the upside down world of neo-liberal economics:
Neo-liberalism assumes that wo/men are hardwired to follow self-interests and that our self-interests are ultimately collectively positive. One can't help thinking what a different vision neoliberal economics would've mapped out for us with its forbidding formulae and graphical illustrations had it begun from the assumption that wo/men are hardwired to cooperate and share. Unfortunately, it follows the same path as many of the early Enlightenment figures with its rather negative view of human nature and optimistic view of the competitive consequences of this negative human nature. Neo-liberalism pre-empts Gordon Gecko—greed is good. When all the wo/men in the market place are greedy together, a spontaneous and ideal order emerges. In this sense, all market places are the same. Pigs, bombs and currency are interchangeable. This private language of measurable movable quantities views the economy as a set of scales that tend in the natural order of things towards balance. As much greed as is possible is satisfied within the constraint of scarce resources. This (with a straight face) is called optimum social welfare. In the competitive nature of the marketplace one wo/man may triumph and accumulate far in excess of the others on the basis of his superior characteristics of greed. This (still with a straight face) is also called optimum social welfare. Everybody had a chance to participate and it is the total satisfaction of greed not the distribution that counts. Competitive greed is the given. Since it is innate it exists in all times and places. As a result, neoliberal economics marginalizes history, geography and institutional rules or rather turns the world of history, geography and institutions upside down.
(...) Neo-liberal individualism means we are free to be different so long as we all behave the same