“To interpret the government as a problem is to literally revert to anarchy.”
Part I
The most destructive economic ideology conceived since the advent of the Marxism is neoliberalism. In a strict sense, neoliberalism is not an ideology but a policy to better overcome the challenge of Marxist socialism. It does not have a set of ideas but more of a repetitive denunciation of socialism.
The core of neoliberalism is to reduce tariff and eliminate other forms of trade barriers, the liberalization of international capital, and the curtailment of trade unions in disregard of the security of tenure of the workers such as the legalization of outsourcing. Even China refrained from using the term “globalization” in favor of multilateralism and inclusiveness especially after that the Trump administration gave it a bad connotation called “backwater nationalism”.
Neoliberalism came about after the rise of protectionism consequent to the serious trade deficit after the US decoupled its currency from the gold standard and due to the US unlimited involvement in war promoted by its own arms industry. They all contributed to nibbling at the very economic system which the neoliberals sought to protect.
The neoliberals treated their emergence as epochal, beginning in their bloody riot at Tiananmen square in Beijing in June 1989, followed by a coup that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in August 1991 to later on rip apart the monolithic ideology of Marxist socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought untold suffering to its people. Prior to that, the neoliberals tore down the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
The events that unfolded became their cry to denounce state-control in businesses. State-control in business was perceived as inefficient, laden with corrupt government bureaucrats, and stands as a symbol of a parasitic society of which existence is dependent on the taxes collected. This is the same shrill of denunciation parroted by pro-American hecklers in the Liberal Party and their shameless cabal. US President Ronald Reagan outlined his concept of neoliberalism when he said, “government is not the solution to our problem, but the government is the problem.”
To interpret the government as a problem is to literally revert to anarchy. The existence of society is predicated on the existence of social order. The government is the highest form of social order and all must abide by what is now understood as the fundamental law of the land.
Reagan and many of his acolytes overlooked that social order allowed society to advance, loosely interpreted as civilization. Science and civilization will not gain headway had it not for the intervention of social order. There will be chaos such that the capitalist theory of property rights will never come to the mind of great libertarian political thinkers. Many blindly subscribed to the ideology of neoliberalism not knowing that it is like a trip to “neverland.”
The neoliberals woefully badmouth the government forgetting that society owes its existence to the government. The neoliberals take the state as the oppressor rather than as protector of the people. They spread lies that the government is corrupt, lorded by inefficient bureaucrats, syndicated cheaters, and sinecure employees. Their propaganda was conditioned to pollute the mind for people not to pay their taxes on the premise that taxes are likely to be pocketed through corruption, thus justifying Reagan’s heathen theory that “government is not the solution to our problem, but government is the problem.”
It was the neoliberals and their LP counterpart that triggered the demand for the reduction in the payment of income, corporate and property taxes, demanded grant of bailout to sinking corporations irrespective whether the financial collapse is due to corruption, granted tax exemption to the Church and charitable organizations, and erased altogether the concept of public welfare. Many institutional organizations such as educational, cultural, etc. were shifted as rightfully belonging to private corporations, which today is used to secure tax exemption, to dissuade public opinion and to tamper election results.
In the economy which is the heart of the neoliberal ideology, they worked for the abolition of price controls even if the business was granted on the basis of franchise. The neoliberals sought to abolish regulation of tuition fees, rate of electricity, cost of transportation and purposely privatized roads and highways to justify the collection of exorbitant toll fees in violation of Section 6, Article III of the Constitution to effectively limit the right of one to travel.
To charge the public for the use of any public utility on top of the taxes they pay is to erase altogether the concept of public service. In effect, the neoliberals sought to fry the people in its lard to get back their investment to justify the practice of usury.
Liberal Party and their yellow confederate allowed the Constitution to exempt the church from paying all forms of taxes, forgetting that clerics who refuse to pay taxes to the government equally commit sin and should be denied their right to share the benefit and protection of the state. The militant Left today practically stands as a bouncer because of their inexplicable alliance in defense of human rights.
Even the sale of basic commodities such as rice, corn, meat, fish, and poultry products necessary to the survival of man was exempted from regulation. The lifting of regulation such as control and subsidy became plausible after these economic cannibals privatized the country’s irrigation system and disposed of the country’s fertilizer plant only to be dismantled by the buyer in favor of importation.
The Chicago economists, as the leading proponents of neoliberalism, advocated the printing of money to release the economy from the burden of the supply side and called it “quantitative easing.” Milton Freidman was the same fellow who advocated the decoupling of the dollar from the gold standard to boost production. He again sought to have himself vindicated by using public funds to salvage big business from sinking. The process was clever which some say amounted to swindling the American public of the taxes they pay.
The technique started with the printing of money to abate the anticipated recession in 2008-2009. The central banks of countries around the world entered uncharted territory when they began to purchase through the US Federal Reserve long-term securities such as Treasury bills and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). This allowed the US federal reserve to pump money into the financial system to stave off the collapse of the US banking system. The unexpected flood of cash lowered interest rates, and everything went back again to normal. The neoliberals called it “quantitative easing.”
Neoliberals compartmentalize everything, unmindful that the lending of US treasury bills will remain a debt that accumulates and has interest that must be paid. In other words, the neoliberals allowed the US economy to live only for the day. Worse, the Philippines, being a member of the World Bank, has to contribute its share of lending to the US to make the system of easing work in its favor.
The Liberal Party and their cabal of hypocrites are howling left and right to announce to the whole world that the Duterte administration has mired the country in a debt trap to China because of the projects mostly financed by it. Yet, not a word was heard from them that the US is directly borrowing from our currency reserve to finance its respirator to sustain life to its policy of quantitative easing.