Cognitive dissonance drives economists and neoliberals to treat crisis as reinforcing their beliefs

Evidence

Clearly, the role of all the stories is to keep your attention acutely focused upon yourself. The worse things get, you must not engage in rage, remonstration, or “stoicism,” much less communal support; instead, the space spanned by your consciousness becomes the perimeter of the “economy,” which is no longer about what you may make, but consists exclusively of the stories you tell about yourself. Your vigilance must never waver from its focus upon the center of your own little universe. If you encounter some difficulty in comfortably inhabiting your own little cubbyhole, there is always someone else who will tell you how to succeed at it, for a modest fee. Conjure the confidence fairy! The contemporary financial crisis collapses to a temporary aberration between your ears. Let them buy cake! If only you, the consumer, would rouse yourself to spend more! — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 433 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

My primary thesis here, and in the rest of this volume, is that the crisis has revealed a severe epistemological contradiction that festers at the heart of the modern economics profession; this has dovetailed with a new set of practices and institutions that have developed since 1980 to paper over the contradiction. It began when the economics profession tended to grow more neoliberal over the past few decades. We will take that proposition as given here, because we aim to explore one of its most important implications: namely, that it sets up a treacherous dynamic interplay between the economics profession and the general public, awkwardly brought closer to the surface by the crisis. In a word, neoliberal theory in the context of economic crisis creates problems for economists’ self-image as public intellectuals. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 619 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The 2008 crisis disoriented the left instead of vindicating its economic worldview — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 46; Neoliberals weaponize performative ignorance to paralyze post-crisis response — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 40; Neoliberal crisis narratives redirect blame from structures onto individual psychology — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 433 (+9 more)

Related

• The crisis exposed an epistemological contradiction festering inside orthodox economics (similarity 0.91)
• The 2008 crisis reinforced rather than refuted neoliberal and orthodox economic doctrine (similarity 0.89)
• The crisis destroyed confidence that anyone can understand the economic system. (similarity 0.87)
• The 2008 crisis disoriented the left instead of vindicating its economic worldview (similarity 0.86)
• Economic crises are also conceptual and intellectual catastrophes (similarity 0.86)
• Declaring the economy incomprehensible has immobilized the left’s response to the crisis. (similarity 0.86)
• Opponents of neoliberalism could not locate the intellectual roots of the 2008 crisis (similarity 0.86)
• Left academics wrongly assumed the 2008 crash would doom neoliberalism (similarity 0.85)
• Post-crisis commentary failures stem from refusing to admit the ideology itself failed (similarity 0.84)
• Neoliberalism’s opponents, not its own theory, collapsed after the crisis (similarity 0.84)
• Crisis commentary from 2008-10 shared one syllogism, that failure proves neoliberalism dying (similarity 0.84)
• Economics survived the 2008 crisis intellectually unscathed, unlike other disciplines under attack (similarity 0.84)
• Economists, not politicians, are the ambient zombies in crisis culture (similarity 0.84)
• Neoliberal crisis narratives redirect blame from structures onto individual psychology (similarity 0.84)
• Left parties struggled to comprehend the swift neoliberal resurgence after 2008 (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal crisis narratives redirect blame from structures onto individual psychology #qualifies (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 433
• Ideology shapes economic crisis rather than merely reflecting it #expands (0.80)
• The crisis exposed an epistemological contradiction festering inside orthodox economics #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 619
• Crisis scapegoating of out-groups masks the true political and economic causes #exemplifies (0.75)