Is Neoliberalism Destroying the World? (CBC Ideas)
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
Philip Mirowski, Anat R. Admati, Sam Gindin, Yanis Varoufakis and Bruce Livesey on neoliberalism.
54m36s runtime. Excellent content and production quality.
All the debates we have are internal debates.
We are Westerners. They have three schools of thought in politics. The Left, the Right and the Liberals. These may be compared to a three set Venn Diagram - related but different.
Everything we think is inside the three school paradigm - that is our Western Orthodoxy.
We have got something from the fundamentals right or we wouldn't be, and it's amazing this isn't stated for the bare fact it is more often - the largest and most successful human civilization in human history by every metric there is.
The problem is of course we are likely wrong about something that will prove our undoing. The question is: what are those things?
The natural tendency is to promote our preferred school over the others but this is a weakness. You can imagine the Romans or Chinese looking at their civilization's decline in retrospect - giving their just-so-story of why it happened. In most cases it is going to be blaming the usual suspects aka the failure modes of competing schools and that isn't enough to explain something systematic. I expect that Joesph Tainter's way of thinking is closer to the mark in getting to real answers - which should be possible.
This may not be a specific answer to the question "what will undo us?" but what jumps out at me is how all Westerners presume their school of thought to be a universal as the monotheistic religions have of their beliefs but there is nothing easier than to show Leftist/Rightist/Liberal dogma does not hold relevance in other times and places. Why didn't the Greeks invent the Industrial Revolution? Maybe they weren't looking for the kinds of answers that would have taken them to new forms of energy and transport because they placed importance on other things.
(The full answer is ... longer.)
Two ways in which that could be so is -
Your society succumbs to accumulative negative side affects that lead to a civilization scale heart attack. Pollution, barbarians, (lack of) land reform, diversity zoo taxing coordination ability.
Your society is too rigorous at its maintenance - initially hypersuccessful but becomes overtaken by competitors that managed to bottle enough chaos to produce improvement without falling apart. Analogy being a very clean human would have an unhealthy immune system or homogenous microbiome - making them susceptible. China might be the archetype.
Were either of these what you had in mind? Both include predation but are almost at odds. The main idea might be that a society needs to exercise in many different ways to have a high adaptability score but not too much. This is in the zip code of what David Krakauer (complex systems theory) seems to worry about too. He seems to suggest that we should be teaching children and ourselves lots of useless skills (reading the classics?) because they could exercise our brains in productive ways - that the use of technology to replace human cognition can be a trap.
Many of these endogenous effects are essentially unforseen consequences, though there might be other descriptions which fit (denial / willful blindness among them). Almost all operate as hygiene dynamics, that is, the failure to sustain or support vigorous, healthful function, not merely of individuals, but at a social or societal level.
The etymology, and specific recognition by the Greeks of hygieine techne, "the healthful art", being notable:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/hygiene#etymonline_v_16114
Eventually, all creatures foul their own nests. Even with mitigations, this is inevitable. Some waste product or effect will prove limiting.
The effects also virtually always prove to be unintended consequences. See Robert K. Morton.
Excess cleanliness or vigilance seems to have several negative dynamics. Quashing internal ambition or creativity, as happenned historically with China, is one. Removing selective pressure, possibly another. Giving rise to pathologically reactive social security apparratus, as with police violence, ICE overreach, and excess NSA/CIA/FBI (or NON-US equivalents), akin to autoimmine disorders, another.
Competitive pressures are probably another dynamic, worth consideration. Thanks for mentioning them.
It's always fun talking with you though and I appreciate it.
I'll make one point though.
> Removing selective pressure, possibly another.
I think this one is underrated - there is a strong incentive for us to want to believe the removal of pressure is a good thing - then call that problem solved - it's a black box we no longer think about and close shop on that.
You may know of Mike Rowe - the blue collar jobs advocate.
I think he and David Krakauer are often saying something similar - which is that a loss of contact with the tools in our brains which solve certain problems can (sometimes) produce stagnation as individuals and society - it gets us flying away from Musk's 'first principals' beliefs.
The whole video is worth watching but this short segment illustrates the point: