TBF to the critics of neo-liberalism (I say as someone who identifies as a neo-liberal) there is a genuine phenomenon they are reacting against. And that phenomenon is basically people who are captured by lobbyists and corporate interests who inevitably defend their choices by claiming it's in service of the free market.
This is more a thing on the right than the left but it happens more than we'd like because politicians and the like have strong incentives to please some concentrated interest group and actually designing and enforcing markets that serve the common good tends to do the opposite. Those corporations obviously need to justify their policies somehow and it's usually via some psuedo-economic bullshit.
But unfortunately, many people would rather react to the form of the excuse than evaluate whether it was true.
I'd put it more strongly. Basically, every progressive tax transfer, environmental initiative, or immigration reform has been opposed as "destroying jobs." This has discredited growth promotion in the eyes of many.
The stated goals of the neo-liberals? To increase social welfare and equity by using market mechanisms? It's hard to believe they would deny that's a good thing to do when it works.
I think it's all just that they think it's either bullshit cover for libertarian ideals or the arrogance explanation you offered.
But what makes that so odd is that it describes an approach not any group of people -- at least none in recent memory have self-identified.
Tyler Cowen laid out the neoliberal vision in Average is Over. It's basically the class structure from Brave New World/1984 with around 80% of America living in Brazilian style favelas but with better internet and more pharmaceuticals (naturally the demographics of the plebs will be similar to Latin America).
That's not what I'd call the neo-liberal vision. It's the libertarian vision. The neo-liberals believe in using market incentives to achieve more classically lefty outcomes like redistribution that Caplain is always raging against.
We only needed the word because it's not libertarian I think the Davos crowd is the right notion as guest user suggested.
So global open borders libertarianism with a big welfare state (the ideal).
I'm skeptical as I think a functional welfare state can only be economically maintained by high productivity demographics and politically sustained by high trust societies. You can't have redistribution without surplus and you can't redistribute effectively unless people follow the rules. Only the high IQ races have really (sort of) figured that out, and they still have a fertility crisis.
That's before even getting into how a lot of neoliberalism in practice is just crass international corporatism and luxury belief memes. As noted in the linked peace, "redistribution" mostly just means an ever increasing Eds and Meds racket.
Cowen I think is more honest about what it would be like in practice.
I noticed in the news of the blue dot in the big red state that the next evolution from the owners of $$$ downtown real estate having armed security patrol the sidewalks about their buildings (hotels, etc.) is the hiring by those who can swing it, of private investigators to solve property crimes.
This is from a substack called mustreadtx, which I haven't visited but am daily emailed by:
~ “Downtown Austin business hires private security investigator after several burglaries,” Fox 7 Austin’s Meredith Aldis — “A local business has hired a private investigator after several burglaries. Lance Armstrong’s bike shop in downtown Austin has been hit seven times in 10 months and a couple of suspected burglars are still on the loose.
"There's a very active stolen bike community in Austin," StriderPI private investigator Dave Amis said.
Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop reported seven burglaries since September, five at the retail store and two at the store’s storage unit. Trick Hat Workway, the space next door, reported at least one burglary.
"What people don't realize is that there's far more criminal activity out there than almost anybody realizes," Amis said.
Video shows the window of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop being shattered and a man coming through the broken glass and walking around the store. He’s identified as 41-year-old Brian Darelle Theodore Richardson. Amis said he stole Lance Armstrong’s electric bicycle valued at $20,000. They were ultimately able to recover it. Richardson is charged with burglary of a building.
Other videos showed a man walking inside Trick Hat Workway, looking around, and talking to the manager on the way out while trying to steal the manager’s bike as if it’s his. He is kicked out, then comes back about 10 minutes later, convinces the worker the bike is his, and steals it.
"Having a Texas PI on your trail is not a pleasant experience," Amis said.
20 bikes stolen from east Austin non-profit
A local non-profit has taken a big hit. Thieves stole the very thing they're known for and provide to the community.
StriderPI located and recovered the bike in two weeks, then worked with APD and identified the man who stole the bike as 23-year-old Juan Pablo Castellanos, who’s currently sitting in the Travis County Jail for other charges.
Private investigators are being hired more by businesses.
APD said it’s difficult to get to every report and investigate. The department’s commercial burglary unit has seven detectives, and they receive on average 30 to 40 burglary reports a week. APD said private investigators provide useful information at times.
