Neoliberal Capitalism

Send Lazarus ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 65-93
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Eggemeier ◽  
Peter Joseph Fritz
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Life Itself

This chapter’s verdict on neoliberalism both corroborates the papal diagnosis and makes it more damning. Neoliberalism, both in the principles of its major theorists and in the facts of its execution, is devotion to the global economy as an inscrutable deity, which must be protected by legal and political institutions. The neoliberal project was first conceived in the 1930s, out of a desire by theorists and businesspeople to stave off the threat to global capitalism posed by the demos, the mass of the world’s population. It was first broadly enacted in the 1970s as a strategy of class warfare. Gradually neoliberalism became common sense, a standard for judging what reality is, via a transformation of human self-understanding as human capital. As such, neoliberalism came to constitute a comprehensive ethos of sacrifice, including even everyday life itself, that now stands in fundamental conflict with the Catholic ethos of mercy.

scholarly journals Replicating Silicon Valley? Law and Human Capital in the Making of China's Tech Startups

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Li-Wen LIN
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
High Velocity ◽  
Stock Options ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Global Policy ◽  
The Common ◽  
Innovation Economy

Abstract The rise of China's tech companies in the global economy raises an urgent need to understand how China incubates its tech startups. China's tech startup ecosystem presents two puzzling legal arrangements for human capital in light of Silicon Valley's experience, the co-existence of enforceable non-compete agreements and the high-velocity labour market, and the common use of stock options with a buyback norm. This article delves into the peculiarities of China's legal and political institutions to resolve these legal puzzles. This article also speaks to a global policy debate about the replicability of Silicon Valley and the necessity of such replication. The Chinese experience offers opposite examples showing the replication complexity: replication yet with deformed practices, and non-replication yet with similar outcomes. The findings suggest that there is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all model for creating an innovation economy.

Luxus

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Featherstone
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Psychoanalytic Concept ◽  
Pure Experience ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Contemporary Context

In this article, I seek to explore the psychopolitical significance of the contemporary idea of luxury through reference to the Roman concept of luxus, which means excess, extravagance, indulgence, and debauchery. In the first section of the article, I examine the politics of the idea of luxus in the Roman context through a discussion of the relationship between the emperor Nero, who pushed luxury toward its psychopathic limits, and the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who championed mos maiorum, the moral life of moderation, and a utopia of balance and proportion. In order to further my analysis of the pure experience of luxus, which exceeds any object that is always too base and objective to be truly luxurious, I seek to psychoanalyze Nero’s pursuit of the orgy of luxus through reference to Sigmund Freud’s discussion of Thanatos in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In that work, Freud suggests that the luxurious excess of pleasure, hyperpleasure beyond this or that incarnation of pleasure, resides in the endless repetition of pleasure we find in the experience of addiction, which eventually leads the user to overdose into luxurious space where the user dissolves into a kind of universal substance beyond life itself. It is this psychoanalytic concept of luxus, which describes the experience of luxury beyond its objective limits, that I take forward in the final section of the article. Here, I seek to move beyond Nero and Freud to show how we can understand the concept of luxus, which is beyond the relative luxury we might associate with the possession of this or that object, in the contemporary context of global capitalism. I explore neoliberal capitalism, where consumption is endless, through reference to Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share, where economy is less about balancing the books and more about the production of excess that eventually dissolves into what Bataille calls “continuous being”—the universal state of luxury.

Neoliberal Resilience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldo Madariaga
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Economic Shocks ◽  
Gradual Decline ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Western Democracy ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
The Relationship

Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has withstood repeated economic shocks and financial crises to become the hegemonic economic policy worldwide. Why has neoliberalism remained so resilient? What is the relationship between this resiliency and the backsliding of Western democracy? Can democracy survive an increasingly authoritarian neoliberal capitalism? This book answers these questions by bringing the developing world's recent history to the forefront of our thinking about democratic capitalism's future. Looking at four decades of change in four countries once considered to be leading examples of effective neoliberal policy in Latin America and Eastern Europe — Argentina, Chile, Estonia, and Poland — the book examines the domestic actors and institutions responsible for defending neoliberalism. Delving into neoliberalism's political power, the book demonstrates that it is strongest in countries where traditional democratic principles have been slowly and purposefully weakened. It identifies three mechanisms through which coalitions of political, institutional, and financial forces have propagated neoliberalism's success: the privatization of state companies to create a supporting business class, the use of political institutions to block the representation of alternatives in congress, and the constitutionalization of key economic policies to shield them from partisan influence. The book reflects on today's most pressing issues, including the influence of increasing austerity measures and the rise of populism. As a comparative exploration of political economics at the peripheries of global capitalism, the book investigates the tensions between neoliberalism's longevity and democracy's gradual decline.

Transformation of the intellectual capital structure and a growth in the significance of its components – human capital and intellectual property – in today's economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 745-758
Author(s):  
S.N. Larin ◽  
E.Yu. Khrustalev ◽  
N.V. Noakk
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Intellectual Capital ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Accelerated Growth ◽  
Definition Of

Subject. Currently, as the global economy evolves, its innovative components should demonstrate a tendency of accelerated growth as intellectual capital, information technologies, increasing knowledge and digitization of mushrooming production processes. Nowadays, intellectual capital is one of the economic development drivers. However, the economic community is found to have no generally accepted wording of the concept, thus laying the basis for this article. Objectives. The study sums up the analysis of approaches used by the Russian and foreign economists to determining the economic substance of intellectual capital. We also identify the importance of human capital as its components and specify the definition of the concept. Methods. The article overviews and analyzes proceedings by the most renowned authors, which substantiate how the economic substance of intellectual capital should be unveiled, and suggest its definitions. Results. We specified the definition of intellectual capital concerning the current economic development. We suggest integrating a new component into intellectual capital, such as intellectual property, which includes products of intellectual activity and intangible assets. They can be owned by the entity or other legal entities and individuals, including some employees of the entity. Conclusions and Relevance. The specified definition of intellectual capital will help address issues of sustainable economic development and ensure the competitiveness of the Russian entities nationwide and worldwide, since it directly contributes to intellectual capital and its components.

