What are the pros and cons of neoliberalism?

Thanks for the A2A Johnathan. Here’s my take….

PROS

1. The largest corporations continue to accumulate wealth via exploitation of cheap labor and resources in the developing world - the results of globalization and “free trade.”

2. The largest corporations continue to accumulate wealth through coopting or weakening of democratic institutions - via crony capitalism, clientism, regulatory capture, populist neoliberal propaganda (via the Heritage Foundation and other such think tanks), ALEC and other pro-corporate legislative manipulation and groupthink, etc.

3. The largest corporations continue to accumulate wealth through war profiteering and nation building whenever those opportunities can be created (go Halliburton!).

4. The largest banks and corporations continue to accumulate wealth through “structural adjustment programs” that decimate developing economies (Go IMF and World Bank!).

5. The largest banks continue to accumulate wealth through the increasing financialization of every economy.

6. A vast swath of the voting public around the globe doesn’t have to think for themselves, but can rely on the neoliberal programming delivered by mass media to consistently vote against their own best interests.

7. People who want to support the neoliberal agenda have access to excellent fake science to counter glaringly obvious negative externalities (re: consumer health, worker safety, climate change, species extinction, collapsing ecosystems, resource depletion, etc.) or the inevitable economic train wreck intrinsic to growth-dependent capitalism.


CONS

1. Those glaringly obvious negative externalities of an ascendent corporatocracy’s agenda are real…and getting worse…and the inevitable economic train wreck intrinsic to growth-dependent capitalism has already hinted at its impending arrival.

2. Exploitation, war profiteering, structural adjustments, wealth disparity, etc. lead to resentment, alienation, desperation, and quite often rebellion, societal disintegration and terrorism among growing populations in the developing world.

3. The consumer-electorate is becoming increasingly stupefied by their infantilized dependency, and thus are increasingly unable to recognize the hoodwinking spectacle that prevents them from seeing the destructive arc of neoliberal agendas, and medicates them from caring about that destruction even when, for a fleeting instant, they see through the carefully orchestrated deceptions.

4. Pretty much all of the “pros” listed above are a “con” when viewed from the perspective of anyone but wealthy shareholders.

All-in-all, I would say that neoliberalism is the single greatest threat to civil society that has ever existed on our planet, mainly because of the scale of its assault on human dignity, the superagency of its most callous primary actors on the world stage, and the enormous and irreversible damage it has already accomplished.

My 2 cents.

(see https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-neoliberalism)

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