As we talked today(FND 511) about the tendency for neoliberal policies in governments to create concentrated wealth at the top I could not help but wonder about the reasons for this. Is the fact that this occurs something that is inherent in neoliberal policies or is it a result of some third extraneous factor? When these practices were implemented in the South American Countries there most assuredly was a privileged elite already in existence. When enacted, they simply gave the already wealthy even more control over the countries resources and services. It makes me wonder….If the policies had been put into place on a level playing field would the results differ? Furthermore, what does a level playing field look like?
Is this moot point because outside of an experiment with calculated and predisposed conditions there are no level playing fields in the real world? And if there are no level playing fields are Friedman’s ideas not essentially impossible to implement? The world is so stratified that to even think about the concept of a level playing field seems nonsensical.
When I try to relate this (neoliberalism) back to education and communities it is hard for me to imagine it working at all. Especially, when it has been shown to fail in so many other circumstances. If knowledge is a form of capital in the same way that money is capital, then the already existing dichotomy of knowledge between the “haves” and the “have nots” would seem even more of a crippling factor than a country’s financial disparity when implementing neoliberal policy. How would Freidman respond to this?
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