled The jewels of paradise and was struck by it; I fear it accords with an almost universal (and timeless - didn't Plato rail at politicians in his Republic and cry out for the philosopher king) feeling about those who become politicians. Here it is:

