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This is neoliberal propaganda. It argues from average lives that no one actually lives. For example: The share of people living in extreme poverty has decreased

This is neoliberal propaganda. It argues from average lives that no one actually lives. For example: The share of people living in extreme poverty has decreased immensely. However, your life can be absolutely miserable in a place like the United States while technically not living in extreme poverty. Reducing the dynamics of the entire world and the experiences of each human being to a single number is preposterous. An example particularly in the United States: Poverty levels have decreased in the US. However, cost of living has exploded in certain areas, meaning that people who technically don't meet the official definition of poverty in, say, San Francisco can have their lives completely upended by the fact that they can no longer afford housing. A related example not in exactly the same vein is neoliberal identity politics: It is ok for people to be oppressed my structurally racist institutions so long as the oppressor class is sufficiently racially diverse. s/race/{gender, orientation}/g Hide the fact that identities are tied to material relationships of economics and power behind a statistic about """diversity""". Reducing people to statistics is a technocrat's wet dream and a fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism: Reduce everyone to rational market actors, measure everything with statistics which abstract away actual reality and allow governments and corporations to justify any action they want because they set the definitions, dissimulate coercive power relationships by refusing to measure them. Vox is faux-progressive propaganda for the worst kind of capitalism.

witty_username 10y ago
You forget what extreme poverty is. It is lacking three square meals a day and being stunted (like being a couple inches shorter). The poor of the US live better than the median person in India. Isn't neoliberalism all about being free to be racist (or not racist)? Feel free to correct me about this. > fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism: Reduce everyone to rational market actors, measure everything with statistics which abstract away actual reality and allow governments and corporations to justify any action they want because they set the definitions, dissimulate coercive power relationships by refusing to measure them. I'm biased as a supporter of neoliberalism; but isn't the fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism maximization of human freedom? Statistics don't abstract away actual reality; it's the best way to analyze a large number of people. I can't interview all 1.2 billion people in India; instead I can look at the statistics to understand that population. Neoliberalism is all about minimizing the coercive power relationship between the people and the government. > justify any action they want because they set the definitions I wouldn't call it definitions (they're normative); but yes, neoliberalism uses moral justifications.
- danharaj 10y ago
  > You forget what extreme poverty is. It is lacking three square meals a day and being stunted (like being a couple inches shorter). The definition of extreme poverty is living under $1.25/day (2005 dollars). You'll note that the chart cited in the article is backfilled to 1820. What does it mean to be living in extreme poverty in 1820? Was 95% of the world starving every day? It's an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinarily good analysis to make, but hey, it's a statistic so it must be true! One way in which this statistic is almost completely likely to be bullshit is that most of the world was no where near industrialized in 1820 and comparing means of living under an industrial mode of production versus a subsistence mode of production is suspect. Furthermore, much of the misery associated with unindustrialized parts of the world in the time period the chart measures was directly introduced by industrialized nations. One looks at unindustrialized areas of the world today and sees constant conflict, famine, and systemic societal dysfunction and extrapolates it backwards under the assumption that it is the absence of capitalist industrialization that sustains these conditions when in fact these conditions were created in the process of capitalist expansion