In a word: wow. This book examines the history of neoliberalism in economic policy since the 1960s (ish). As you probably know, neoliberalism supports free trade, deregulation and privatisation. The title comes from the idea that these economic policies can only be introduced by force (i.e. torture and electric shock) or by lies and deception (often using some crisis or shock as distraction or false justification).

The worrying thing is to maintain this unstable equilibrium, shocks need to be repeated to keep people off balance – eternal war (aka “war on terror”), unstable world markets, etc. As they said on the TV series 24 when Jack first talks to the “mastermind” in series 2:

Kingsley: If someone wants to buy it, it’s for sale.
Jack: How can you justify starting a war to profit from the outcome?
Kingsley: We’re just controlling the chaos, that’s all.
Jack: No, you’re causing it.
(emphasis mine)

You see these free marketeers don’t see themselves as bad people. But conveniently they stand to benefit most from the implementation of their ideas. They are totally self interested.

The neoliberal has the goal of “maximising wealth”. To say that this is best achieved by “unrestrained generation of wealth” is trivial to see – yet this is supposed to be an “insight”. But what is not considered, is the human and environmental cost. Since these things can be costed by pure neoliberalism – they cannot be preserved by neoliberalism.

The only hope for control of our world and our lives is independence of the institutions that propogate these ideas. These institutions include the IMF and World Bank. I am deeply skeptical about stock exchanges where all the traders see is a number (of stock value) and how the number goes up and down. The number does not express the social and environmental context of the company business.

Anti Citizen One