I believe your argument is reductive, and ignores the complexities of the politics of people who call themselves liberals. Neoliberalism is not a coherent political or economic ideology, it’s an insult for moderates used by leftists. Most liberals are not ideological; they pick their policy preferences pragmatically, though nobody can truly claim to be perfectly unbiased and non-ideological.
And if you had argued to me in 2010 that democrats and republicans can both be described as “neoliberals”, I might agree with you, but since at LEAST 2015, republicans have completely turned their back on the most basic aspects of liberalism, becoming the anti-immigrant, anti-trade, isolationist party with no respect for the rule of law or the principles of equality or personal freedom. There was maybe a 10 year period in which republicans paid lip service to these ideals throughout the 1990s, but today Republicans can better be described by Hungarian President Victor Orban’s prescription for “illiberal democracy”, though lately they’re not too hot about democracy either.
Republicans, in contrast to liberals, believe in enforcing cultural conservatism through state power, state intervention in markets to benefit in-groups, majoritarian ruling with very slim electoral margins to the detriment of marginalized groups or opposition parties, and a general hostility to freedom of speech or the free press
Yes, liberals ARE pro-capitalism, but capitalism has been the ultimate mechanism for REDUCING inequality. Since the 1970s (the heyday of so-called neoliberalism), the number of people living in extreme poverty has gone from rougly 50% to about 10% today, accelerating in the 1990s with the downfall of communism across Europe.
To reiterate: thanks to free trade and capitalism, most of the world no longer lives in extreme poverty for the first time in human history. It is in very wealthy countries where we are able to take this for granted because we’ve been living very high standards of living since the end of the 2nd world war, which has coincided with a large gap in wealth equality. However, the living standard of the average American today is still MUCH higher than the living standards of the average American in the 1960s or 1950s.
Healthcare in the United States is not actually really a free market. The specifics of how our system works lives and dies by the letter of the law. What many blame on deregulation is in fact due to specific regulations which were written by the insurance companies. To be clear: this is called regulatory capture, which is NOT a principle of liberalism. Liberals believe in a fair and unbiased bureaucracy which serves the public and not special interest groups. The American healthcare system is a failure to live up to liberal principles. This can be said of most other policy failures in the US: housing has exploded in cost because of regulatory capture in zoning commissions, reducing supply.
Neoliberalism is a far right ideology. That’s just a fact you can look up yourself. It has almost nothing to do with classical or social liberalism which is about freeing people.
Neoliberalism is a far right ideology. That’s just a fact you can look up yourself
I’m sorry but you’re simply wrong. “Neoliberalism is a far right ideology” is inherently NOT a fact; it’s a normative statement. It’s an opinion. You can’t present your opinions (or those of people who think like you) as facts. If I said “Neoliberalism is a moderate or even left wing ideology”, I would also say that that is not a fact; it’s my opinion, and the opinion of people who think like me
You should probably read more. This is from Wikipedia. Neoliberalism is about freeing capital not people.
Neoliberalism has become an increasingly prevalent term in recent decades.[16][17][18][19] It has been a significant factor in the proliferation of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them.[20][21] Neoliberalism is often associated with a set of economic liberalization policies, including privatization, deregulation, depoliticisation, consumer choice, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending. These policies are designed to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.[22][23][24][25] Additionally, the neoliberal project is oriented towards the establishment of institutions and is inherently political in nature, extending beyond mere economic considerations.[26]
The term is rarely used by proponents of free-market policies.[27] When the term entered into common academic use during the 1980s in association with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile, it quickly acquired negative connotations and was employed principally by critics of market reform and laissez-faire capitalism. Scholars tended to associate it with the theories of economists working with the Mont Pelerin Society, including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Alan Greenspan.[7][28][29] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism became established as common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[7] By 1994, the term entered global circulation and scholarship about it has grown over the last few decades
The article only says what I’m saying: it’s a term given to certain people as a pejorative, and not an actual ideological program endorsed by people who are labeled by it. You’re telling me that there is a fundamental similarity between Augusto Pinochet, who threw communists out of helicopters, and the US democratic party, which is categorically unwilling to inflict any kind of political violence against their opposition? Pinochet was not a neoliberal, he was a fascist, and if you can’t tell the difference, then I encourage you to not only read more, but to get outside more and talk to people who have actually grown up in fascist and communist countries and see if they think that living in the US is anything like growing up in a fascist state.
