Reflections on Plastic, Governance, and the big N - Neoliberalism

Driving down the highway for work in the United States is generally boring. Once one leaves the urban centers, traffic flows, lanes disappear, and you traverse flat, yet worn, asphalt. There are farms. Buildings are sparse. Exits in the most rural areas offer a gas station or a McDonald's - 2 miles from off ramp. The rural-urban infrastructure divide in the US is part of life. It's normal. International visitors, however, are awe-struck by just how long our roads are. How sparse the people, and how rapidly it changes. Dark sky vanishes. Those distant light bubbles? You're immersed within the urban glow when cruising at 70MPH. The scenery, the people, the landscape, they all change. There is, however, one constant.

Look on the shoulder and you'll see it. Plastic. Miles and miles of plastic. The ubiquitous orange home depot bucket, fading from exposure. Sheet wrap from transports. Plastic cups, foam insulation, and the plastic shavings of a mower, uncaring at what it reduces. Those are only the pieces you can see. Plastic lines the highways from Vegas to Canyon Lands. Huge stretches of desert along the, every mile, is covered. At the entrance to Bryce Canyon, the plastic subsides but never leaves entirely. In the bayou of Louisiana, bottles and shrink wrap. This is not merely a US problem.

The canals of Amsterdam, the alleys of Delft. Chips bags, a football jersey of polyester. A dead seagull, it's wings bound in plastic fishing line, floats under Huig en Houtbrug. A lone canoe, launched from a house boat along the river, attempts to fish out what trash the occupants can see. It is grueling work. It is thankless, as I am the only one in the market crowd that shouts a thanks with a wave. I look down, and there is more. It is inescapable. Cigarettes, laden with everything one can think of to harm human and animal alike, are discarded in every nook and crevice. It is, frankly, tragic. The discourse, the blame, the solution, are on you. You are responsible for purchasing decisions, recycling, reusing, avoiding, cleaning. What does this blame, this larger tragedy of our times - our generation's radium, asbestos, lead - say about our societal and governmental affairs? Quite a bit. Let's start with some definitions.

Neoliberalism - An amalgamation of political rationality, a political project, and a political ideology that seeks the primacy of human liberation through the mechanisms of free markets. (My own definition)

The Entrepreneurial Self - A neoliberal subject whom relates to themselves as if they were a business, are active, embrace risks, and are capable of managing difficulties and hiding injuries (Scharff, 2016)

Plastic Pollution - A non-natural distribution of petroleum by-products into the natural world that causes damage to habitats, human health, and economies (Adapted from The Ocean Cleanup)

Government failure theory - Describes situations where government interventions to solve a problem another facet of our political and social systems can not, but ends up creating new problems, worsening existing ones, or treating the symptoms and not the problem itself (My own definition)

Individualization and Globalization - Plastic, Beck, and Beck

Neoliberalism and the entrepreneurial self construct individual blame. The theoretical foundation for understanding how neoliberalism shifts environmental responsibility lies in the concept of the "entrepreneurial self" - a form of subjectivity that makes individuals responsible for outcomes traditionally understood as collective or structural problems. As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim eloquently put it:

Neoliberal economics rests upon an image of the autarkic [self-sufficient] human. It assumes that individuals alone can master the whole of their lives, that they derive and renew their capacity for action from within themselves. Talk of the self-entrepreneur makes this clear. Yet this ideology blatantly conflicts with everyday experience in the worlds of work, family and local community, which show that the individual is not a monad but is self-insufficient and increasingly tied to others, including at the level of world-wide networks and institutions. The ideological notion of the self-sufficient individual ultimately implies the disappearance of any sense of mutual obligation... (Introduction, xxi, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim)

Ulrich Bröckling's foundational work on the entrepreneurial self (2016) demonstrates how neoliberalism constructs citizens as entrepreneurs of their own lives, responsible for managing risks and opportunities that were previously state responsibilities. This entrepreneurial subjectivity becomes particularly powerful in environmental discourse - treating environmental problems as opportunities for market solutions rather than regulatory intervention. When the market can't, or won't, fix the problem [market failure], citizens become responsible for addressing systemic issues such as plastic pollution through individual purchasing decisions and lifestyle choices. In this vein, it would seem we have failed as individuals. Citizens feel they are should address environmental problems through consumption choices, but they can not afford to with their time, mental effort, or bank accounts. We can not blame ourselves, but must consider the political movements that empower not only environmental destruction, but out own.

Governmental Failure By Design

The ubiquity of plastic pollution along our roads, canals, and waterways serves as a potent symbol of governmental failure, distinct from more abstract environmental challenges like climate change. Unlike distant or gradual threats, plastic waste is an immediate and tangible problem that confronts citizens daily, making the inadequacies of current policies painfully visible. This constant exposure not only underscores the state’s inability to safeguard its citizens from environmental harms but also erodes public trust in government institutions, potentially precipitating legitimacy crises.

Political science research reinforces this connection, demonstrating that environmental degradation—particularly when visible and pervasive—can undermine governmental credibility through multiple pathways. The sight of plastic waste in public spaces reveals a systemic breakdown in the state's capacity to manage and regulate a core public good: the environment. It exposes a lack of effective policy, enforcement, and infrastructure, all of which are primary responsibilities of the state. This visible failure is not just an aesthetic issue; it represents a tangible sign of regulatory capture, political unwillingness, or both.

When governments fail to address such a visible problem, it suggests that the political will to confront the structural causes of pollution is absent. The political will to fund a solution. The political will to hold businesses accountable. The political will to treat the shared environment with care and empathy. This is a problem of the neoliberal framework, where responsibility is offloaded to the individual. Individual action alone is insufficient to solve the problem. The government's failure to act decisively on plastic waste is not just a policy oversight; it is an active reinforcement of a system that prioritizes economic activity over environmental health, leaving citizens to clean up the mess. Citizens who do not have the time, the money, the health, to confront individual responsibility, even if it were effective. Instead, people increasingly prioritize survival over all else:

"I don't have time for that [community involvement]. You know, I like politics and I get involved at work, you know, with the people talking and this and that. But when I get off work, I'm tired and I feed the dogs, and once I feed the dogs or mow the lawn, or whatever has to be done. . . .I go to bed in between 7:30 and 8:00 everyday, but I get up at 4:00 in the morning and I'm at work at 4:30 or 4:45.

What you need to survive starves off what you need to strike.