Journalist Paul Mason, economics editor for Channel 4 News, argues that the neoliberal capitalist model “is broken” — has had its day, is systemically unsustainable — and can be replaced with a new model.
His solution?
- Use technology to reduce the hours of work we all do, and “consign the coercive bullshit that takes place at the precarious end of the labour market to history”
- Information is corroding the price system. The true market value of anything you can copy and paste is close to zero. “Technology giants” (google, apple) “have tried to monopolise information, but they are not functional in an information society.”
- Because information is “inherently social” we see the spontaneous rise of non-market, collaborative ventures. This may seem like a precarious basis for a new economy, but so did banking when it was first invented
VERDICT:
While we like his diagnosis that the neoliberal capitalist model is producing the hyper-inequality and austerity he describes, we are not convinced that his solutions hold water.