"When you don't have enough cops, you have the problem that people get away with things and so then they do it again and each time they do it, they get better and better and better," Amis said.” Fox 7 Austin
> That's before even getting into how a lot of neoliberalism in practice is just crass international corporatism and luxury belief memes.
This doesn't make sense because no one in politics is going around claiming to be a neo-liberal. This is what's so infuriating about the whole discussion, it doesn't make sense to critisize them as practically doing X when there is no them in power at all!! Basically people are selecting things they see as bad and then ascribing them to neo-liberals even when no one so identified was involved and it didn't actually align with their stated principles.
--
Re: the rest, I think your characterization is wrong. The goals neo-liberals want to achieve are relatively traditional center left goals and they believe that market mechanisms can be created via appropriate regulation to help achieve them. To the extent they even exist as a vague description of a certain segment amoung policy advocates they don't literally endorse open borders a la Caplain just favor substantially more open borders and freer trade than the status quo.
--
But regarding practicality, I think you underestimate just how hard immigration is and the strong selective effects favoring only the most motivated and ambitious. Most people just go with the flow.
Not to mention that you may not offer all the benefits to immigrants or even impose higher tax rates.
The "neo" prefix is pretty meaningless to me, or at least tending to obscure.
The forebears of Matt Y. or Noah Smith chose to outsource to countries where there is no environmental movement, sure; or labor protections, of course. But a curiously tight grip on capital.
And did the same in reverse with labor. The bumper sticker should say: "The folks who gave you weekends, and the folks who took them away!"
But I'm pretty sure that e.g. the shift of apparel and footwear manufacturers from China to Vietnam is not based on a shift in environmental regulations in those respective places :-).
Sloppy thinking indeed.
The environmental movement has enjoyed great support in America, from Americans. Policymakers only followed.
Americans can make of anything a racket; arguably the environmental movement was much less captured in that way than most other things, until climate concern came along. But climate is now its own more or less distinct movement, and typically framed in terms of social justice, or adverse effect on non-Russian and non-Canadian humans, not biodiversity loss.
I'd be interested to know which dam Matt Y. would like to see built, that we dodged. Or which waterway he'd like to see dirtier than it is. Or which species he'd like to see extinct (animal populations are mostly diminishing across the board, but I'm not aware that he's drawn attention to that; presumably it should function for him as a good indicator of the world he wants).
I'm not sure about the claim re: stringent environmental regs. I actually suspect those on the left think they are weak on the environment.
But re:branding the problem is that since Clinton no one has identified as such so it's weird to try and defend a brand you haven't claimed to be a part of,
Moreover, what's really fucked up, is that somehow that crowd seems to be constantly blamed for things despite never actually being in charge. I'd fucking love it if someone who advocated those views gained power in the US but Clinton administration was as close as we got and only because at the time that was the populist move.
--
Amusingly I support pretty much all of those things but not necessarily for the stereotypical neo-liberal reason. For instance, Even absent offsetting government assistance I believe outsourcing makes people in other countries better off to a much greater extent than any harm to us and I think foreigners matter as much.
I'm what they may hate but no one like me ever has or will hold power.
I think you give Matty way too much credit. Maybe I see him too often on twitter, where he is smug and catty, but the other issue (lately) is Matty is peak "fair weather YIMBY." Regulations are horrible supply-constraints only when they interfere with the densification of everything (and only to that extent). Matty has no issue with Fair Housing Regs or even rent control....just rules that limit the number of high rises that can be built in the suburbs. In any other domain, regulation is good and pure--the more the better.
You can always count on Matty Y to advocate something not that brave after a sufficient amount of time has elapsed since other people stuck their necks out on the issue already.
Zoning will be easier to deal with when people aren't justifiably freaked out of what will happen if underclass apartment dwellers flood their school district. Since Matty Y is against a lot of the things that would alleviate concerns over that (he won't even give people school choice, because that digs into a left constituency), it's all just huffing and puffing.
> There was a period, beginning near the end of the Carter Administration, when regulations were reformed, particularly in the transportation sector.
In case some readers are not familiar..
The intellectual force behind this was a staffer in Senator Kennedy's office, Stephen Gerald Breyer. Credit to him, to the senator who hired him, and to the Pesidents who later nominated him to the courts.
It occurs to me that you've reproduced here one central argument for a UBI, namely that making more people at least partially "independent" in your sense will lead to more conscience-driven decision making and less grifting. That may not be worth the downsides, but it should stand as a significant upside if you believe the benefits of independence for conferring integrity are so great.
I am a housewife with 3 years of college living in a city that ranks 78th in my state for "educational attainment".
