Neoliberalism K—UMich 2013 neg 1NCs 1NC: Generic

I: Colonialism

Neoliberalism is modern imperialism—oppressive, controlling, and elitist

Popular Culture at the National University of Tucuma, 97 (Eduardo, “Neoliberalism

Economic Philosophy of Postmodem Demolition”, Latin American Perspectives 97:24, 11/97, JSTOR)//AS
Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy for early peripheral postmodemism. Messianic, authoritarian, and exclusionary, it is mathematical mod eling designed in certain academic centers of the advanced world and later in the periphery for the economic conversion of the Third World to a strategy of late colonialism-a structure that makes possible transnational integration, national disintegration, and a veritable reactionary "revolution" in the distribution of national wealth. Technical cadres have been created for the demo lition of the welfare and social service structures in the undeveloped countries under the impetus of the third wave of civilization led by late capitalism. The supreme historic moment has come when the few are to concentrate the most through new policies for taxation, finance, income, privatization, wages, and state regimes-the end of an epoch and the spectacular beginning of a colonialism with a cybernetic face, an ontology of inequality.

I: Politics/Agency

Internalized neoliberal policies defeat political agency and any ability to create change

Second, in internalizing neoliberal economic assumptions, governing political parties in the Anglophone democracies have increasingly translated the political power conferred upon them at the ballet box into a self-denying ordinance. In Britain, as elsewhere, political parties vying for office now couch their political rhetoric to a considerable extent in terms of: (1) the nonnegotiable character of external (principally economic) imperatives; (2) the powerlessness of domestic political actors in the face of such (ostensibly selfevident) constraints; and (3) the need, in such a context, to displace responsibility to quasi-independent and supra-democratic authorities such an independent central banks.1 Elections, it seems, are increasingly about appointing officers to be trusted to take the necessary technical decisions dictated by shifting external circumstances; they are not public plebiscites on manifesto policy commitments. As Peter Burnham (2001) has observed, politics today is about the management of depoliticization. The decision by the Blair administration, only days after its election in 1997, to grant operational independence to the Bank of England despite the absence of any supporting manifesto commitment is a case in point. It is in this context that a third factor, the marketization of political competition, acquires particular significance. It, too, has arguably contributed to declining political engagement, participation and turnout (Levi 1996: 49). If the competition between parties for votes is assumed analogous to that between businesses for market-share, then parties will behave in a quasi-Downsian manner. In a first-past-the-post two party electoral system, such as Britain’s, they will tend to scrabble over the centre ground in a race towards the median voter (for a detailed elaboration of this logic, see Hay 1999a: 76_/104; also Downs 1957). The result, ceteris paribus, is bipartisan convergence.

I: Water Wars

Neoliberalist policies will result in the struggle for water because of the unregulatedprivatization

von-Werlhof, Professor of Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, 2008 (Claudia, “AlternativenzurneoliberalenGlobalisierung, oder: Die Globalisierung des Neoliberalismus und seine Folgen, Wien, Picus 2007.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-consequences-of-globalization-and-neoliberal-policies-what-are-the-alternatives/7973)//JS

In the GATS, services are defined as “everything that cannot fall on your foot”, as someone once remarked ironically. This means that they are no longer reduced to traditional services, but now extend to human thoughts, feelings and actions as well. Even the elements – air, water, earth, fire (energy) – are increasingly turned into commodities (in some places this process is already completed) in order to make profit from the fact that we have to breathe, drink, stand and move (Barlow 2001, Isla 2003).In Nicaragua, there exist water privatization plans that include fines of up to ten months’ salary if one was to hand a bucket of water to a thirsty neighbor who cannot afford her own water connection (Südwind 2003). If it was up to the water corporations – the biggest of which are French and German (Vivendi Universal, Suez, RWE), which means that the privatization of water is mainly a European business – then the neighbor was rather to die of thirst. After all, compassion only upsets business.In India, whole rivers have been sold. Stories tell of women who came to the river banks with buffalos, children and their laundry, as they had done for generations, only to be called “water thieves” and chased away by the police. There are even plans to sell the “holy mother Ganges” (Shiva 2003).Fresh water (just about 2% of the earth’s water reserves) is as such neither renewable nor increasable and of such essential importance to local ecosystems that it seems utterly absurd to treat it is a commodity that can be traded away (Barlow/Clarke 2003, Shiva 2003). Nonetheless, this is already happening. The effects, of course, are horrendous. Coca-Cola has left parts of the southern Indian state of Kerala a virtual desert by exploiting their entire ground water reserves.

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