that largely benefited a few hegemonic nations. Neoliberal ideology rewrites human history so that it can blame preindustrial societies for the misery capitalism and imperialism visited upon them. > Isn't neoliberalism all about being free to be racist (or not racist)? Feel free to correct me about this. Neoliberalism is specifically a reprogramming of the elements of liberalism to reduce all human activity to the actions of rational, atomized economic actors in a private market. The erasure of the commons, the marketization of social structures such as education, family structures, personal beliefs, cultural expression, the erasure of power relationships (because everyone is voluntarily participating as a rational economically minded being in everything they do), and the depoliticization of human interactions (there is no political, only the economic) are all hallmarks of neoliberalism. Another aspect of neoliberalism is a technocratic view of government which is antithetical to enlightenment ideals: The point of government is to manage and regulate markets and nothing more. Neoliberalism also paints its mechanisms, which are often driven by heavy regulation, police actions, and military invention as inevitable natural outcomes of human nature: in particular globalization is seen as an organic growth of human economics when in fact it has been fostered and directed by deliberate government actions, not laissez-faire economic development. I don't know what you think neoliberalism is. > I'm biased as a supporter of neoliberalism; but isn't the fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism maximization of human freedom? Sure, and the Party in 1984's ideological goal was to maximize freedom too. The material goals of neoliberalism are ultimately the class interests of the capitalist and owning class. The ideological goal of neoliberalism is to frame the world so that those who control most of its resources are naturally and inevitably the ruling class and that any objection to the sacred, natural law of the market is invalid. So, freedom is framed not as a political concept, but a purely economic one, and ultimately "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve" (Isaac Asimov). Because the market is natural and inevitable, any structure it may have that disadvantages anyone to the benefit of another is natural and thus not an impingement of freedom. > Neoliberalism is all about minimizing the coercive power relationship between the people and the government. Somehow it does this by increasing the power of the police state, increasing military intervention in weaker countries, staging coups for violent neoliberal dictators in nations that reject it (e.g. Pinochet), increasing regulations to the benefit of the largest corporations, consolidating industries into fewer and fewer independent entities and creating a close relationship between politician, bureaucrat, security officer, and businessman.
kmicklas 10y ago
This kind of nuanced thinking will get you downvoted on hacker news, don't you know?
mjohn 10y ago
Most of the recent improvements have been in developing countries, because for a long time there have been a minuscule number of people in the US living on less that $1.9 a day. For some sub-populations of the US things have gotten significantly worse in the past few decades and we should do something to help. Nonetheless, I think it's worth celebrating a reduction in the global rate of extreme poverty from 64% in 1960 to 9.6% in 2015. It's also worth noting that the estimates are adjusted for inflation and price differences between countries, so changes in cost of living should not be a significant factor (even though adjusting historic data for inflation is imperfect).
rconti 10y ago
Why should I accept one person's opinion that a theoretical "absolutely miserable" life in the US is worse than living in extreme poverty over, you know, actual data? We all have the agency to allocate our resources as we wish; not being in extreme poverty means that you have more resources to allocate to improving your condition. Also, is neoliberalism about dividing people up by minority status and then ensuring diversity in our oppressorship? Or is it about reducing everyone to rational market actors and abstracting away everything else? I can't quite tell. You can use lots of fancy thought-piece buzzwords but I don't see how it makes the content itself thought-provoking.