I'm pretty sure I would rank dead last in any contest of clout, anywhere.
Of Matt Yglesias et al (those who look at America and how much it has given up to the god of globalism and conclude that the problem with America is environmentalism lol):
"It's a simple ideology. They are radical humanists. They have no morality. They value only *people" and they value people only because they are consumers, and so make them money."
I'd say more if there was more to say - but there's not much there.
I was working in the World Bank at the time and our version of "neoliberalism," the "Washington Consensus" never included tax reductions for the rich in order to create deficits. We applauded exports-promoting trade reforms, but were remiss in not seeing that protectionism, for all its inefficiency did somewhat function as a progressive-ish consumption tax and that trade reforms were a gift to urban elites.
Ideally neoliberalism shou have been "neo-social democracy," actually delivering faster AND more equitable growth.
I really enjoyed this piece until the last two or three sentences. I was really confused by the change from donors to young midwit progressives who work at foundations. It seems very random and unconnected to the rest of the piece.
I'm basing my comments on an interaction I had with him at the Claremont Review of Books. He wrote a wrong-headed, demagogic article attacking market-friendly economists. I wrote a letter to the editor saying that he did not understand the critique of government intervention that we make, and he replied with worse nasty demagoguery. Furman and Levin are wrong about him. Don Boudreaux has Cass's number.
> "But he only has a platform because of the sponsors who pay for it."
I find Arnold's argument here to be below his usual standards. Everyone who doesn't have FU money, as he puts it, "only has a platform because of the sponsors who pay for it".
The same is true of the vast number of well funded "neoliberal" and "progressive" thinkers as well. Except that their grift is the establishment grift. So they are just as unbelievable and falling back on only trusting people who have "FU money" is an obvious non-starter because that would eliminate most everyone.
All in all, it's an intellectual dead end. Once you stop engaging the ideas themselves, and start delving into who funds them and making your decisions based on that, you're talking politics. Which has its place, but let's not confuse the two.
Also, I'm very unconvinced that Yglesias is a paragon of speaking truth to power. Even with relative financial independence, he doesn't want to get cancelled anymore than anyone else on the left does. That obviously influences what he writes.
As a commentor on that article says, the argument is "overwrought". We may be kinder to the Professor and call it rhetorical flourish.
What I am struck by: 24 years after Jackson's presidency came a man in every way superior, both to Jackson and the Whigs, and to everyone who had come before or since. And who beseeched the "mystic chords of memory" to be touched "by the better angels of our nature". And yet they claim there are "Jacksonians".
And whatever quibbles one may have with Jackson, he was a bonafide war hero. To compare in any way the fist waver to him, shows how abysmally low standards have fallen.
"fist-waving defiance and determination quieted any doubt about his personal courage."
Hey, if this quiets his doubt or your doubt or the doubts of however many Jacksonians there are, good for them! I doubt Jackson would have ever sought a "timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption" from fighting.
And to be clear, I'm obviously leaving out the ranks of Substack commenters from the discussion. I am about as pusillanimous as they come!
TBF to the critics of neo-liberalism (I say as someone who identifies as a neo-liberal) there is a genuine phenomenon they are reacting against. And that phenomenon is basically people who are captured by lobbyists and corporate interests who inevitably defend their choices by claiming it's in service of the free market.
This is more a thing on the right than the left but it happens more than we'd like because politicians and the like have strong incentives to please some concentrated interest group and actually designing and enforcing markets that serve the common good tends to do the opposite. Those corporations obviously need to justify their policies somehow and it's usually via some psuedo-economic bullshit.
But unfortunately, many people would rather react to the form of the excuse than evaluate whether it was true.
I'd put it more strongly. Basically, every progressive tax transfer, environmental initiative, or immigration reform has been opposed as "destroying jobs." This has discredited growth promotion in the eyes of many.
The stated goals of the neo-liberals? To increase social welfare and equity by using market mechanisms? It's hard to believe they would deny that's a good thing to do when it works.
I think it's all just that they think it's either bullshit cover for libertarian ideals or the arrogance explanation you offered.
But what makes that so odd is that it describes an approach not any group of people -- at least none in recent memory have self-identified.
https://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-toady-class-on-average-is-over/
Tyler Cowen laid out the neoliberal vision in Average is Over. It's basically the class structure from Brave New World/1984 with around 80% of America living in Brazilian style favelas but with better internet and more pharmaceuticals (naturally the demographics of the plebs will be similar to Latin America).
