Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart | Hacker News Reader

Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart

theguardian.com

28 pointssmacktoward11 comments

It is ironic that “neoliberalism” consists of economically liberal ideas commonly considered conservative today: privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

What's so ironic in that? This was the agenda of the liberals since the Scottish Enlightenment.

The irony is that liberal today means the government takes more money, and gives it to "the people". Which is not remotely classical liberal.

Maybe in your country. In mine liberal still means liberal.

Liberal is the correct term to describe those economic positions. Using liberal to describe left wing politics is an American thing.

As far as I know, only the US describe economically liberal ideas as conservative. My theory is that they bundled moral and economic ideas (Republicans are conservative in moral ideas, but economically liberal).

And anyone standing in isolation is evil and dangerous? This article is partially correct in its observations, but in the end, you can smell the labor camps, the piles of dead, the ideology alternatives (left,right& religious) want to erect to pressure anybody who ventures away from their ideal back into the fold and shift the blame of the problems they produce.

I rather have a community lottery, forcing lonely people living together with one another for at least some hours a day, if they are unable to proof they socialize voluntarily in person on daily basis.

That part is unavoidable, as proven by the swedish social catastrophe. This is not something abstract, this is something quite real, join a fire brigade and door-openings into this abyss become your daily work.

In driving the individuals apart, both the liberal and the right wing side work hand in hand. The one side supports a system that allows contact avoidance, the other one pitches people against one another.

What is "the Swedish social catastrophe", and what does a fire brigade have to do with it?

Sweden and norway have some of the most established social welfare states, its a example of how wealthy and "healthy" a society can become. And its rife with isolation, according to the health statistics of the state (sweden).

And if you join a voluntary fire brigade in a country such as germany, you spend quiet alot of the alarms not fighting fires or helping with accidents, but with the opening of doors of run-down socially isolated people. Its almost always neighbours complaining about the smell.

Not so long ago, total isolation was a prison sentence and a torture.

Neoliberalism, the resurrection of Victorian age globalism but under the banner of the USD, does not create lonliness. It creates forced integration, race-to-the-bottom labor wages due to that forced integration, and debt slavery for those who can no longer produce due to an endless parade of cheaper humans somewhere else. And if you can't find them cheaper? Drop bombs on a country until they become cheap again.

It creates fractured states who run to political measures in the hopes to restructure and weather the storm. But that fails as well.

And the mass media that reinforces this configuration has you caring about people you'll never meet and demonizing people within 500 feet of you.

Lonliness is the first step to seeing the absurdity of it all, and that type of criticism is verboten, which is why articles like this try to treat lonliness like a curable disease.

Neoliberalism - Definition: Classical Liberalism

Reply on news.ycombinator.com