Neoliberalism is deformed by what it ignores 2024 – approx 38 x 16 x 17cm, acrylic paint, canvas, letraset, wire, metal stand
Neoliberalism is about sanctifying ‘unmanaged capitalism’, it is based not in social governance but anti-governance. Advocates of neoliberalism want to do away with the state and government interventionism altogether. To neoliberals public services are deemed ‘small potatoes’ their goal is to privatize entire regions and place whole countries under a corporate model of ‘countrypreneurship’, this entails outsourcing governance to foreign investors, countries who are willing to ‘let democracy go’ have either been captured by an outside force, succumbed to a military coup or have self-inflicted a regime that has engineered crises to the point where an outside entity can take over. The enclave or zone is the perfect framework for exiting democracy because it carves up a country into smaller easily manageable units where patchworks of corporate sovereignties replaces a country’s collective sovereignty (people power). Privately run Special Economic Zones (SEZs) can function under deregulated laws free from the ‘oppressive constraints’ of Big Government. Neoliberal billionaires such as Peter Thiel claim ‘freedom and democracy are no longer compatible’, he and many other oligarchs seek ‘exit strategies’ from democracy, strategies that were developed in the 1950s/60 as radical fringe ideology, born out of a rebuke to F.D.Roosevelt’s 1932 New Deal that saw nearly 4 decades of managed capitalism, a fair and balanced distribution of wage share and profit share of GDP, an egalitarian economic system, state provision of sustainable well built social housing, functioning healthcare systems, and good governance.