Under neo-liberalism the economy is a machine independent of social purpose.
Nugget Coombs said that.
With the shift to a neo-liberal mode of governance the market becomes the main instrument of governing the population ---co-ordinating the affairs of the nation. That has been the purpose of the economic reforms of the last two decades.
In this world it is held that a little more unemployment, a little less education, a little more market discipline and a little less freedom of expression would make the world a better place. It would be good for all Australians.
Well, GDP may have risen and the economy may be booming but I'm unhappy.
What I have experienced is that my economic security as a middle class person has been kicked away. I experience this new world in which the market is in charge of my future with a mixture of loss and anger. I experience my income as falling; I sense that I have been hung and drawn; that my life has been hollowed out. It has been a long slow downward slide in income relative to prices.
I don't like the steady squeeze on my income and the general decline in the quality of my life. I will grimly hang onto the past as I struggle with my life.
Nor do I want the markets to neutralize my social memory that things were different once. Nor do I want my values, motivations and judgements to be spliced into market ones as the market reshapes our culture and pulls us ever more into the structure of the new capitalism.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 25, 2003 11:01 PM | TrackBack