“Yes, like any philosophy, neoliberalism has its limits, and as with any philosophy, some of its adherents get overexcited and take things a bit too far. But given where we currently are, and where we are likely to go in the near future, focussing on the risk of “too much neoliberalism” seems bizarre to me. It is as if you were lost in the desert, and your main worry was that if you find an oasis, you might end up drinking too much water, and get overhydrated. Maybe one day, neoliberalism will be so popular that there really will be a non-trivial risk of taking it too far. If so – that will be a good day.”
– Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director, Institute of Economic Affairs. (Part of his commentary is this recent apologia to libertarians from Noah Smith, a US centre-leftist who appears to have some intellectual honesty and grit, which is refreshing, and so it appears, rare.)
It might be helpful of critics of neoliberalism bothered to define it clearly.
(Tim Worstall has a related takedown of George Monbiot’s recent forays into this territory. Worstall is, as you might expect, unimpressed.)
The centre left seem to have this trick where they insincerely try to rehabilitate old enemies as a way of trying to discredit current enemies.
You see this in Britain how centre left opinion rehabilitated 90s Tories like
Major,Ken Clark and Heseltine and say something along the lines ‘oh these were reasonable and good men compared to the right wing nutcases we have now’. You inspect what they said about Major in the 90s and they were spitting venom.
It’s even more pronounced in the USA how democrats have tried to rehabilitate the Bush family, John McCain and Mitt Romney as a way to attack Trump and his supporters. Back in the day, the liberal left compared all these men to Hitler.
The Left likes Republicans that don’t stir the pot, and don’t upset the Left’s agenda. Republicans which either don’t get elected (Romney, McCain) or get elected like Bush but don’t change anything.
They like them as soon as it is clear they are useless. Before this point is clear they oppose them vigorously. Needless to say that what the Left likes best is Leftists, and holding on to power.
Indeed. Noah Smith and co ‘miss’ libertarians because they beat them, and beat them pretty easily. The current right , whatever it’s flaws, won’t play by the left-liberal rules and is happy to play dirty. That’s why Noah Smith wants the old opponents back.
Martin, I am not seeing much sign of anyone in the donkey party trying to restore the image of Mitt Romney, who was treated badly and condemned for working in private equity and finance (I mean, the horror). McCain had long been cultivated by the centre/left as the “acceptable” face of the Republican party (because he liked spending and was seen as not as full on for free enterprise as his Arizona predecessor, Barry Goldwater.)
I am not sure whether Noah Smith’s desire to is have weak opponents back whom he can easily “beat”. It is not as if the more free market-leaning Republicans such as Reagan etc were pushovers.
I know it is shocking in these cynical times, but sometimes a big change in the political scene means people wake up a bit and reappraise their assumptions. Smith tends to be on the non-insane part of the liberal/left. I think that it pays to engage with them in a civil way, rather than assume the approach to take is punch them in the face. There’s a law of diminishing returns to this.
I guess “neoliberal” means something completely different on your side of the pond than what it means here. Not surprising, since “liberal” does also.
Look harder
More evidence
Also here and here
Noah Smith : “Libertarians underrate the importance of non-market mechanisms, which are sometimes superior to markets when transaction costs are high. If friendship, sex, and the right to breathe air were allocated by markets, society would be worse.”
Eh ?
“The market” is merely a subset of voluntary association which is in turn a subset of liberty in toto. Friendship and marriage (usually) are “allocated” by voluntary association. They are not exceptions to the liberal (aka neo-liberal, aka libertarian) preference for social interactions being arranged on a mutually voluntary basis.
He obviously has the traditional lefty blind spot to economic liberty (celebrated by the silly Political Compass which abstracts economic liberty from its libertarian-authoritarian axis, so that lefties can celebrate how liberal they are by ignoring their economic authoritarianism.) In Smith’s case it looks like he’s so fixated on his imagined distinction between economic liberty and non economic liberty that he thinks those who favor economic liberty are only interested in material things.
Post-Reagan, what are the exact achievements of these ‘free market-leaning republicans’?
“Neo Liberalism” like “trickle down” are smear terms invented by Collectivists to attack pro liberty people. They are terms that should not be used.
The pro liberty principles of, for example, John Bright in Britain or Senator Roscoe Conkling in the United States are as valid today as when these men were alive.
Whether these principles are called Liberalism of Conservatism does not matter – but they are not “neo”, they are the real thing.
Are the principles of self-styled ‘neoliberals’ like Kristian Niemitz and think tanks like IEA and Adam Smith Institute the same as John Bright or are they pushing something different? (Genuine question, no snark/sarcasm)
Martin – they are pushing something different, very different.
For example, John Bright was very much a hard money man, and Roscoe Conkling wanted to stick to gold even during the American Civil War.
They were different in their personal morality (Conkling was a skirt chaser), but on their economic morals they were sound.
The IEA and ASI seem to love fiat money and Credit Bubble banking.
If money is corrupt and finance (lending) is corrupt – then everything else will be corrupt (and it is corrupt – the corporations, all of it).
A “soft money” version of the free market is no free market at all – Richard Cantillon worked that out 300 years agon
A soft money “free market” is a massive swindle – which enriches a small group at the expense of everyone else.
There is also the principle of a free self-governing nation.
That was central to thought of the old liberals – and the Whigs before them.
The IEA and ASI do not seem to care about a free self-governing nation – they seem to think in terms of international corporations and various international bodies, not accountable to national peoples.
