Deregulation Hysteria Is Building Inside the Beltway

 Some republican legislator excited about Grump's support for deregulating the economy: 

“There may be more bang for the buck in terms of growing our economy…making regulatory changes, get the impediments out of the way, let those job creators and entrepreneurs really be able to go to work.”

Letters from an American Historian 

I liked Gary Gerstle's book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order (2022), especially the history stuff about the fall of the New Deal (1932-1979) period and the rise of Neoliberal period (1980 to when remains a question), but the "fall" of the neoliberal order in his book title still seemed a tad presumptuous even after finishing his argument. 

The recent election, for instance, was driven by revenge of the neoliberal order as much as it was culture war stupidity. Deregulatory hype like the above quote is Neolib reaction, pure and simple. They're back and never went away really.   

And how many times have we heard this one: if only we'd get taxes and regulations off the backs of our enterprising captains of industry they'd create all the jobs and wealth and prosperity America could ever possibly need. Free market or halcyon deregulated business conditions are hyped as this romantic Shangri-La fantasy forever frustrated by government meddling. But, we already know what big businesses, corporations, will in fact do when unfettered by government regulations. We have nearly two centuries of evidence of what they do, actually. 

We know what the free marketeers do when unregulated: 1) Big business interests will peddle products that are dangerous, poisonous, and addictive if not regulated. 2) Big employers will squeeze labor to the last drop, enslave workers if possible, and work children and adults for less than living wages, and then have the gall to construct an ideology out of these practices that contends that their business success and productive "efficiencies" depend on disciplining labor like this, most of whom would fall into lazy waste without the order their jobs provide. And 3) As much as they can get away with, large corporations have always "externalized" the expenses of doing business, their costs of production, pushing carbon emissions and other pollutants onto the community or public commons openly or if need be they will take extraordinary measures to dump their wastes into the environment to avoid the expense of disposing of them safely. Again, unless regulated this is what many so-called free market businesses will do and have been doing for 150 years routinely. 

The free market dogma has gotten so bad of late that the billionaires and oligarchy are opposing green energy innovations and obstructing economic reforms with that old saw about how saving the planet is bad for the economy. One imagines making the planet uninhabitable won't be very good for the economy either. 

Anyway, we do know what big corporations and private equity firms do when deregulated: they lowball and chisel labor, breaking unions, off-shoring labor, whatever they have to do, understaff and overstretch their frontline workers, externalize all the costs they can, and then skim off as much as they can in profits for as long as they can, and then sell off their remaining assets for parts. And just like they've never seen a tax or regulation they like, the profit margins from this process, their take, is never enough, of course. This go-go yuppie sales hustle hype is always in pursuit of the next bull market bubble and will most likely fizzle with a bunch of stock buybacks or another crypto bubble meltdown. 

It's in the government's interest to increase commercial activity but not to leave the foxes guarding the henhouse. From a macro economic standpoint it's evident at this point that the neoliberal order isn't so much pro economic growth as it is class war redistribution and pro-billionaire wealth hoarding. If the richies had a pound of sense they'd be leaning hard into economic development in a green energy transition and pay living wages. But they don't. 

And if nothing else, maybe this assassination of a healthcare CEO, I read today they found a backpack, presumably owned by the gunman, full of Monopoly money (not kidding), might give some sobering pause to the austerity Hawks lining up to turn the screws on health care and other essential services crucial to big super-majorities of the population. 

Stay tuned. 

What Will We Do With Our Free Power?

The shocking rise of solar is reshaping the energy landscape 

“I simply cannot believe where we are with solar,” says Jenny Chase, the BloombergNEF analyst and quite possibly the person in the world who knows the most about the business of turning the light of the sun into electricity. “And if you’d told me nearly 20 years ago what would be the case now, 20 years later,” she continues, “I would have just said you were crazy. I would have laughed in your face. There is genuinely a revolution happening.” By just 2030, Chase estimates, solar power will be absolutely and reliably free during the sunny parts of the day for much of the year “pretty much everywhere.”

David Wallace-Wells in NY Times 

The expert on turning solar into electricity thought free solar was crazy 20 years ago and I could swear people were still complaining only 10-15 years ago that solar would never be cheap enough to compete with natural gas or whatever fossil fuel. So what I want to know is how the experts got this so wrong? Not so much so as to have someone to blame but maybe their skepticism reflects some old ways of thinking, free market ideology, innovation must come only from private investment based on market demand, stuff like that, that we ought to be rethinking sooner rather than later? Maybe with some common sense "Industrial Policy" 20 years ago we might already have free solar power? As for 'What Will We Do With Our Free Power?' Well, if we leave its production and distribution entirely up to private industry I'm going way out on a limb and guessing we won't likely be giving it away free to anybody any time soon.  

The Really-Existing Mixed Economy and the Cold War Either/Or Binary

 Why Urbanism Failed? Spoiler: Capitalism Killed It. Charles Mudede, The Stranger April 24, 2024

Good stuff on Keynes but why I still resist the capitalism vs socialism binary: it reflexively registers with everyone (Americans, at any rate) as an either/or proposition: private property or no private property. And so as a critique of capitalism it's stuck in a Cold War either/or muddle and ends up bolstering capitalist dogma. 

People like private property rights and generally want more private property; they almost universally do not want less private property (even the people with way too much of it, I gather). Talk supporting the abolition of private property turns people off. 

Yes, we need less unfettered free market capitalist governance and more democratic socialist governance but this refers to the reality that the economy and governance are in fact inseparable,  we live in a mixed economy, and we live in that mixed economy with a corrosive political fiction that elevates the economy over everything else in society. 

In short, we need a sustainable Green New Deal hybrid of democratic socialism and capitalism. Either/or conceptions of capitalism vs socialism are a zombie Cold War fantasy and get in the way of a really-existing progressive hybrid world where urbanism can be revived and thrive. 

But fat chance of any great compromise in the progress of liberal enlightenment coming together anytime soon, perhaps, but my gut still says much closer to reality (or even desirable) than the total eradication of capitalism and/or private property. There, I said it; stodgy Neo-Keynesian liberalism, perhaps, but more practical and less abstract than, frankly, dated binary capitalism vs socialism formulations.  

Anyway, beyond my pet peeve about the lingering intellectual muddle of the Cold War, and fear that I'm likely not radical revolutionary enough for Mr. Mudede or The Stranger, I'm most definitely on their side in this struggle, and agree with everything in this story: 

Seattle Revives the Bullshit Economics of Low Wages

Should we survive corporate rule's effort to cook the planet so as to preserve their exorbitant profit-seeking rates of return, in the ensuing changes, adapting reforms, any corporation, publicly traded or large scale business (or government office, for that matter), paying less than a living wage will appear to us as an astonishing aberration, obviously exploitation of labor, and even criminal expropriation. And failure of a rich business to pay its fair share in taxes for the public infrastructure that supports social prosperity will appear obviously predatory; and their claims that they cannot afford living wages or cleaning up the environment an intolerable gaslighting absurdity.  

And only then will it become apparent to everyone that business success does not require such kleptocratic, hoarding, and monopolizing extremes as we indulge and glorify today. In fact, free markets may create Billionaires but they are always lowballing labor and squeezing small businesses, evading taxes, and evading responsibility for their contributions to global warming and destruction of the environment.

I believe raising wages, rent controls, and price controls, strategically applied, are expansionary. And tax cuts for the rich, tax evasion, and obstructing technological innovations in sustainable energy production are in the long-run deflationary and, worst of all, pushing the world towards more catastrophe.