To try to label the policies of Pinochet and the policies of the US democrats with the same term is either an expression of ignorance or privilege. Again, neoliberalism is a term which was made up by liberal arts and philosophy departments, not economists
No, you are saying that if someone disagrees with you, it is because they are misinformed. This is a kind of narcissism: you believe that your opinions are so correct and unshakably true that you cannot conceive of a world in which someone with equal access to information legitimately disagrees with you. You assume that if someone else disagrees with you, then they obviously haven’t read up on the matter; that they are ignorant, stupid, or malicious. It IS a personal attack, because you’re not attacking my words, you’re attacking the speaker of the word because you’ve spent so long in an internet echo chamber that you are no longer capable of imagining a reality in which you might be wrong.
Conversely I could say that if your first recourse to someone disagreeing with you is to copy paste a Wikipedia article as proof that a term merely exists, I would wager you probably haven’t read much about the topic other than mean internet comments. I would further wager that probably most of what you read is mean internet comments
You can disagree with me all you want, you cant simply redefine a words meaning because it doesn’t fit your standard of a definition or hurts your feelers. That’s what the right does till words have no definitions or meaning.
I have to assume your here to sow descent in discourse.
If the term conflates the policies of a man who threw communists out of helicopters and banned labored unions with the policies of the US democratic party, which is the strongest supporter of labor union in the US, then it is a useless term which, again, was defined by philosophy departments at ivy league schools. It is already meaningless. It’s a useful way for people like you to conflate moderates with jackbooted thugs from 3rd world banana republics. It is an intellectually dishonest way to convey your political opinions: just label everyone who disagrees with you as a “neoliberal”
I have to assume your here to sow descent in discourse.
There’s the trademark extremist schizoid disorder. Take your meds
I believe your argument is reductive, and ignores the complexities of the politics of people who call themselves liberals. Neoliberalism is not a coherent political or economic ideology, it’s an insult for moderates used by leftists. Most liberals are not ideological; they pick their policy preferences pragmatically, though nobody can truly claim to be perfectly unbiased and non-ideological.
And if you had argued to me in 2010 that democrats and republicans can both be described as “neoliberals”, I might agree with you, but since at LEAST 2015, republicans have completely turned their back on the most basic aspects of liberalism, becoming the anti-immigrant, anti-trade, isolationist party with no respect for the rule of law or the principles of equality or personal freedom. There was maybe a 10 year period in which republicans paid lip service to these ideals throughout the 1990s, but today Republicans can better be described by Hungarian President Victor Orban’s prescription for “illiberal democracy”, though lately they’re not too hot about democracy either.
Republicans, in contrast to liberals, believe in enforcing cultural conservatism through state power, state intervention in markets to benefit in-groups, majoritarian ruling with very slim electoral margins to the detriment of marginalized groups or opposition parties, and a general hostility to freedom of speech or the free press
Yes, liberals ARE pro-capitalism, but capitalism has been the ultimate mechanism for REDUCING inequality. Since the 1970s (the heyday of so-called neoliberalism), the number of people living in extreme poverty has gone from rougly 50% to about 10% today, accelerating in the 1990s with the downfall of communism across Europe.
To reiterate: thanks to free trade and capitalism, most of the world no longer lives in extreme poverty for the first time in human history. It is in very wealthy countries where we are able to take this for granted because we’ve been living very high standards of living since the end of the 2nd world war, which has coincided with a large gap in wealth equality. However, the living standard of the average American today is still MUCH higher than the living standards of the average American in the 1960s or 1950s.
Healthcare in the United States is not actually really a free market. The specifics of how our system works lives and dies by the letter of the law. What many blame on deregulation is in fact due to specific regulations which were written by the insurance companies. To be clear: this is called regulatory capture, which is NOT a principle of liberalism. Liberals believe in a fair and unbiased bureaucracy which serves the public and not special interest groups. The American healthcare system is a failure to live up to liberal principles. This can be said of most other policy failures in the US: housing has exploded in cost because of regulatory capture in zoning commissions, reducing supply.
