Explaining the difference between capitalism and it's psychopathic spawn, neoliberalism

Canada's Thomas Friedman, Doug Saunders, informs me today that "neoliberalism" and "cultural Marxism" do not exist.

As far as the latter is concerned, he may have a point. In my experience, the folks who invest in that concept tend to be one step or less distant from the "Obama is a communist" crowd, which is a crowd I generally consider too stupid to take seriously.

The neoliberalism thing is a different animal altogether, and since it's what Doug gets paid to shill for on a regular basis it's somewhat disingenuous of him to disclaim its existence.

Saunders may be somewhat close to the mark when he says the "very far left" uses the term as a synonym for capitalism. That's true insofar as we can acknowledge that there are different hues of capitalism at work in our world.

In the America that's been going downhill for fifty years and which recently put the cherry on that downward spiral with the election of Trump, capitalism manifests more or less as neoliberalism. It's a robust, manly, macho capitalism that says billionaires deserve their billions because they're smarter than you and they work harder.

That's a philosophy that translates into a particular suite of policy initiatives. Taxes are bad. The private sector can do everything more efficiently than government. Poor people are weak and stupid and deserve their fate...

And so on.


But there's a different capitalism in much of Europe, where the heirs of Karl Kautsky have nurtured a more effete version of capitalism. Ya, we'll have capitalism but we'll tax the shit out of the rich and make sure everybody has a roof and three squares a day.

That's still capitalism, but it is not neoliberalism.

Why do multi-billion $ corporations hire unpaid interns?

Because they can!

Because it would cost money to pay them!

Because why would you pay somebody who is desperate enough to work for free!

Bell Canada is in the news today for its methodical abuse of unpaid interns. These are young folks just out of school, desperate to have something on their resumes. Bell is one of the country's biggest and most profitable companies with net earnings of $2.6 billion dollars last year.

This is an even better scam than the Temporary Foreign Worker boondoggle. At least in that one the workers still got something.

Mind you, not everyone at Bell works for free; CEO George Cope took home over 11 million last year. That's almost a million a month!

C'mon folks, if you can find a million a month for the big cheese, you can find something for these unpaid interns too.

This is the kind of egregious exploitation that gives capitalism a bad name.

Supply and demand revisited

Adam Smith would be appalled at the charade that we know as "capitalism" today.

As the leading edge of our capitalist class gradually got hold of more and more levers of power, it has become less and less probable that anyone will call their bluff.

There is a reason that the effective interest rate is zero and that corporations all over the world are sitting on trillions in cash.

It's all about supply and demand.

There is an over abundance of capital and an undersupply of demand in the economy today.

That is the result of our shaping the economy in favor of the capital accumulators.

Lower taxes mean quicker capital accumulation on one hand and deferred public spending on the common good on the other.

We've been cutting taxes to the point where the capital accumulators have simply accumulated so much capital that they've run out of places to put it.

Which is why the cost of money is next to nothing.

Which, ironically, is why the banks have so little incentive to lend it out.

But they do have a powerful incentive to back those hedge funds that can return 100% a year.

What they're forgetting is that real wealth ultimately comes from real people doing real stuff that other people will pay for.

We're not the tail.

We're the dog.

It's time we acted like it.

Nathan Rothschild meets extra-terrestials at secret Davos meeting

And if you believe that, you're fucked in the head.

Actually, Nathan Rothschild just lost a libel case in Britain, proving again that while he might be a relatively rich guy, he too has feet of clay.

Who goes in for this nonsense that's pedelled all over the internet, about the Rothschilds and crop circles and the end of the world?

The elite control the world, that's true. That's why they're known as the elite.

But it's got nothing to do with the Illuminati or the Rothschilds or extra-terrestials or Davos or Bilderberg.

It's got everything to do with the fundamental intrinsic nature of capitalism.

Letting a few control everything is the logical outcome of how we allow capitalism to be practised.

There's nothing wrong with capitalism. There's never been a more efficient way of mobilizing human resources.

Problem is, left to its own devices, capitalism eventually eats its host. When you get to a place where vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney are held up as paragons of capitalist success, you have reached a tipping point.

Mitt Romney and the likes of Bain Capital don't enable capitalism; they destroy it.

There are huge swaths of society that will never be accomodated by winner-take-all capitalism.

The sick.

The poor.

The elderly.

Those marginalized for any reason.

That's why there needs to be a "we" to regulate capitalism.