At the risk of condemning myself as an ist and a phobe (or whatever) – I would say that if Enoch Powell had met John Bright (of course Mr Bright died more than 20 years before Mr Powell was born) they would have had a common political culture – they could have understood each other.
The IEA used to be part of that culture – I met Enoch Powell at the IEA (well after I met him in Birmingham – but he was not out of place in the IEA of that time).
These days there is such a different feeling about such places.
They feel Corporate.
Thanks Paul – this is what I suspected and I 100pc agree regarding Enoch Powell.
One doesn’t have to agree on everything with the documentary maker Adam Curtis but his observation that think tanks are more part of the PR industry than actually doing any real thinking rings increasingly true.
Martin – they were not always so.
For example, on the IEA – the founders (the people who ran the organisation as late as the 1980s) were different.
All of this will soon be moot:
Labour Party Loses Seats to Pro-Gaza ‘Independent’ Candidates in England Local Elections
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/05/04/leftist-labour-party-continues-losing-seats-to-pro-gaza-independent-candidates/
The mask is no longer needed, and can be discarded.
The era of taqiyya is over.
Liberal? Neo-liberal? Conservative?
You may as well be arguing about angels on the head of a pin.
Post-Reagan, what are the exact achievements of these ‘free market-leaning republicans’?
When Newt Gingrich and his fellow GOP congress allies won the House in 1994, they shackled Clinton and derailed his crazier domestic spending ideas. By the end of the 1990s, the US budget was in a surplus.
Then 9/11 happened.
Paul: The IEA and ASI do not seem to care about a free self-governing nation – they seem to think in terms of international corporations and various international bodies, not accountable to national peoples.
And yet I keep meeting people at the IEA today who supported Brexit, if for liberal rather than for nationalism reasons. As for international corporations,I think you make the error of assuming that because a corporation operates in several jurisdictions, that this is somehow evil or a threat to democratic governance. You are increasingly sounding like a Progressive Era trust-buster.
The IEA is still fairly conventional in its views about money, although it does not tack to some conventional monetarist/Keynesian outlook as far as I can see. It has praised choice in currencies.
Clinton was reelected. Yes Clinton said the era of big government was over but it was an obvious illusion back then let alone now. The free market Cato Institute even notes that the GOP approved spending above Clinton’s own requests.
Consider: Over the past three years the Republican-controlled Congress has approved discretionary spending that exceeded Bill Clinton’s requests by more than $30 billion. The party that in 1994 would abolish the Department of Education now brags in response to Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union Address that it is outspending the White House when it comes to education. My colleagues Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski found that the combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate have increased by 13%.
I mean you could point how these Clinton era Republicans helped pass the trade bill that facilitated China entering the WTO, but given how this has helped China build into self into a industrial and military power that may well end American hegemony, this seems something closer to treachery than success.
Johnathan Pearce – do they support the independence of the United Kingdom, or do they support “Brexit” which has turned out to be meaningless word. Even in 2016 I kept asking why people, such as Mr Johnson and Mr Farage (yes him to), were saying “Brexit” rather than independence – well now we know why, independence (for example real control of the borders) was never on offer, just this “Brexit” deception of the British people.
“For liberal rather than nationalistic reasons”.
I suspect this “liberalism” has nothing much in common with the liberalism of Gladstone and John Bright, and now means the domination of the people by international bodies and partner corporations. In short this “liberalism” or “neo liberalism” is not liberalism at all.
Martin – yes. Some people really did think that after the death of Mao and the fall of the “Gang of Four” the regime in control of China was turning away from evil (although if so why did the picture of Mao, one of the most evil rulers in the history of the world, remain all over China) – but after the massacres of 1989 it was obvious that the People’s Republic of China Communist Party regime remained committed to evil and (as had been openly stated as far back as 1978) economic reform (allowing “capitalists”) was just to give the regime the resources to modernize the military (the “Fourth Modernization” was not forth in importance – it was a matter of timing, other things had to be done first – so-that military modernization could be done) and also to give economic power to spread their dominance over the world.
The people (politicians, corporate managers, and their servants in the policy institutes) who backed “free trade with China” AFTER the massacres of 1989 (after it was obvious that the regime had not changed) were indeed traitors – traitors of the worst kind. They betrayed their own people for personal gain – for money. They literally “sold out” their own people. Their basic industries (on which their economic life, and their self respect, depended) and, eventually, their basic liberties – as domination by the PRC regime will see these basic liberties crushed.
The idea that Adam Smith, or any of the great economists, would have supported such a policy is absurd.
As for rule by the Corporations – “contracting out” and so on.
The intentions were good (they really were) – but it has not worked.
For example, “private providers” sometimes charge the best part of a million Pounds for the care of a single child, they spend this money (mostly) on buying properties – which they (the private providers) then own, NOT the taxpayers who paid for the properties.
The roads (in Northamptonshire) are maintained by the Kier Corporation – which does a rotten job, a really rotten job.
And street lights are the responsibility of the Balfour Beatty Corporation – which promises to repair the street lights when they fail, but then does NOT repair them.
“Get different corporations”.
They would be the same – it has been tried.
For example, when we finally got rid of one vast company of external auditors – the new vast company of external auditors did not suggest any savings (on anything) either.
Contrary to what Mr Nigel Farage claims to think – auditing is not about finding savings, it is about obeying government regulations (box ticking) and charging the taxpayers.