Words have definitions often with histories.
Neoliberalism is a far right ideology. That’s just a fact you can look up yourself. It has almost nothing to do with classical or social liberalism which is about freeing people.
I’m sorry but you’re simply wrong. “Neoliberalism is a far right ideology” is inherently NOT a fact; it’s a normative statement. It’s an opinion. You can’t present your opinions (or those of people who think like you) as facts. If I said “Neoliberalism is a moderate or even left wing ideology”, I would also say that that is not a fact; it’s my opinion, and the opinion of people who think like me
Neoliberalism is very much a far right ideology.
You should probably read more. This is from Wikipedia. Neoliberalism is about freeing capital not people.
Neoliberalism has become an increasingly prevalent term in recent decades.[16][17][18][19] It has been a significant factor in the proliferation of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them.[20][21] Neoliberalism is often associated with a set of economic liberalization policies, including privatization, deregulation, depoliticisation, consumer choice, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending. These policies are designed to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.[22][23][24][25] Additionally, the neoliberal project is oriented towards the establishment of institutions and is inherently political in nature, extending beyond mere economic considerations.[26]
The term is rarely used by proponents of free-market policies.[27] When the term entered into common academic use during the 1980s in association with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile, it quickly acquired negative connotations and was employed principally by critics of market reform and laissez-faire capitalism. Scholars tended to associate it with the theories of economists working with the Mont Pelerin Society, including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Alan Greenspan.[7][28][29] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism became established as common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[7] By 1994, the term entered global circulation and scholarship about it has grown over the last few decades
Grow up. Attack ideas, not people.
The article only says what I’m saying: it’s a term given to certain people as a pejorative, and not an actual ideological program endorsed by people who are labeled by it. You’re telling me that there is a fundamental similarity between Augusto Pinochet, who threw communists out of helicopters, and the US democratic party, which is categorically unwilling to inflict any kind of political violence against their opposition? Pinochet was not a neoliberal, he was a fascist, and if you can’t tell the difference, then I encourage you to not only read more, but to get outside more and talk to people who have actually grown up in fascist and communist countries and see if they think that living in the US is anything like growing up in a fascist state.
To try to label the policies of Pinochet and the policies of the US democrats with the same term is either an expression of ignorance or privilege. Again, neoliberalism is a term which was made up by liberal arts and philosophy departments, not economists
If someone telling you to read more to properly inform yourself is a personal attack id say your pretty fragile along with your argument.
No, you are saying that if someone disagrees with you, it is because they are misinformed. This is a kind of narcissism: you believe that your opinions are so correct and unshakably true that you cannot conceive of a world in which someone with equal access to information legitimately disagrees with you. You assume that if someone else disagrees with you, then they obviously haven’t read up on the matter; that they are ignorant, stupid, or malicious. It IS a personal attack, because you’re not attacking my words, you’re attacking the speaker of the word because you’ve spent so long in an internet echo chamber that you are no longer capable of imagining a reality in which you might be wrong.
Conversely I could say that if your first recourse to someone disagreeing with you is to copy paste a Wikipedia article as proof that a term merely exists, I would wager you probably haven’t read much about the topic other than mean internet comments. I would further wager that probably most of what you read is mean internet comments
You can disagree with me all you want, you cant simply redefine a words meaning because it doesn’t fit your standard of a definition or hurts your feelers. That’s what the right does till words have no definitions or meaning.
I have to assume your here to sow descent in discourse.
If the term conflates the policies of a man who threw communists out of helicopters and banned labored unions with the policies of the US democratic party, which is the strongest supporter of labor union in the US, then it is a useless term which, again, was defined by philosophy departments at ivy league schools. It is already meaningless. It’s a useful way for people like you to conflate moderates with jackbooted thugs from 3rd world banana republics. It is an intellectually dishonest way to convey your political opinions: just label everyone who disagrees with you as a “neoliberal”
There’s the trademark extremist schizoid disorder. Take your meds