{"id":62318,"date":"2022-03-29T07:43:11","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T12:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62318"},"modified":"2022-03-29T07:43:11","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T12:43:11","slug":"the-world-on-the-brink-of-the-abyss-looking-at-the-real-danger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62318","title":{"rendered":"The world on the brink of the abyss. Looking at the real danger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The world on the brink of the abyss. Looking at the real danger<\/a><\/h3>\n

The neoliberal ideology of unrestrained markets has led to a global crisis. Humanity now faces an existential threat as the result of global dominance by corporations, whose ultimate goal is at odds with human flourishing<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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Back in 1947, as the world was rebuilding from the destruction of the Second World War, a few dozen free-market ideologues met in a luxury Swiss resort to form the Mont Pelerin Society\u2014an organization devoted to\u00a0spreading the ideology of neoliberalism<\/a>\u00a0throughout the world. Their ideas\u2014that the free market should dominate virtually all aspects of society, that regulations should be dismantled, and that individual liberty should eclipse all other considerations of fairness, equity, or community welfare\u2014were considered fanatical at the time. Over three decades, though, financed by wealthy donors, they assiduously established networks of academics, businessmen, economists, journalists, and politicians in global centers of power.<\/p>\n

When the stagflation crisis of the 1970s threw classic Keynesian economics into disrepute, their moment of opportunity arrived. By 1985, with free market disciples Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher entrenched in power, they initiated a campaign to systematically transform virtually all aspects of life into an unrestrained marketplace, where everything could be bought and sold to the highest bidder, subject to no moral scruple. They crippled trade unions, tore up social safety nets, reduced tax rates for the wealthy, eliminated regulations, and instituted a massive transfer of wealth from society at large to the uber-elite.<\/p>\n

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Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher helped initiate the neoliberal takeover of global politics, economics, and media. (Photo by Ron Galella\/WireImage)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world on the brink of the abyss. Looking at the real danger The neoliberal ideology of unrestrained markets has led to a global crisis. Humanity now faces an existential threat as the result of global dominance by corporations, whose ultimate goal is at odds with human flourishing Back in 1947, as the world was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,6,7],"tags":[171,335,32803,16819,32804,6996],"class_list":["post-62318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-corporations","tag-free-markets","tag-inside-over","tag-jeremy-lent","tag-mont-pelerin-society","tag-neoliberalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62319,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62318\/revisions\/62319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}