The Fallacy of Neo liberalism

 

After watching the coverage of the G7 summit in the UK this week, a single thought dawned on me, and that is, our western leaders are all puppets of neoliberalism. For the most part, their rhetoric to the public is the same old same old: building back better, future lucrative trade between nations, and generally patting themselves on the back for handling the COVID 19 pandemic. But that's just it. Nothing will change for the common people around the planet. As many of us know, the entire system is rigged.

It should be quite obvious that nothing of any substantial value will occur in preventing further climate change. The Biden administration can make all the targets for fewer coal emissions and superficial nods at electric cars. Still, the biggest producer of air pollution and pollution in general around the planet is the US military. The amount of bombs, for example, dropped by the US on countries around the planet is beyond measure. But hey, that's modern warfare, plenty of bombs, and economic sanctions with the least amount of 'boots on the ground' as feasibly possible.

In Australia, our illustrious prime minister, Scott Morrison, was banned from the last worldwide climate accord because of his reluctance to meet certain emission targets and his renowned love of coal. Morrison's last electoral win was financially backed by the coal industry. This included the lies that jobs in this sector would be lost if the Labour party came to power. I'm getting at that our current western governments do not care about people, only their donors and economic masters, who are international corporations and banks.

Most people of any compassion would desire the entire world to be vaccinated for COVID 19. However, the oligarchs, the corporate masters, will have nothing of that. Making the vaccine free to developing countries might see a significant drop in COVID cases worldwide. The 1% would not make a profit. These poor countries need to pay for it. Some countries at the G7 summit boasted of vaccines they would give as charity around the world. They claim it would be around 1 billion, but the real number is around 650 million on closer examination. Remember, there are almost 8 billion people on the planet, so this PR gesture doesn't even come close to fixing the problem. Neo-liberalism is about taking care of the wealthy and privatizing the public domain. It's about getting the rich richer and to hell with everybody else.

Poverty and homelessness is on the rise, and particularly so since the beginning of the pandemic. To a certain extent, it is understandable, but governments around the world mismanaged the entire shit show. Certain governments and media have politicized COVID 19 and are continuing to do so in the present time. Some governments have out right lied about it, causing thousands of undeserved deaths. Now they've turned COVID 19 into a profit exercise where only the have nots will lose out.

The conservative party in Australia have a famous catch-cry, and that is, “Private is Better.” Capitalism rules; thus, the government must sell off all public works to private persons, and society will be much better off. As history has shown time and again, this is not the case. With privatization, quality suffers for the sake of pure profit. In this system, only the bottom line takes priority, while people come last. A good example of this was during the first outbreak of COVID 19. In Melbourne, the aged-care facilities had been sold off by the government. In private hands, the quality of care plummeted, resulting in unneeded deaths. When officials finally got off their bureaucratic asses and inspected these facilities, what was revealed was a Pandora box of abuse, hunger, and pitiful conditions. In neoliberal societies, spending more money for better care affects the bottom line, so a few neglected and starving old people didn't matter. In capitalism, profit reigns supreme, and to hell with the peasants.

In a neoliberal society, the middle class and poor are taxed, while the wealthy are not. In fact, lawmakers write legislation creating tax loopholes for the rich, so they can get away from paying any tax at all. For example, during the US Trump administration, the biggest tax law transferred trillions of dollars to the top 5%. It seems the new administration under the democratic party will make these unfair tax laws permanent. I don't understand why there is no more debate about taxing the rich. It should be a natural and logical state of affairs, but our politicians work for them and certainly not for us, the people.

If you want to get a good image in your mind showing the fallacy of neoliberalism, picture a big fat man with a villain mustache stepping on a crowd of poor people. Of course, he is sucking on a big cigar. This is exactly what is happening in real-time and has been more revealed by COVID 19.

So when I watched our world leaders spouting the same old platitudes about how they are making the world a better place, my body cringed, and I knew they were lying.

Neo-liberalism is a fallacy.