Woe is us, the neoliberals are taking over the world and whither the State? So far no different from any other piece of Morozov’s. And then we get to this:
This is precisely where solutionism steps in. If neoliberalism is a proactive ideology, solutionism is a reactive one: it disarms, disables and discards any political alternatives. Neoliberalism shrinks public budgets; solutionism shrinks public imagination. The solutionist mandate is to convince the public that the only legitimate use of digital technologies is to disrupt and revolutionise everything but the central institution of modern life – the market.
Oh, right.
So, the varied existences of Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, Messenger and however many other bits of free voice and video calling don’t disrupt the market for telecoms then? Offering for free what used to cost a fortune is not disruptive?
I think we’ve got to put Morozov over on that pedestal reserved for the fool’s idea of a clever man, don’t we?
The real risk is that this crisis will entrench the solutionist toolkit as the default option for addressing all other existential problems – from inequality to climate change.
I dunno there. I’d sorta assume that billions of people getting their telecoms for free reduces inequality myself. You know, given that your real income is what you are able to consume and all that.
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Well, there's the false choice that, because tech disrupts markets, that is its ONLY purpose. There's the ridicule of thinking that a free market is central. And there's the fact that neither "climate change" and "inequality" is a problem to be solved by a longer rulebook: The courier with a cellphone will out-earn one without. Morozov is "the fool's idea of a clever man," as the reader must learn a new term just to get to the end of his column.
He means "the market", the Lefties monster in the dark. It's like their belief that the Stock Exchange is "the market" or capitalism is "the market". Its just shorthand for things they don't like and don't understand and people doing what they want when they should doing what they are told.