[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how neoliberal policies enacted and imposed by conservative elites rendered rich have led to private excess opulence and a disdain for the rights of people. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Note: You can easily translate the Readers to many languages. Use the app deepl.com and it is done instantaneously. It takes seconds to download the app into your computer or phone and translations are of high quality.
1. Capitalism is so often based on lies. Take for instance: Everyone is for peace* –yes but, for some, only until war breaks out. No one chooses to work all their life to make others rich, and no one choose to support or die in wars, but wars enrich the corporate class even further. To win public support, war is sold to us as a ‘humanitarian intervention’, but… (Susan Rosenthal)
*: Has peace ever had any real meaning other than in poetry? (Shula Koenig)
2. No rules govern capitalist competition. As Thomas Dunning observed 150 years ago, when capitalists see a good prospect for profit, capital is bold in extreme. High margins of profit will make it ready to trample on all human laws and human rights (HR) –even considering crime. If turbulence and strife bring a profit it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.
3. Technical and scientific progress is not due to Capitalism or the capitalists in general terms. It is millionaire corporations that just kidnap technical and scientific advances to commodify them. (Jorge Majfud) Then, those rendered even richer through their corporations** are the big funders of the political parties that then write the laws advantageous to them. (A circularity that is no big news to us).
**: The following practices are common to most TNCs:
- Lobbying governments and/or providing political donations;
- maintaining products despite harms;
- evading taxes;
- profitability being their uppermost in decision making;
- employing ‘white wash’ and ‘greenwash’ tactics;
- creating civil society organizations as ‘front groups’ to promote corporate views;
- using public relations as a form of education for the public;
- using corporate social responsibility strategies to enhance the corporate image. (Fran Baum)
For decades, neoliberal policies enacted and imposed by rich conservative elites have led to private opulence and public squalor. (The Guardian)
-What fortune gave you is not yours. (Seneca)
-Making money is easy. Making money in alignment with social and human rights values is hard. (Khe Hy)
4. Neoliberalism is ultimately interested in plundering the wealth of each country and its citizens. The rest, all the stupid economic theories, serve only to disguise the swindle. Actually, the discourse of the ‘experts’ is just another scam in a world in which the scam itself is a market. (Louis Casado)***
***: …Or is plundering the wealth of these countries more a thing of the past? Well, perhaps a nuance here: nowadays, it is more a question of conquering markets …anywhere. (Alberto Portugheis)
5. It has been half a century since the free market theory became what it is –a swindle. This, in good measure, thanks to the work of numerous free-market economists. [Enjoy this: Max Planck once confessed that he started out as a student of economics, but found it too difficult and switched to physics. So, he took his uncertainty to the field of physics. If many famous economists had done the same, they would have saved us a lot of crises that physicists do not cause. Or ponder this: According to standard economic theory, time does not go into econometric equations, so, if you will, when there is a contradiction between theory and the time-bound aspects of reality, it will be concluded that it is reality that is wrong. (George Stigler, Economics Nobel Prize winner, 1982)].
6. Moreover, further ponder: In 40 years of neoliberalism, the system has transferred colossal sums from the remuneration of labor to the balance sheets of capital. Instead of securing social security (and HR), pensions have been a source of profit for the companies that deal with pension funds …and look where the investments of these funds go: to the haves or to the have yachts…no? (Evan Osnos) [Furthermore, in Europe, progressively, capitalist regimes are seeking to extend work until 70 years of age, increasing the years of contribution at the same time –a gold mine for big capital].
7. Yes, and when you have the gold mine, corruption intrudes the system and the state effectively ends up protecting the free market (as well as predatory trade agreements) and their powerful supporters.****
****: Power has been called the ultimate aphrodisiac. And power is most effective when least observable. Those with great power prefer to see their power as graciously conferred to them by the ‘free’ market –or even as ordained by God. (S. Bezruchka)
8. The critique of the neoliberal economic model and its processes is thus highly overdue and is the unavoidable reaction to the exhaustion of the neoliberal economic paradigm of the last three+ decades. (William San Martin).
So, is the world actually close to a new world order?
-Is optimism only based on a lack of information? (Heiner Müller)
9. After more than three decades of American efforts to establish and consolidate a unipolar international order, we are witnessing signs of the deterioration of the American-centric international order and the formation of a new international order. The important ongoing transformations, whether political or economic, will undoubtedly create a new global reality. Take for instance, the decline of globalization: Globalization represented the ideological framework for the economic movement of the world in recent decades. Nevertheless, the recent years have witnessed a decline in the globalization movement, so much so that the world is witnessing a decline that foretells that we are on the verge of the birth of a new world order –and that there are evidences that have begun to loom on the horizon, especially the economic crises that will necessarily reflect on the political situation. Just think of the American decline as a superpower; it will have long-term consequences with regard to the balance of power in the international system. (Amr Wagdy Omran)
10. Will the HR situation then improve?? Food for thought when you look at your own crystal ball…
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-Not being facetious, can we save the rich from their richness, from behind the walls and fences of their property? (Andreas Wulf)