In Lieu of a Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Linarelli ◽  
Margot E Salomon ◽  
Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Current State ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
International Economic Law ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This chapter recaps the main themes of the volume, ie that the international law of the global economy is in a state of disorder. Claims about the justice, fairness, or benefits of the current state of international law as it relates to the global economy are fanciful. A more credible picture emerges when one considers who is protected, against what, and those relations that are valued and those that are not. Moreover, these claims above all require a suspension of a reflective attitude about what international law actually says and does. When it comes to international economic law, power is masked behind a veil of neutrality when it certainly is not neutral in the interests it protects and offends. As for international human rights law, it overlooks the ways in which it props up extreme capitalism foreclosing the possibility of transformative structural change to neoliberal capitalism. In its most radical areas, human rights norms have been blocked from making demands on the design of the global economy precisely because of their transformative potential. Among the central critiques of international law presented in this book is that international law must be justifiable to those who are subject to it.

Placebos and Movies: What Do They Have in Common?

2021 ◽  
pp. 096372142110038
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Benedetti
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Placebo Effect ◽  
Psychological Factors ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Physiological Responses ◽  
Therapeutic Effects ◽  
Physiological Effects ◽  
Placebo Effects ◽  
What Matters

Placebos are fake therapies that can induce real therapeutic effects, called placebo effects. It goes without saying that what matters for inducing a placebo effect is not so much the fake treatment itself, but rather the therapeutic ritual that is carried out, which is capable of triggering psychobiological mechanisms in the patient’s brain. Both laypersons and scientists often accept the phenomenon of the placebo effect with reluctance, as fiction-induced clinical improvements are at odds with common sense. However, it should be emphasized that placebo effects are not surprising after all if one considers that fiction-induced physiological effects occur in everyday life. Movies provide one of the best examples of how fictitious reality can induce psychological and physiological responses, such as fear, love, and tears. In the same way that a horror movie induces fear-related physiological responses, even though the viewer knows everything is fake, so the sight of a syringe may trigger the release of pain-relieving chemicals in the patient’s brain, even if the patient knows there is a fake painkiller inside. From this perspective, placebos can be better conceptualized as rituals, actions, and fictions within a more general framework that emphasizes the power of psychological factors in everyday life, including the healing context.

Human Capital and International Capital Flows: Evidence from China

2021 ◽  
pp. 016001762198942
Author(s):  
Zhenshan Yang ◽  
Yinghao Pan ◽  
Dongqi Sun ◽  
Li Ma
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Capital Flows ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Global Market ◽  
International Capital Flows ◽  
International Capital ◽  
Outward Fdi ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Vector Autoregressive ◽  
External Resources

The pattern of international capital flows has changed dramatically in the process of globalization. In this study, we argue that human capital (HC) facilitates a region’s reversal from being a net recipient of external resources to being an active contributor in the global market. Using a panel vector autoregressive regression method, we examine the relationships among regional HC, foreign direct investment (FDI), and outward FDI during 2004–2015 in China. Our results show that HC plays a key role in both attracting FDI and generating outward FDI. The findings contribute to research on the dynamic capacity building of regions participating in the global economy, especially strengthening HC for local economies participating in the global economy as either investment recipients or contributors.

scholarly journals International Trade and Human Capital Investment with Heterogeneous Firms and Workers: Modeling and Analysis

Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1106
Author(s):  
Jaewon Jung
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Heterogeneous Firms ◽  
Modeling And Analysis ◽  
Trade Model

Though the importance of organizational behavior and human decision processes within firms for the firm performance has largely been recognized in the business and management literature, much less attention has been devoted to studying such implications in the international trade context. This paper develops a general-equilibrium trade model in which heterogeneous workers make an investment decision in acquiring advanced managerial skills and choose their optimal effort level based on their comparative advantage. In doing so, we show how globalization-induced human capital accumulation within firms leads to sustainable economic growth. We also show that workers’ organizational belief and CEO’s managerial vision may be an important element for the human capital formation within firms and for the performance of firms in a global economy.

Conditional Belief and the Ramsey Test

2002 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 215-232
Author(s):  
Scott Sturgeon
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Other ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Conditional Belief ◽  
Ramsey Test ◽  
Fine Grained

Consider the frameS believes that—.Fill it with a conditional, sayIf you eat an Apple, you'll drink a Coke.what makes the result true? More generally, what facts are marked by instances ofS believes (A→C)?In a sense the answer is obious: beliefs are so marked. Yet that bromide leads directly to competing schools of thought. And the reason is simple.Common-sense thinks of belief two ways. Sometimes it sees it as a three-part affair. When so viewed either you believe, disbelieve, or suspend judgment. This take on belief is coarse-grained. It says belief has three flavours: acceptance, rejection, neither. But it's not the only way common-sense thinks of belief. Sometimes it's more subtle: ‘How strong is your faith?’ can be apposite between believers. That signals an important fact. Ordinary practice also treats belief as a fine-grained affair. It speaks of levels of confidence. It admits degrees of belief. It contains a fine-grained take as well. There are two ways belief is seen in everyday life. One is coarse-grained. The other is fine-grained.

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