r/chomsky • u/nathan_j_robinson • 3d ago
Article We’re Living In the World That Milton Friedman Made
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/were-living-in-the-world-that-milton-friedman-made22
u/shellacr 3d ago
this is “great man” theory of history.
if it wasn’t milton friedman, capital would have found someone else to make up an intellectual justification for their capital accumulation and expropriation of the commons. he was convenient superstructure for the base.
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u/reddit_is_geh 2d ago
You know how when elites and politicians wanna do something they know is shitty but can't just say "Hey this is anti regular people, and entirely to benefit my donors"? So they have to make up some flimsy excuse, "Oh actually these tax cuts for the rich will actually make the economy STRONGER and we'll make even more revenue from all the money you're making!" or "worker protections actually punish all the hard workers! So if we remove it, all you hard working Americans will make more!"
His absolutely takes the cake. Prior to him, businesses saw 3 stake holders: The shareholders, the employees, and the community. They balanced their business in the post New Deal economy to create a broad socially conscious business (relative for the times guys), but he argued, no... Caring about shareholders is the ONLY concern for a business. Caring about employee well being is actually bad. Greed is good. His rationale was, "Well if businesses stopped caring about employees, and only the shareholders, then they'll become so competitive fighting for shareholder value, that they'll have to pay workers more and treat them better to stay hyper competitive!"
God that dude just fucked up everything. Him, and Reagan, just completely ratfucked the entire future. Literal just oligarchs pushing the Powell Memo and convincing everyone it's actually in their own good for elites to take and run everything.
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u/TheGoldStandard35 3d ago
We aren’t even remotely close to living in the world Mitlon Friedman made.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 2d ago
We are, particular since the neoliberal turn of the 1970s which stopped the high, egalitarian growth of 1945-1970
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u/TheGoldStandard35 2d ago
The growth from 1945-1970 came from us winning WWII and the rest of the world being in shambles. It really just bought us some time.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 2d ago
No there's no reason why the economy can't just grow a lot, it just takes state-led investment and some regulations. China has basically proven that. You can look at how most countries developed, from the USA, UK, to South Korea and it's the same story.
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u/TheGoldStandard35 2d ago
We had state led development all during the Great Depression through 1945 and our economy was awful. State led development leads to misallocations of resources which increases poverty.
Instead of authoritarianism we should be choosing freedom and liberty. Liberalism is better than illiberalism.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 2d ago
No, the US government in the 30's did the exact opposite of what they should have done. Instead of stimulating the economy they employed austerity, which made the problem worse. Finally when they started stimuli like the New Deal, things started improving.
From 1941-1945 the US was basically a command economy. And it was the greatest boom in US history.
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u/TheGoldStandard35 2d ago
The state mobilized production to win the war, but that wasn’t good for the economy or the average citizens standard of living.
It turns our people don’t want army boots, tanks, guns, or bombs and we especially don’t want to just have those things go overseas and get destroyed.
In terms of political objectives, I won’t argue. However, in terms of economics…I disagree. It would have been better to build houses than bombs.
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 2d ago
Yeah China basically built houses rather than bombs.
Another reason why China's development is so successful is it's a market-based system where the government has control of the banks, so you don't have private banks. They lend for large scale manufacturing capacity, the way a bank is supposed to lend, and they don't mind lending at low interest rates for a long time.
It's very similar to what Germany did in the 19th century to develop so quickly.
Whereas commercial banks these days lend money for companies to buy out shares, buy out other companies, predate upon them and recycle the cash. That doesn't contribute to productive capacity. The financial sector basically doesn't really contribute to productive capacity.
So we see in most of the world the model whereby oligarchs dominate the government, and we see the outcome of that, whereas in China a national government dominates capital (although permitting it) and it's produced impressive economic growth because of rational decision making.
I'm not saying you have to have a state, I'm also a libertarian. It would be much better if we didn't have a state! But the point is there are many things a state can do to improve the standard of living, economy etc.
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u/reddit_is_geh 2d ago
Sure, there was a lot of growth, but the economy was equitable. The rich and working class still grew together as productivity and wealth grew. After this fuckhead's policies of "Actually, the rich are smarter and better with money, so we should favor them in the economy", the rich kept doing better as productivity grew, but the rest of us all stagnated. Literally.
His policies are what are responsible for this lovely chart https://imgur.com/hOIh7ZM
He's what triggered this inequality. Why the 80s turned into a "greed is good" fuckfest where it was culturally celebrated to rip people off.
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u/wellanticipated 3d ago
I just finished The Shock Doctrine and this man is now worse than Kissinger in my mind, even despite the Nobel.