What is neoliberalism? It is the extension of market dominance to all spheres of social life, fostered and enforced by the state. In economic policy, this means deregulation, privatization, and financialization. In culture, it means untrammeled marketing and the commoditization of everyday life, including the intimate sphere. In law, it means consumer sovereignty and a restrictive conception of the public interest. In education, it means the replacement of public by private (i.e., business) support for schools, universities, and research, with a corresponding shift of influence over hiring, curriculum and research. In civil society, it means private control over the media and private funding of political parties, with the resulting control of both by business and the ultra-rich. The upshot of this political-economic regime is prosperity for Wall Street, Big Tech, and a few other favored industries. For intellectuals - at least those who have not sold themselves to business or the state, which is actually a pretty good definition of public intellectuals - it means austerity, a squeezing of the creative economy, which is a gift economy, the antithesis of a market economy. For everyone, it means a narrowing of horizons.
–George Scialabba
It grinds up your bones
And drinks the living marrow
Your life means less
Than the fall of a sparrow
It puts a toll booth on your heart
Sucks the life out of culture
It worships only war
And prays to the Vulture
It turns love into commerce
And siphons every nickel
It drinks from the firehose
And offers you a trickle
Financialize and privatize
And profit from inflation
Jeopardize and terrorize
To drain a bleeding nation
by Richard W. Bray
Tags: George Scialabba, Graywalls, Hamlet, neoliberalism, Northeast Portland homeless camp tents, Poetry, The Shock Doctrine, William Shakespeare
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