witty_username 10y ago

You forget what extreme poverty is. It is lacking three square meals a day and being stunted (like being a couple inches shorter). The poor of the US live better than the median person in India. Isn't neoliberalism all about being free to be racist (or not racist)? Feel free to correct me about this. > fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism: Reduce everyone to rational market actors, measure everything with statistics which abstract away actual reality and allow governments and corporations to justify any action they want because they set the definitions, dissimulate coercive power relationships by refusing to measure them. I'm biased as a supporter of neoliberalism; but isn't the fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism maximization of human freedom? Statistics don't abstract away actual reality; it's the best way to analyze a large number of people. I can't interview all 1.2 billion people in India; instead I can look at the statistics to understand that population. Neoliberalism is all about minimizing the coercive power relationship between the people and the government. > justify any action they want because they set the definitions I wouldn't call it definitions (they're normative); but yes, neoliberalism uses moral justifications.

danharaj 10y ago
> You forget what extreme poverty is. It is lacking three square meals a day and being stunted (like being a couple inches shorter). The definition of extreme poverty is living under $1.25/day (2005 dollars). You'll note that the chart cited in the article is backfilled to 1820. What does it mean to be living in extreme poverty in 1820? Was 95% of the world starving every day? It's an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinarily good analysis to make, but hey, it's a statistic so it must be true! One way in which this statistic is almost completely likely to be bullshit is that most of the world was no where near industrialized in 1820 and comparing means of living under an industrial mode of production versus a subsistence mode of production is suspect. Furthermore, much of the misery associated with unindustrialized parts of the world in the time period the chart measures was directly introduced by industrialized nations. One looks at unindustrialized areas of the world today and sees constant conflict, famine, and systemic societal dysfunction and extrapolates it backwards under the assumption that it is the absence of capitalist industrialization that sustains these conditions when in fact these conditions were created in the process of capitalist expansion that largely benefited a few hegemonic nations. Neoliberal ideology rewrites human history so that it can blame preindustrial societies for the misery capitalism and imperialism visited upon them. > Isn't neoliberalism all about being free to be racist (or not racist)? Feel free to correct me about this. Neoliberalism is specifically a reprogramming of the elements of liberalism to reduce all human activity to the actions of rational, atomized economic actors in a private market. The erasure of the commons, the marketization of social structures such as education, family structures, personal beliefs, cultural expression, the erasure of power relationships (because everyone is voluntarily participating as a rational economically minded being in everything they do), and the depoliticization of human interactions (there is no political, only the economic) are all hallmarks of neoliberalism. Another aspect of neoliberalism is a technocratic view of government which is antithetical to enlightenment ideals: The point of government is to manage and regulate markets and nothing more. Neoliberalism also paints its mechanisms, which are often driven by heavy regulation, police actions, and military invention as inevitable natural outcomes of human nature: in particular globalization is seen as an organic growth of human economics when in fact it has been fostered and directed by deliberate government actions, not laissez-faire economic development. I don't know what you think neoliberalism is. > I'm biased as a supporter of neoliberalism; but isn't the fundamental ideological goal of neoliberalism maximization of human freedom? Sure, and the Party in 1984's ideological goal was to maximize freedom too. The material goals of neoliberalism are ultimately the class interests of the capitalist and owning class. The ideological goal of neoliberalism is to frame the world so that those who control most of its resources are naturally and inevitably the ruling class and that any objection to the sacred, natural law of the market is invalid. So, freedom is framed not as a political concept, but a purely economic one, and ultimately "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve" (Isaac Asimov). Because the market is natural and inevitable, any structure it may have that disadvantages anyone to the benefit of another is natural and thus not an impingement of freedom. > Neoliberalism is all about minimizing the coercive power relationship between the people and the government. Somehow it does this by increasing the power of the police state, increasing military intervention in weaker countries, staging coups for violent neoliberal dictators in nations that reject it (e.g. Pinochet), increasing regulations to the benefit of the largest corporations, consolidating industries into fewer and fewer independent entities and creating a close relationship between politician, bureaucrat, security officer, and businessman.

kmicklas 10y ago

This kind of nuanced thinking will get you downvoted on hacker news, don't you know?

mjohn 10y ago

Most of the recent improvements have been in developing countries, because for a long time there have been a minuscule number of people in the US living on less that $1.9 a day. For some sub-populations of the US things have gotten significantly worse in the past few decades and we should do something to help. Nonetheless, I think it's worth celebrating a reduction in the global rate of extreme poverty from 64% in 1960 to 9.6% in 2015. It's also worth noting that the estimates are adjusted for inflation and price differences between countries, so changes in cost of living should not be a significant factor (even though adjusting historic data for inflation is imperfect).

rconti 10y ago

Why should I accept one person's opinion that a theoretical "absolutely miserable" life in the US is worse than living in extreme poverty over, you know, actual data? We all have the agency to allocate our resources as we wish; not being in extreme poverty means that you have more resources to allocate to improving your condition. Also, is neoliberalism about dividing people up by minority status and then ensuring diversity in our oppressorship? Or is it about reducing everyone to rational market actors and abstracting away everything else? I can't quite tell. You can use lots of fancy thought-piece buzzwords but I don't see how it makes the content itself thought-provoking.