Neo-Liberal, Neo-Conservative or Neo-Dead?

The neo-liberal/conservative idea that private business and capital can solve all of societies problems through economics needs to be left for dead. While it is an attractive, simple and beautiful idea, illustrating a clean and efficient way to organize the world. It is also hopelessly flawed. Market economies try to provide wealth and drive innovation through a merciless pursuit of efficiency with the least amount of regulation and intervention possible. Yet there is one small problem. Humans.

Apparently they just never act the way they are supposed to. I guess we get caught in the gears gumming up the beautiful machine.

Bummer.

Yet we seem intent on following the same dead ideology that was crucified and put out to pasture by Keynes after the great depression. Yet the myth has been reinvented and brought presented again and again.

You know the story. "It was a dark and stormy night and Jack and Jill were intent on deregulating and privatizing everything they possessed because private capital and greed makes everything run efficiently." Little did Jack know that privatized education would put him into debt for the rest of his life and Jill would lose her life's saving in a series of unchecked boom and bust cycles. Neither did they realize their health and childrens education would also suffer as neo-conservative governments axe public funding so provinces like British Columbia could compete for the affections of mega-corporations intent on getting the most for the least by any means possible.

Unchecked market forces seem great until they are balanced by the inevitable human need for equality and fairness. As Margaret Atwood points out in her book "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth" when debt collects too far in favor of anyone person or class, the result is often collapse and meltdown as people seek to reestablish equilibrium. It has happened to the greeks, the french and countless others. It seems to in our DNA.

While equality and fairness seems like a simple realization, it is one our institutions seem unwilling to unable or unwilling to acknowledge. Today, a year after the collapse of Lehman brothers you have to wonder what the hell is going to happen in the wake of the global economic meltdown. Pillars of private finance have crumbled to dust. Tens of millions of people around the world have lost their jobs (predicted to hit 51 million by the end of 2009). Lives have been destroyed by the greedy and privileged in their pursuit of the beautiful machine.

The political response, both at home and abroad, seems both tepid and intent on re-inflating the bubble that started the disaster in the first place. Not only that but the vast majority of help has only flowed in one direction, to the same greedy and privileged people and institutions that caused the problem. To me the burst of the housing bubble and fallout that came after signaled the end of conservative capitalist ideology in much the same way the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the end of communism. Similarly, in the same way the communist old-guard sought to hold onto power as long as they possibly could, It seems apparent that the same players are doing their best to guard and protect the vast wealth and power the accumulated under the old system. I can't help but think that the end result, likely ten to fifteen years from now, will result in the utter and complete collapse of the financial house of cards we have built over the last thirty years.

Unless our financial system is reformed and regulated we will face a collapse that will likely put the events of the last year to shame. If it is not fair and equal to everyone it will not work.

Lets face it. Neo-liberalism is dead. it is time to clear the wreckage of the old idea and start building the new. Something new that doesn't break when humans get caught up in the gears.