Neoliberalism reshapes cultural incentives by prioritizing extreme profit seeking
Evidence
At a broader level, these changes in culture are inexorably linked to neoliberalism, the hypercapitalist economic system that organizes society to expedite the free flow of capital across global markets. Neoliberalism has quietly shaped the incentive structures that guide individual human behavior. By elevating extreme profit seeking as the highest human goal, neoliberalism alters what gets made, how it gets distributed, who benefits—and how we feel about that process. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 20
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: This is Marx’s macro-mechanism hook; the reader must hold this alongside the ‘death of the sellout’ status dynamics to argue the counter-case.
- DEFINE: Brief working definition of neoliberalism as a cultural-shaping force rather than just an economic one.
Related
- Neoliberalism alters what culture gets made and how it is distributed (similarity 0.96)
- Neoliberalism is only one phase of capitalism, not the first or worst. (similarity 0.81)
- Neoliberalism’s focused conception of reform gave it competitive advantage over social liberalism (similarity 0.80)
- Neoliberalism existed to crush Sixties democratic socialism and is now failing (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalist realism’s depoliticising hegemony invited populist fervour to replace it (similarity 0.80)
- Neoliberalism is a caricature of liberalism reduced to a theory of economic organization (similarity 0.80)
- Neoliberalism required culturally transforming non-capitalist societies to extend markets (similarity 0.79)
- Neoliberal economic rationality is extinguishing the domains through which democracy materializes. (similarity 0.79)
- Neoliberalism advanced a political, not merely economic, case for the competitive market (similarity 0.79)
- Neoliberalism pivoted from the economy to the framework encasing it (similarity 0.79)
- Postwar economics expansion made neoliberalism appear outdated and marginal. (similarity 0.78)
- Neo-liberalism collapses labor into capital and frames the individual as an enterprise (similarity 0.78)
- Neoliberal modernisation aimed to destroy non-market sources of social reproduction (similarity 0.78)
- Neoliberalism’s durability rests on fusing the economic with the cultural (similarity 0.78)
- Neoliberalism generalizes the economic form across the entire social field, unlike classical liberalism. (similarity 0.78)