John Iduh Blog

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Living with Limits: Desire, Scarcity, and the Economic Condition

One of the most enduring insights of economics is deceptively simple: we live in a world of limitless human desires but limited resources. This observation lies at the heart of economic thinking and explains why economics exists as a discipline in the first place. Human wants expand continuously—shaped by culture, technology, status, and imagination—while the resources available to satisfy those wants, such as land, labor, capital, time, and ecological capacity, remain finite. The tension between these two realities defines the economic condition. Human desires are not static. As societies grow wealthier, wants do not diminish; rather, they multiply and become more sophisticated. What once counted as a luxury soon becomes a necessity, and new aspirations quickly replace old ones. Economic growth, advertising, and social comparison intensify this process, ensuring that desire continually outruns satisfaction. From an economic perspective, this means that scarcity is not merely a natural...

A Good Name Adorned with Trust Is Better Than Institutions Without Justice

There are moments in political life when the authority of institutions collapses under the weight of their own contradictions. Parliaments may legislate, police may enforce, and courts may adjudicate, yet when these institutions manipulate truth and perpetrate injustice, their formal power loses moral legitimacy. In such circumstances, a good name—adorned with trust and integrity—becomes more valuable than the combined authority of Parliament, the police, and the legal system. A good name is not merely a matter of reputation; it is the social embodiment of moral consistency. Trust is earned through repeated alignment between word and action, between promise and practice. Unlike institutions, which derive authority from law, coercion, or tradition, a trusted name derives authority from character. Where institutions command obedience, trust invites consent. This distinction is crucial, for obedience can be forced, but legitimacy cannot. History offers countless examples of institutions t...

How Trumpism Differs from Traditional Conservatism

Trumpism is often described as a contemporary variant of conservatism, yet a closer examination reveals that it represents a significant departure from the core principles that have historically defined conservative thought. Traditional conservatism, particularly in the Anglo-American tradition, is grounded in respect for constitutional order, institutional continuity, limited government, and gradual change. Trumpism, by contrast, is less a coherent ideology than a political style and movement centered on personal leadership, populist rhetoric, and sustained confrontation with established norms. At its foundation, conservatism has long emphasized the importance of institutions as stabilizing forces in society. Courts, legislatures, bureaucracies, and electoral processes are viewed as imperfect but essential mechanisms for maintaining order and legitimacy. Trumpism exhibits deep skepticism toward these institutions, frequently portraying them as corrupt, captured by elites, or actively ...

Neoliberalism as Policy Practice: The D–L–P Formula

Neoliberalism does not exist merely as an abstract economic doctrine or ideological worldview; it manifests itself most visibly as a concrete and coherent set of public policies. These policies are often summarized through what may be called the D–L–P Formula : deregulation , liberalization , and privatization . Together, these three pillars constitute the operational core of neoliberal governance and provide the practical means through which market principles are extended into ever more areas of social life. First, deregulation refers to the systematic removal or weakening of state controls over economic activity. Regulatory frameworks governing labor markets, finance, environmental protection, and industry are relaxed or dismantled in the belief that free markets are inherently more efficient than state oversight. Deregulation is justified by the claim that excessive rules stifle innovation, discourage investment, and reduce competitiveness, even though its social costs—such as fina...

Neoliberalism as New Public Management: Recasting the State in Market Terms

In the early 1980s, neoliberal ideas found a powerful institutional expression in a new model of public administration known as New Public Management (NPM). Emerging first in Anglo-American contexts and rapidly diffusing across the globe, NPM operationalized neoliberal modes of governance within the everyday practices of state bureaucracies. Its central ambition was to remake the public sector in the image of the private market by importing managerial techniques, entrepreneurial values, and competitive logics into government institutions. At the heart of New Public Management lies a fundamental redefinition of the relationship between the state and its citizens. Rather than conceiving citizens as members of a political community entitled to public goods, NPM recasts them as “customers” or “clients” whose needs are to be met through efficient service delivery. Public servants, in turn, are encouraged to abandon traditional bureaucratic norms of neutrality, rule-following, and public du...

Neoliberalism as Ideology, Governance, and Policy: A Threefold Framework

Neoliberalism is a broad and often contested concept, commonly used to describe an economic paradigm that rose to global prominence in the late twentieth century, particularly from the 1980s onward. Rooted in the classical liberal ideal of the self-regulating market, neoliberalism is not a single, uniform doctrine but a complex configuration of ideas, practices, and institutions. A useful way to understand its reach and durability is to conceptualize neoliberalism as operating simultaneously across three interrelated dimensions: as an ideology, as a mode of governance, and as a policy package. First, neoliberalism functions as an ideology. Ideologies are systems of widely shared ideas and patterned beliefs that provide societies with interpretive frameworks for understanding political and economic life. They simplify complex realities into accessible narratives about how the world works and how it ought to work. In doing so, ideologies encourage particular forms of action while discour...