The thoroughly integrated parasitical financial ideology of individual income scarcity and thus systemic austerity.

It is a dramatization of the curse of Adam, the obsessive dead letter of the law instead of its spirit, religiosity instead of spirituality and the denial-unconsciousness of grace.

Let us have a Wisdomics via monetary grace as in Gifting.

E:  In spite of the fact that Bourdieu’s article has some tough spots, he found it useful. Along the way I offered this paraphrase of the first paragraph (not the one Lars cites):
“the dominant economic order is pure and perfect with predictable consequences that responds to its adversaries through its [financially and police-powered] “armed” institutions with these policies: reduced labor costs, reduced public expenditures [and I would add specifically privatization and plundering of public assets] and making work more “flexible” [meaning cutting perks and other job-security stuff such as pensions]; this is its scientific description of reality.” My friend found this helped clear up the rough spots he encountered.

I went on to say:
“stressing the focus on individuality that characterizes neoliberalism and economic orthodoxy, I think Bourdieu’s partly saying (correctly) that the ideology denies or omits the social aspects that are necessary in a truly functioning political economy. … his criticism about individuality is correct. So is the criticism about the focus on mathematical purity. It’s all an illusion that has come to dominate us.

“I have my own explanation for this: I call orthodox economics the emperor’s clothes, and the habardashing intentional. I can even date it back to about 150 years ago, to about 1870, when the referenced Walrasian mathematics fascination really took hold. And the ideology is crafted to hide the naked brutality of the empire of corporate capital rule.From about 1890 we have evidence of intent, backed by big finance, to promote an ideology to counter the popularity of both Henry George and Karl Marx (interesting that George disliked Marxism). I was told explicitly in grad school (the 1960s) that alternatives to the orthodoxy were verboten and that one of them, called “institutional economics”, was passe.

“I am happy to call this a conspiracy of deceit, and if such was even possible and I were younger with deep pockets I would bring a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) lawsuit against the entire economics profession for perpetuating this fraud.”

I think some of the confusion about the term “neoliberal” may lie in the different meanings of the word “liberal” in the American versus the British systems. Although in both systems, patriarchal as they still are, the equality of liberty with property ownership still holds sway.

I welcome any comments on these observations.

Me:  They’re all interesting bits and pieces of the problem, but not its essence.

The essence of neo-liberalism is the oppressively enforced monopolistic monetary and financial paradigm of Debt Only.

Science is reductionistic and fears to declare a truth. Wisdom is scientifically informed integrative and wholistic thought.

New paradigms being singular concepts that define new patterns are the quintessential integration of the opposites of mental essence and temporal pattern. Paradigm perception is thus thinking and observing with wisdom.

E:   What do you think “empire of corporate capital rule” refers to if it is a “bit and piece”? Where, if not there, do you think “oppressively enforced monopolistic monetary and financial” resides?

In spite of my own consistent focus on the power of predatory corporate capital (a phrase i prefer to “capitalism”), I tend to resist ideologies that have “the answer”.

And every time I hear the word “paradigm” I burst into a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. Can’t help it.

Me:  Keep focusing on the FINANCIAL corporate power…and you’ll find the true mark.

Paradigms hold the most power and create the most beneficial change. Don’t react to it…just look at it.

That after all is what the scientific are supposed to do…and the wise do by practicing integrative thinking and self actualization.

Me:   Steve Keen recently gave a presentation to the shifting paradigms conference at the Aberdeen Political Economy Group he called The Incredible Inertness of Paradigm Changes in Economics. It was both insightful regarding energy and yet also typically blind to why genuine paradigm change has not come to economics, namely the enforced de-stabilizing costs of the monetary and financial paradigm of Debt Only as the sole form and vehicle for the distribution of credit/money…..in effect for the culturally inured length of the entire history of human civilization.

In other words the economic paradigm is inert….because the deepest and most longstanding ECONOMIC problem IS THE CURRENT MONETARY AND FINANCIAL PARADIGM. First things first. It helps with knowledge and perspective.

Finance says it costs too much to have a stable economy, to have a stable empire and to survive ecologically (how f@%king insane is that?)….because there can be no other monetary and financial paradigm than Debt and its additional costs saturated before, during and after the productive process which actually ends at retail sale, but must be increasingly and parasitically extended beyond that point to keep private finance viable.

But what if a new paradigm of Monetary Gifting were to be integrated into the productive process and became the new dominant force? Then you could have a secure psychologically rejuvenated populace in a system that was stably free flowing and prosperous for all competitive and ethical enterprise. Then finance could be utilized to beneficially assist all economic agents individual and commercial and be used to reduce costs at retail sale with a 50% discount/rebate monetary policy…and with an additional 50% discount/rebate policy at the point of note signing for all big ticket green consumer products and resources could be a bottom up way of hugely jump starting a consumer assist to the ecological problem.

Finally, if excess costs and inflation are no longer ways that finance can enforce the sluggishness of the economy and the inertness of paradigm change then the funding of any and all mega projects to reverse the effects of the laws of thermo-dynamics, like the off planeting of most production where such wasted energy dissipates into the cosmos….could all be SANELY begun with post haste.

Consider it.

DT:  Craig, mathematically you are just saying that in our current way of thinking debt is a constant; but if gifting is to become the new FORCE you will STILL have a constant.

The point of a paradigm, surely, is that it is not merely a new way of doing things but a new way of SEEING things.

Me:  Dave,
I’m saying that the concept of Debt ONLY is a monopolistic paradigm. I’m not here to destroy debt. Debt will continue after Monetary Gifting becomes the new PRIMARY paradigm, Gifting will not become the new monopoly paradigm.

You’re quite right that a new paradigm is a new way of SEEING things. There is a always a cognitive aspect to a paradigm right along with its temporal effects. In fact, as I have posted here many times, a new paradigm is a single defining concept that changes an entire pattern IN THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE VIA THE ALIGNED POLICIES IT ENABLES. It is thus an elemental integration of both the mental and the temporal, and as wisdom is the very process of the integration of the particles of truths, workabilities, applicabilities and highest ethical considerations in apparent opposites, paradigm perception is thus wisdom in the body of knowledge/area of human endeavor the new paradigm applies to.

Data gathering, mathematical computation and theoretical modeling are all well and good, but are all on a lower level of mental integration than the perception of paradigms.

Why would we want to only use lower levels of integration when higher levels exist and will have larger, greater and more beneficial effects???