Someone recently told me that international bee populations are on the decline. It's expected that bees who perform the vital act of pollination-a key part of the old "birds and bees" story-will soon be extinct. Following this event, agriculture is expected to enter a tailspin that will result in the greatest food crisis humanity has ever faced. Combine that with the now-uncontrollable progress of global warming-and associated disasters such as new epidemics-and the future looks grim.
So why do I bother? What's the point of building a better society if something as innocuous as the decline of the honey industry is going to cause humankind's downfall?
It's particularly easy to think this way, because the neo-liberal revolution is at its peak right now. Policies that were dismissed as counter-intuitive, backwards, cruel, and illogical are now the gospel. A report by the Spence Commission-which includes some of the world's foremost economists and policy-makers-declared that the ultra-laissez-faire approach of neo-liberal capitalism won't deliver the goods. Yet our teachers, our media, and our government keep peddling the same ideas that got us into this recession mess to begin with.
How do they do it? Neo-liberalism has created a new discourse and set of expectations. "Professionalization" is the tune of the day, be it in police forces, social services, and even (or especially) universities. This "professionalization" is usually combined with an effort to improve "efficiency."
Efficiency, in this context, means removing checks and balances, thus giving the newly "professionalized" workers free reign. The result is a lack of connection to the workplace, a lack of accountability to the consumer, and a decline in service.
Of course, if this were the only result, we (the consumers, the people, or whatever you want to call the victims of this insidious revolution) probably wouldn't take it. But this "professionalization" is bundled with superficial improvements and an Orwellian discourse on how this will improve service, access, and efficiency.
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