Ask Lemmy

Neoliberalism. The belief that owners of corporations should be able to do whatever the fuck they want, because corporations always create the best outcome possible for society.

The result is stuff like the US Opioid Crisis. Purdue Pharma knew that opioid pharmaceuticals were extremely addictive. For decades, they lied and said it was not addictive. In private, they laughed about their victims.

They bribed doctors and dentists to overprescribe it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html

https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

They also paid think-tanks to defend them and aggressively challenged negative media coverage:

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-purdue-pharma-media-playbook-how-it-planted-the-opioid-anti-story

The tobacco companies used the same techniques before western governments cracked down on them.

In the 90s, they tried to prevent governments from acting by bribing politicians:

An NPR review of McConnell's relationship with the tobacco industry over the decades has found that McConnell repeatedly cast doubt on the health consequences of smoking, repeated industry talking points word-for-word, attacked federal regulators at the industry's request and opposed bipartisan tobacco regulations going back decades.

Soon after McConnell won a U.S. Senate seat, he was invited to the Tobacco Institute's boardroom to give a speech in January 1985. The documents also reveal that McConnell and his Senate office frequently accepted gifts from tobacco industry lobbyists

The gifts included tickets to NFL and NBA games, a production of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment, a Ringo Starr concert, "top-quality brandy," and what McConnell called a "beautiful ham."

When McConnell has sought re-election, tobacco company employees and PACs have typically donated to McConnell more than to any other member of Congress, according to data from the Center For Responsive Politics. Since 1989, he has received at least $650,000

One of the most striking episodes revealed in the tobacco industry documents came in October 1998. Just a few months earlier, McConnell helped defeat major tobacco legislation championed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The McCain bill would have ratified and strengthened the proposed settlement between the tobacco industry and attorneys general from most of the states. It would have also allowed FDA regulation of nicotine and penalized companies that failed to reduce teen smoking.

McConnell, who had repeatedly clashed with McCain over campaign finance legislation, helped lead the opposition. "We know, of course, that only 2% of smokers are teenagers," McConnell said.

(In fact, nearly 90% of all smokers begin before they turn 18 years old.)

"That to me is the most egregious incident that I have seen about the appearance of corruption since I have been a member of the United States Senate," McCain later said of McConnell

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/730496066/tobaccos-special-friend-what-internal-documents-say-about-mitch-mcconnell

In many countries, tobacco corporations are still using mafia methods:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/big-tobacco-dirty-war-africa-market

For neoliberals, the corporations should decide what is acceptable or not. If there is a profitable market for something, then it means it should be legal. Period. They don't give a shit about selling addictive poison to kids, destroying the environment or underpaying workers. Corporate profits are their religion.

Neoliberals believe citizens or lawmakers should never try to fix injustice, because corporations can't create injustice. And if they want to be involved and threaten corporate profits, you have to punch them in the nose.

In 1951, Jacobo Árbenz was democratically elected President of Guatemala. He wanted to tax rich banana companies and ensure they didn't own all the land. So the United Fruit Company lobbied the CIA to overthrow him. Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, accepted immediately. His brother, wealthy businessman John Foster Dulles, was chairman of United Fruits International. So the President Árbenz was violently overthrowed. At least 9000 people were killed.

That's extreme neoliberalism.