Neoliberalism and the End of Democracy [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Neoliberalism and the End of Democracy [pdf]

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22 pointsgrdeken13 comments

Is this an academic paper? Telling a story the way the author sees it, causal relationships established as if they are obvious, no need to actually show they exist. This is indoctrination, not analysis.

The author is a contributor to Jacobin Magazine which according to Wikipedia "has been variously described as democratic socialist, socialist and Marxist" so it would seem you're spot on.

As far as a critique of the actual paper, it seems to be predicated on the idea that democracy and freedom are synonymous when in fact they're orthogonal concepts. You can have tyrannical democratic structures, in fact that's what the founding fathers sought to combat in the original system they laid out which was less democratic than it is now (e.g. only land owners, people who have skin in the game, can vote).

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." – Benjamin Franklin

You cannot have freedom without democracy (unless of course you're part of the ruling class). When someone else rules over you, you aren't free.

Democracy does not guarantee freedom but it greatly increases the chances and distributes it more equally. Your chance of being "tyrannized" by the majority is less than 50%. A ruling class you aren't part of will tyrannize you.

> When someone else rules over you, you aren't free.

That is the case in today's so called democracies. Just because you pick your ruler doesn't mean you have any say in the fate of society.

check the video for actual democracy: https://youtu.be/qH43YHaUGyQ

See the difference between saying democracy is necessary for freedom and saying that democracy obviates freedom. Parent comment only made claim to the former.

Nor did I make any claim about our current democracies being democracies (though "no say" is an exaggeration).

It seems to be an article from a book written by an academic. There's a page of citations at the end that you may have missed.

Here is a list of the author's work. This is very consistent with "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and numerous bodies of work that highlight the tactics used. This essay (if not an academic article) was interesting for providing more context and subtext around the drivers for the movement. It's honestly a political and economic masterclass regardless of your ethical position. https://www.jasonhickel.org/#/academic-work/

Why is it necessary to dig so far to understand the decay of American democracy? Today's problems are impossible without simple gerrymandering and the idiosyncrasies of the electoral college. It's not a deep problem.

What exactly are you saying is the problem? Even if it’s as simple as you claim, those “simple” problems are apparently not subject to repair. So long as that is the case, I recommend considering that the problem does in-fact have a bit more depth to it.

The problem is that the USG isn't responsive to the well being of it's people because it doesn't need to be. The reasons are mostly abuses of technicalities which are different in our present time than they were in Rome ~yr0 ce.

They are subject to repair.

Our nation's brightest political theorists such as Lawrence Lessig have put forth simple solutions to their credit. Theres the majority vote interstate compact which has been ratified by many states already. Simple vornoi redistricting would solve the gerrymandering problem.

Ideologies and philosophies don't build civilizations. They distract otherwise capable people. Practical circumstances shape civilizations. That's really the major lesson of the classics if you read them.

Neoliberalism as practiced in the United States isn't a good idea. In other countries it's had much more success. For instance, Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage, and has very high labour mobility. A generous social safety net and strong trade unions enables this.

Then is it really neoliberalism in Denmark? It seems strong social safety net and trade unions are somehow anathema to neoliberalism.

Sure they could participate in the global economies and reap rewards from the globalization but they're also a smaller player w/ less power on the world stage.

American neoliberalism has been a bad idea not just for us, but maybe for the whole world. It's all gonna come to a head though if they really do evict 40 million people this year.

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