I’m still trying to find a good source on this in text format. One good resource would be this recent podcast from the neoliberal project on what they believe.
frasermince
Karma: 5
I think you are definitely on to something here. It’s definitely interesting how many different camps point to the mid seventies as the period where things started to go wrong. The term often used to describe the political ideology emerging in this period and coming to fruit fully with the election of Reagan would be “neoliberalism”. Often characterized as a distrust of centralized control, a laissez faire approach to governing, a dismantling of welfare and labor protections, and a defunding of things like research initiatives, It definitely seems like it was a turning point in our political mindset. The term is usually used to refer to both Republican leaders like Reagan and Bush and the Democrats of the era including Clinton and potentially even Obama. It also is closely tied to economic thinkers such as F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman.
That said the term has a lot of baggage attached to it to the point where it may be less helpful than I would like it to be. I say this mostly due to how the term has been colored by the Marxists that often have used it. Obviously these Marxists have their own narrative drum to beat and this means finding unbiased resources on the era using this term might be difficult. I think validating that this era is indeed characterized by the traits often ascribed to neoliberalism is a worthwhile endeavor.
In recent years a new group of liberals have adopted the term for their movement and have said specifically that one thing that separates them from the original neoliberals is that the modern version is much more comfortable with technocracy (I can dig up the source for this if anyone is interested). So even the people who have adopted the term neoliberal seem to suggest that this era is characterized by a distrust of technocracy which seems like a solid sign for your overall theory.
I really like this. I really like Solarpunk personally but I think one of its core problems is how tied to degrowth it can be. This plus it’s aversions to markets make it a mixed bag. I love the idea of creating an aesthetic and idea for the future around us conquering our surroundings and even improving on them.
There are portions of Solarpunk I think we should seek to incorporate. I often get the sense from Solarpunk types that they have a vision of the future that is collaborative and kind. I think ideally these elements are also incorporated into Terrapunk. There’s a certain warmth and peace to Solarpunk imagery I often see and I think we can both embrace this as well as the more dynamic imagery. While we should certainly celebrate the geniuses that push humanity forward we should also envision a more collaborative, fair society. How are the average people empowered in this society to do more than they could otherwise? How are their lives improved? At it’s best this should be what Solarpunk shows us though like you mentioned it rarely shows people going about their lives.
Capitalism and innovation have been the pivotal things that have increased the standard of living for people for the past several hundred years and it will be interesting to depict and imagine how that will continue. It will also be interesting to imagine what comes afterwards. In a post scarcity world I can only imagine the economic systems will look very different from our own.