The Expressway to Serfdom

In case you were wondering why the American economy (well OK, the entire world economic system) seems to be sliding into FUBAR territory, here's an answer:

How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves

So the question is this: given that the crises [...] are predictable effects of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and financial markets, given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life?

[snip]

The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. US oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, were all established to promote this project. Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.

But there's so much more: the media, political bullying, the groves of academe. Read on and learn how futile "democracy" and "populism" really are in the face of this neoliberal virus. David Harvey's Brief History of Neoliberalism now seems to be the essential text about this stark parasitic ideology.

So. How do we get rid of it? Encourage global citizens to study up on the inspiring plutocrat-liberation theology of the Mont Pelerin Society? Or better yet: plaster the world with inspiring quotations from neoliberal prophet Friedrich Hayek! Such as this paleo-Darwinist doozy which probably doesn't play too well in Hibbing: Capitalism created the proletariat, but not by making anybody worse off; rather by enabling many to survive who would not otherwise have done so. Thank heavens the proletariat can breed too, otherwise there wouldn't be these hands typing this post!