Short note from Noam Chomsky

1 Comment Posted by on March 19, 2017

March 12, 2017

Emanuel Pastreich:

Many youth feel trapped. They feel that they live in a system that puts them at a disadvantage and does little to help them. They feel misunderstood and they feel that there is an absolute gap between themselves and those who seem to be deciding how things are done, how society is run. Why do they feel that way?

Noam Chomsky:

Contemporary neoliberalism has created what some call a “precariat” – people living a precarious existence, on their own, cast in a hostile market system with little solidarity, mutual support, stability and security.

 

Articles, Uncategorized

One response to “Short note from Noam Chomsky”

  1. Craig March 19, 2017 at 5:50 pm

    I’m not sure how this is insightful. This has been true in all times and places throughout history. What was wore than having a hostile (rigged) market system was usually having to rely on the State; resources were usually doled out based on political favouritism or personality, and the vast majority people suffered as a result. I;m thinking here of the old Soviet Union, definitely of the DPRK, or of feudal Europe. All of these were confiscatory selective redistribution states.

    It would be nice if the government would stop favouring some corporate winners and would allow, say, things like the banks or overbearing corporations to go bankrupt. There’s no reason in Korea, for example, for the government to be helping Chaebol; it should be allowing them to fail when they fail. Nor should, say, the national customs department be a branch service of Lotte, blocking competition from abroad by enforcing onerous taxes so that Lotte and other online distributors can benefit from higher prices and monopolies.

    If we could just get the government to start undermining rather than supporting monopolies, all of this would work far better. Not perfectly, but far better.

    Ultimately, the problem is always traceable to the State.

    The state needs to be incubating competition so that young people can be entrepreneurs, challenging the status quo. Right now, the State seems to be doing its best to preserve the power of those who already have it. That was baked into Park Chung Hee’s economic model from the beginning, and it’s a serious flaw in the current system.

    Reply

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