So What's Neoliberalism?

[Anna B 1,414]

7 hours ago, Arnold_Lane said:

I’m not sure I understand the premise of the question.  Are you implying neoliberalism and environmentalism are incompatible? 

 

Pretty much, yes.

Long term, you cannot have constant growth and consumerism without affecting the environment.

We're already drowning in 'stuff.'

[andyofborg 11]

4 minutes ago, Anna B said:

Pretty much, yes.

Long term, you cannot have constant growth and consumerism without affecting the environment.

We're already drowning in 'stuff.'

we can recycle the old stuff into new stuff....

 

I've always thought that at some point we would end up mining landfill sites for resources. 

[Anna B 1,414]

1 hour ago, andyofborg said:

we can recycle the old stuff into new stuff....

 

I've always thought that at some point we would end up mining landfill sites for resources. 

Hopefully we will get better at recycling, but we're nowhere near that yet. There are still plenty of things that use finite resources that cannot be recovered or recycled. 

[andyofborg 11]

29 minutes ago, Anna B said:

Hopefully we will get better at recycling, but we're nowhere near that yet. There are still plenty of things that use finite resources that cannot be recovered or recycled. 

by and large and with a few notable exceptions, the amount of every element on earth now is the same as it was 4 and half billion years ago when it was created. To recover the one's we've used is a matter of the cost of doing that against the cost of digging more up and possibly a bit of technology and the driver for that is economics. 

[Anna B 1,414]

If the driver is economics and it's cheaper to dig than recover, then we haven't a prayer.

 

Free market economics means profit is all important, and environmental concerns don't come into it. 

Normally the government should have overall control, but with FME they have abdicated their responsibility for regulating for years. Lobbyists challenge and deal on behalf of the companies. It's a free for-all, the winner is measured by money and profits. The environment is just  collateral damage. Hence the pickle we are in today.

[Delbow 700]

13 hours ago, andyofborg said:

by and large and with a few notable exceptions, the amount of every element on earth now is the same as it was 4 and half billion years ago when it was created. To recover the one's we've used is a matter of the cost of doing that against the cost of digging more up and possibly a bit of technology and the driver for that is economics. 

Right, so investment won't be put into the reclaiming of materials until we've dug so much of it up, at great cost and damage to the environment, that it becomes cheaper to reclaim it. I think you've answered your own question there.

[andyofborg 11]

15 hours ago, Anna B said:

If the driver is economics and it's cheaper to dig than recover, then we haven't a prayer.

 

Free market economics means profit is all important, and environmental concerns don't come into it. 

Normally the government should have overall control, but with FME they have abdicated their responsibility for regulating for years. Lobbyists challenge and deal on behalf of the companies. It's a free for-all, the winner is measured by money and profits. The environment is just  collateral damage. Hence the pickle we are in today.

The driver is always economics always has been always will be,   Nothing can survive if it cannot at least recover the cost of producing it's product. Governments are not exempt from this and really don't have a magic wand they can use to change this. 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by andyofborg

[Arnold_Lane 0]

20 hours ago, Anna B said:

Pretty much, yes.

Long term, you cannot have constant growth and consumerism without affecting the environment.

We're already drowning in 'stuff.'

So who is driving things such as the Paris Agreement and other green initiatives?  Either governments aren’t so neoliberal after all or neoliberal governments and environmentalism are compatible.

 
 

 

[Delbow 700]

27 minutes ago, andyofborg said:

The driver is always economics always has been always will be,   Nothing can survive if it cannot at least recover the cost of producing it's product. Governments are not exempt from this and really don't have a magic wand they can use to change this. 

 

 

That's right, it's a problem of capitalism rather than neoliberalism. Capitalism often stops us doing what we know we should do. Too often I hear people say "that would be good to do, but we can't". Seems to me we can do better than a system that's been around for centuries now and gets in the way of what we know we need to do.

33 minutes ago, Arnold_Lane said:

So who is driving things such as the Paris Agreement and other green initiatives?  Either governments aren’t so neoliberal after all or neoliberal governments and environmentalism are compatible.

 
 

 

That would be a valid point if governments had come even close to meeting their commitments under the Paris Agreement, which they haven't.

[Arnold_Lane 0]

6 minutes ago, Delbow said:

That's right, it's a problem of capitalism rather than neoliberalism. Capitalism often stops us doing what we know we should do. Too often I hear people say "that would be good to do, but we can't". Seems to me we can do better than a system that's been around for centuries now and gets in the way of what we know we need to do.

That would be a valid point if governments had come even close to meeting their commitments under the Paris Agreement, which they haven't.

Fair point, but is it just the ‘neoliberal’ governments that have failed?

 

[carosio 186]

On 03/02/2021 at 19:47, Anna B said:

We are now into 40+ years of unfettered consumerism, and we are beginning to realise the damage it's doing, and the dangers, both to individuals and the planet. We cannot sustain this growth indefinitely, but the plutocrats in charge are not going to let go easily, because they are doing very nicely out of it at the expense of everyone else.  

Many would generally agree with is broad statement, but if you also advocate progressively higher wages and therefore a higher standard of living, it follows that people will have more money to spend on goods and services, thereby fuelling "consumerism."

 

Quote  "Rather unfair competition don't you think, when highstreet shops have to pay rents, rates and all sorts of business taxes when Amazon (for example) doesn't pay it's fair share of tax at all? And gets away with it.... "

 

Amazon still pays rates and probably pays a lease on its warehouses; they chose not to operate from expensive High street premises, similarly Lidl.

 

There is a case for unfair competition due to many shops having to close because of Covid, but as far as tax is concerned I presume they paid the bill demanded by the taxman who will have worked out what is owed, as they would with anyone else. I haven't yet heard of a case where an individual or company has complained to the taxman that they owe more than that demanded.

Edited February 8, 2021 by carosio

[Delbow 700]

5 minutes ago, Arnold_Lane said:

Fair point, but is it just the ‘neoliberal’ governments that have failed?

 

I don't think so. Neoliberalism is a more extreme form of capitalism that has been impacting in the UK, the US and some other countries for a couple of decades, but not everywhere. I think it is too simplistic to say that anything that's bad is solely because of neoliberalism and that if we reverted to a more balanced capitalism like we had in the 1950s to 1970s all those problems would disappear. But I think it's demonstrable that neoliberalism has totally failed in areas such as housing and food security.