That's not what I'd call the neo-liberal vision. It's the libertarian vision. The neo-liberals believe in using market incentives to achieve more classically lefty outcomes like redistribution that Caplain is always raging against.
We only needed the word because it's not libertarian I think the Davos crowd is the right notion as guest user suggested.
So global open borders libertarianism with a big welfare state (the ideal).
I'm skeptical as I think a functional welfare state can only be economically maintained by high productivity demographics and politically sustained by high trust societies. You can't have redistribution without surplus and you can't redistribute effectively unless people follow the rules. Only the high IQ races have really (sort of) figured that out, and they still have a fertility crisis.
That's before even getting into how a lot of neoliberalism in practice is just crass international corporatism and luxury belief memes. As noted in the linked peace, "redistribution" mostly just means an ever increasing Eds and Meds racket.
Cowen I think is more honest about what it would be like in practice.
Luxury beliefs ... not to mention luxuries.
I noticed in the news of the blue dot in the big red state that the next evolution from the owners of $$$ downtown real estate having armed security patrol the sidewalks about their buildings (hotels, etc.) is the hiring by those who can swing it, of private investigators to solve property crimes.
This is from a substack called mustreadtx, which I haven't visited but am daily emailed by:
~ “Downtown Austin business hires private security investigator after several burglaries,” Fox 7 Austin’s Meredith Aldis — “A local business has hired a private investigator after several burglaries. Lance Armstrong’s bike shop in downtown Austin has been hit seven times in 10 months and a couple of suspected burglars are still on the loose.
"There's a very active stolen bike community in Austin," StriderPI private investigator Dave Amis said.
Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop reported seven burglaries since September, five at the retail store and two at the store’s storage unit. Trick Hat Workway, the space next door, reported at least one burglary.
"What people don't realize is that there's far more criminal activity out there than almost anybody realizes," Amis said.
Video shows the window of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop being shattered and a man coming through the broken glass and walking around the store. He’s identified as 41-year-old Brian Darelle Theodore Richardson. Amis said he stole Lance Armstrong’s electric bicycle valued at $20,000. They were ultimately able to recover it. Richardson is charged with burglary of a building.
Other videos showed a man walking inside Trick Hat Workway, looking around, and talking to the manager on the way out while trying to steal the manager’s bike as if it’s his. He is kicked out, then comes back about 10 minutes later, convinces the worker the bike is his, and steals it.
"Having a Texas PI on your trail is not a pleasant experience," Amis said.
20 bikes stolen from east Austin non-profit
A local non-profit has taken a big hit. Thieves stole the very thing they're known for and provide to the community.
StriderPI located and recovered the bike in two weeks, then worked with APD and identified the man who stole the bike as 23-year-old Juan Pablo Castellanos, who’s currently sitting in the Travis County Jail for other charges.
Private investigators are being hired more by businesses.
APD said it’s difficult to get to every report and investigate. The department’s commercial burglary unit has seven detectives, and they receive on average 30 to 40 burglary reports a week. APD said private investigators provide useful information at times.
"When you don't have enough cops, you have the problem that people get away with things and so then they do it again and each time they do it, they get better and better and better," Amis said.” Fox 7 Austin
Not open borders but recruitment of the world's talent.
Redistribution would be progressive consumption tax, much higher EITC and generous child allowance.
> That's before even getting into how a lot of neoliberalism in practice is just crass international corporatism and luxury belief memes.
This doesn't make sense because no one in politics is going around claiming to be a neo-liberal. This is what's so infuriating about the whole discussion, it doesn't make sense to critisize them as practically doing X when there is no them in power at all!! Basically people are selecting things they see as bad and then ascribing them to neo-liberals even when no one so identified was involved and it didn't actually align with their stated principles.
--
Re: the rest, I think your characterization is wrong. The goals neo-liberals want to achieve are relatively traditional center left goals and they believe that market mechanisms can be created via appropriate regulation to help achieve them. To the extent they even exist as a vague description of a certain segment amoung policy advocates they don't literally endorse open borders a la Caplain just favor substantially more open borders and freer trade than the status quo.
--
But regarding practicality, I think you underestimate just how hard immigration is and the strong selective effects favoring only the most motivated and ambitious. Most people just go with the flow.
Not to mention that you may not offer all the benefits to immigrants or even impose higher tax rates.
The "neo" prefix is pretty meaningless to me, or at least tending to obscure.
