NEOLIBERALISM, NOT ECONOMICS,
IS ABOUT PROFITING FROM SCARCITY

many of y’all speak of economics as if were a subset of finance and a necessity based on precarity. this is not and was not how Economics was defined well into the 1970s. the break came with Reaganism, austerity politics but even worse, the enshrining in the Federal Reserve of Randian cultist, Alan Greenspan.

it is because of Alan Greenspan and his subversion of capitalism that many of y’all equate economics with scarcity… 🧵

am not turning this into an intro course, but if you are studying economics and have yet to read The Wealth Of Nations and have yet to study the economists involved in developing USA economic policy since FDR, but especially for Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter, then you do not have any idea of how violent was the break from a labor-based view of the economy to a market-finance one with Reagan and thereafter.

most people don’t even know of this break and that’s why… 🧵

the definition of inflation for the working classes, people like you and me, is completely different from capitalists and their bootlicking political managerial classes.

because when you decide that the economy is based on capitalists needs, not the labor of ordinary people and their capacity to buy what they need to sustain themselves and thrive, YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE SCARCITY… 🧵

capitalists living off dividends and controlling the economy of a nation are like the kings and queens and nobility of yore that squeezed and squeezed the peasantry to support their bigger hairs, bigger castles, bigger wars ―until in one country many last saw the blood pooling at the guillotines.

ADAM SMITH WROTE THE WEALTH OF NATIONS FOR A MOMENT MUCH LIKE THE ONE WE ARE IN NOW

a terrible time of inequality when engineered scarcity was thought of as the basis of the economy…🧵

he was a professor of MORALS & ETHICS.

let that sink in: the dude who supposedly invented capitalism (or at least the arguments for it), did so to prove, WITH EVIDENCE, that all European monarchs’ holdings alone were NOT the wealth of their nations.

he even gives in the book a rationalization for the abolition of slavery by capitalizing on the externalities of free laborers.

the thing is, he never uses the word economics. only economy or political economy… 🧵

this is important because this is the problem with how the United States, with the Chicago Boys, completely upended the concept of national economic activity. it was not something to observe, it was something to engineer and manage.

Milton Friedman, gaslighter extraordinaire and big daddy of neoliberals everywhere, believed so much in free markets that he high-fived the assassination of Salvador Allende and hand-picked Pinochet for his buddy Kissinger…

MILTON FRIEDMAN’S FREE MARKETS WERE BULLSHIT.

the Chicago Boys were never, ever about managing economic activity for all; just moving the goal posts of abundance for only one social class.

the coup against Allende and the subsequent unraveling of Latin American economies that ended with Clinton bailing out the same banks that 10 yrs later took hostage the world economy in 2008, prove neoliberalism, NOT economics is about engineering scarcity by all means necessary…🧵

ALL THIS TO SAY

stop parroting the talking points of the oppressor.

there is enough everything to feed, clothe, house, heal, educate, employ and even “start up” not just every human, but generations to come.

the problem are the .1% who don’t want that to happen.

those are the people who make money blocking universal health care and forcing us into insurance companies that are nothing but eugenics-as-a-service.

that’s why when CEOs get shot, nobody bats an eye.

the scarcity is false./ 🧵

@blogdiva

This radical Episcopalian notes that #Jesus & the early Church is all about feeding & healing EVERYONE
Just after feeding a multitude, Jesus warns explicitly against 'the leaven of the Pharisees'
Which I understand as anyone who preaches that life is a zero sum game

Brian Thompson - UnitedHealthcare CEO, Medical Non-Provider

What kind of world are we living in where a health insurance CEO can’t even feel safe on our streets?

Mourning Remembrance: A collection of mocking obituaries

@blogdiva

it seems the "free markets" are one thing, but in combination with the capitalist class controlling and printing the money, thry can pay everyone and buy everything they want at any time to control and design things

a market without money printers does not allow a capitalist money printing class

money printer without markets will still allow a capitalist class, but without markets they can control it less

either way, the main power that allowed the capitalists is money printing

@serapath @blogdiva

#nowarbutclasswar

(I feel like i've said this a lot today.)

@mousey @blogdiva haha 🙂

yeah, fair enough, but historically, i feel one thing that is not present or too little present, that the essential feature of capitalism is the controp of the money printer

its true the government big politics prints money to shuffle it to their capitqlist amigos which they themselves are mostly part of, but also the private banks print as much if not more of the money for only the privileged capitalists

of course its called loans, but debt only increases = printing

@blogdiva Post-scarcity Utopia is here, it's just not evenly distributed.
@blogdiva I've got a lot of misogyny and ableism and loads of other toxic beliefs embedded in my psyche but nothing as deeply fused into my system like the idea of scarcity and seeing capitalism as a savior. We have no idea how brainwashed we are.
@blogdiva I really learned about this scarcity economic bullshit through Buckminster Fuller who spoke about Malthusian Darwinian economics as bullshit which is scarcity & population control eugenics. Who is fittest to survive.
Bankrupt Prospect Medical is poised to take steps to close Crozer Health’s Delaware County hospitals

The latest developments come after Prospect Medical Holdings filed for bankruptcy protection Jan. 11, with the $2.5 billion company down to $3.4 million in cash.

The Philadelphia Inquirer
@blogdiva on the topic of conflating economics with neoliberalism, I always like to say that corporations had to invent Business Degrees to teach what they wanted because academic economic studies kept contradicting their opinions (behavioral economics, game theory, etc.)
@blogdiva
Free markets are a great way to discover what everyone values and where a producer might best fit in.m, without some central bureaucrat making a five year plan.
But that's a tool, not a natural law. For externalities, that's where regulation and other tools most be applied.