Nobody said it was gonna be easy.

Over at Naked Capitalism Yves Smith presents a brief history of economic neoliberalism, the fatal flaws and rising economic consensus against global neoliberalism.

The Movement to Replace Neoliberalism Is on the Ascendency – Where Should It Go Next?

Global grassroots groups are scoring victories:

This is because neoliberalism – the broad set of political-economic ideas and policies which have dominated public life over the last 40 years – has failed, in both theory and in practice. It is in the wake of the global financial crisis that these failures have plumbed new depths. Financial instability looms over economies shackled by insufficient investment. Living standards stagnate and work becomes ever more insecure, shattering the implicit bargain of the entire endeavour.

The human costs of this experiment have been enormous, with psychological and non-communicable ill-health becoming the hallmark of a system that cares for little but profit. Inequality, itself linked to ill-health, has grown to levels unseen since the nineteenth century, leading to large power imbalances throughout society. Socio-economic mobility has been further stalled by the erosion of the public realm, from universities to the legal system.

Most pressingly, neoliberalism continues to rely on a growth model that is destroying the biophysical preconditions upon which it relies, increasing the chance of collapse in the climate and other natural systems.

Yves mentions two economic paradigm shift in the past 100 years and throws in a link:

Time for a New Paradigm? Past and Present Transitions in Economic Policy

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.12415/abstract

Yves lays out preliminary underpinnings of a paradigm shift:

Across each period, the process of a shift to a new sets of ideas can be split into three components:

its intellectual and academic underpinning, particularly within economics;

the policies and narratives through which it was expressed in the wider public domain; and

the political processes – notably elections of governments – which enabled it to be implemented and entrenched.

How do we get there from here?

Change Is Driven by an Ecosystem of Influential Organisations and Individuals

How does a paradigmatic shift come about? Change of this scale is conditional on events that erode confidence in the status quo and heighten the legitimacy of alternative ideas. But it is also a function of the preparedness of those movements espousing an alternative. The conditions for change may come by chance, but the change is won by those most prepared to capitalise on crisis. Those seeking a shift away from the post-war consensus knew this and developed an ecosystem of influence to increase the chance that their ideas would win the day if and when crisis came.

(emphasis added)

An ecosystem of influence. Okay. Next, we get a brief history of the Neoliberal paradigm shift:

By the early 1970s, the neoliberal counter-orthodoxy had organised into a transatlantic network of economists, think tanks and journalists. This network and its ideas increasingly populated political parties and government institutions, creating the intellectual conditions for change and ensuring that the neoliberal movement was prepared to capitalise on crisis. When this crisis came, neoliberal ideas entered government, first under the chaotic Labour and Democrat administrations of the late seventies, and later with the election of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

After triumphing in key battles against the commanding institutions of the post-war consensus and New Deal, these administrations scored the ultimate victory when centre-left parties [editBill Clinton and the DLC] adopted major elements of neoliberalism so that even changes of government could no longer halt the march of its ideas.

Yep. We've been royally screwed since the DLC Third Way Centrists joined the Reagan Revolution.

Now Is the Time for the New Economics Movement to Shift to the Next Gear

The problem:

However, outside of one or two notable efforts, we have not seen common narratives or policy solutions emerge. Our conclusion is that this results from material barriers to progress, rather than profound differences between groups. These barriers cover three areas:

the lack of a fully developed intellectual foundation;

the fact that most organisations are non-mainstream actors, or ‘outsiders’, with ‘insider’ or establishment activity still relatively thin; and

the absence of coordination and strategic direction covering a critical mass of the ecosystem, including for communications and media outreach, and funding and resource allocation.

(emphasis added)

Yep. We need a genuine progressive media megaphone, socialist left wing think tanks and substantial funding.
Anyone know where we can find a billionaire who loves his grandchildren and the planet more than he loves his money?

Last, but not least:

Younger Generations Must Be Given the Chance to Lead

Because it's their future and survival that are at stake.

In conclusion:

In an oft quoted remark, Milton Friedman, a key part of the neoliberal ecosystem of influence, once described its basic function as being to “develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable”. We do not yet have a critical mass of those alternatives and a common narrative around which to bind them. More shared spaces and coordination are needed to accelerate the process by which we reach this point. And while those spaces should be populated by all ages, the torch must be passed to a younger generation. It is they who will one day make the impossible inevitable.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/11/movement-replace-neoliberalism-a...