The Notional Economy Is Having Its Comeuppance

The Neoliberal Free Market Model, Based On Speculative Extraction Is Coming Apart.

Ram Mohan Susarla
Published in
3 min readOct 11, 2024

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Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Ever since President Nixon abandoned the Gold Standard by unilaterally pulling the United States out of the then prevailing pegging of the US Dollar to Gold, the world has been in a speculative frenzy of sorts, wherein we are making more money from investing in “notional” assets, rather than physical ones. In short, we’ve gone from building houses to renting them for profit. Of course, we still build factories and the like, but, the “beef” is in making money off stocks and working in services, rather on the shopfloor or in industries.

This “system” prevalent since the 1970s gave us Free Trade, Migration, the Information Technology industry, the Entertainment sector, and most importantly, Financial Services. Known as Neoliberalism, this model emphasizes the overarching importance of Unfettered Markets, free from governmental interference. Most of the “returns” in the Neoliberal economies are “earned” through exchange of “notional” means of production rather than “real” investments.

When Capital is deployed in the service of such ethereal purposes, there is a disproportionate allocation of it towards the Caputalists rather than the workers. Mind you, this was what Marx had railed…

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Ram Mohan Susarla
Ram’s Ramblings

Writer seeking metaphysical fulfillment by publishing meditations and ruminations about the world.