The neoliberal experiment
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on 24 August 2017
When Margaret Thatcher started explaining to us that running a country was similar to balancing the family budget and almost exactly like running a grocery shop, we didn’t know it but she was changing the world. Previously, people had understood that being part of a family, a community, bringing up children, providing for others, mucking in and sharing, living and forgiving, was all one thing, and that knowing the price of everything was quite another. The economic philosophies that so deeply influenced Thatcher and others, have come to be known as neoliberalism. Today, even the IMF is starting to acknowledge that there must be limits to neoliberal ideology.
Nearly 40 years ago, we were told that everything was a market, and that markets — when free — were wiser and cleverer than anything anyone could imagine. There was no need to make, mend or grow anything, if others could fulfil our needs cheaper. There was no need to control the flow of capital or of people into and out of any place, as each competing cog would find its own role. Competition was the best way to settle anything, so pupils, teachers and schools should be scored, measured and ranked, as should health care and everything else.
Jersey became an offshore tax island, providing another degree of freedom for international capital. All over the UK, the USA and elsewhere, societies fragmented, workplaces were dismantled, transport, health, education and just about everything else was privatised. Entire generations have now been brought up in a world where competition is key, where economic growth is paramount and where everything is just another commodity to be bought or sold for a good return.
It is hard to remember now that these are not facts of life but intellectual constructs, experiments, introduced quite consciously upon our society by people who had no idea if they would work, but had gained the power — and had the political leaning — to want to find out.
It is not surprising that the de-skilled and apparently unwanted who have sunk to the economic bottom of the various ruthless and competitive heaps are not happy with this. The 1% and the 0.01% are doing increasingly well, but the riots on the streets of the USA, the terrorism on the streets in Europe, and the collapse of the ecosystems under all our feet are testaments — evidence — that this experiment is coming to an end.