The forebears of Matt Y. or Noah Smith chose to outsource to countries where there is no environmental movement, sure; or labor protections, of course. But a curiously tight grip on capital.
And did the same in reverse with labor. The bumper sticker should say: "The folks who gave you weekends, and the folks who took them away!"
But I'm pretty sure that e.g. the shift of apparel and footwear manufacturers from China to Vietnam is not based on a shift in environmental regulations in those respective places :-).
Sloppy thinking indeed.
The environmental movement has enjoyed great support in America, from Americans. Policymakers only followed.
Americans can make of anything a racket; arguably the environmental movement was much less captured in that way than most other things, until climate concern came along. But climate is now its own more or less distinct movement, and typically framed in terms of social justice, or adverse effect on non-Russian and non-Canadian humans, not biodiversity loss.
I'd be interested to know which dam Matt Y. would like to see built, that we dodged. Or which waterway he'd like to see dirtier than it is. Or which species he'd like to see extinct (animal populations are mostly diminishing across the board, but I'm not aware that he's drawn attention to that; presumably it should function for him as a good indicator of the world he wants).
I'm not sure about the claim re: stringent environmental regs. I actually suspect those on the left think they are weak on the environment.
But re:branding the problem is that since Clinton no one has identified as such so it's weird to try and defend a brand you haven't claimed to be a part of,
Moreover, what's really fucked up, is that somehow that crowd seems to be constantly blamed for things despite never actually being in charge. I'd fucking love it if someone who advocated those views gained power in the US but Clinton administration was as close as we got and only because at the time that was the populist move.
--
Amusingly I support pretty much all of those things but not necessarily for the stereotypical neo-liberal reason. For instance, Even absent offsetting government assistance I believe outsourcing makes people in other countries better off to a much greater extent than any harm to us and I think foreigners matter as much.
I'm what they may hate but no one like me ever has or will hold power.
I think you give Matty way too much credit. Maybe I see him too often on twitter, where he is smug and catty, but the other issue (lately) is Matty is peak "fair weather YIMBY." Regulations are horrible supply-constraints only when they interfere with the densification of everything (and only to that extent). Matty has no issue with Fair Housing Regs or even rent control....just rules that limit the number of high rises that can be built in the suburbs. In any other domain, regulation is good and pure--the more the better.
You can always count on Matty Y to advocate something not that brave after a sufficient amount of time has elapsed since other people stuck their necks out on the issue already.
Zoning will be easier to deal with when people aren't justifiably freaked out of what will happen if underclass apartment dwellers flood their school district. Since Matty Y is against a lot of the things that would alleviate concerns over that (he won't even give people school choice, because that digs into a left constituency), it's all just huffing and puffing.
My favorite was when he denounced the rioting after George Floyd's death in August of 2020, a month or more after it was over. Real courage!
Now if only Yglesias applied this insight to the other 99% of what he advocates for.
> There was a period, beginning near the end of the Carter Administration, when regulations were reformed, particularly in the transportation sector.
In case some readers are not familiar..
The intellectual force behind this was a staffer in Senator Kennedy's office, Stephen Gerald Breyer. Credit to him, to the senator who hired him, and to the Pesidents who later nominated him to the courts.
It occurs to me that you've reproduced here one central argument for a UBI, namely that making more people at least partially "independent" in your sense will lead to more conscience-driven decision making and less grifting. That may not be worth the downsides, but it should stand as a significant upside if you believe the benefits of independence for conferring integrity are so great.
Any one of us can play this game.
I am a housewife with 3 years of college living in a city that ranks 78th in my state for "educational attainment".
I'm pretty sure I would rank dead last in any contest of clout, anywhere.
Of Matt Yglesias et al (those who look at America and how much it has given up to the god of globalism and conclude that the problem with America is environmentalism lol):
"It's a simple ideology. They are radical humanists. They have no morality. They value only *people" and they value people only because they are consumers, and so make them money."
I'd say more if there was more to say - but there's not much there.
Does anyone remember a time when the Religious right favored immigration reform or freer trade? I don't.
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I like the pick of J.D. Vance as VP
I was working in the World Bank at the time and our version of "neoliberalism," the "Washington Consensus" never included tax reductions for the rich in order to create deficits. We applauded exports-promoting trade reforms, but were remiss in not seeing that protectionism, for all its inefficiency did somewhat function as a progressive-ish consumption tax and that trade reforms were a gift to urban elites.
Ideally neoliberalism shou have been "neo-social democracy," actually delivering faster AND more equitable growth.
I really enjoyed this piece until the last two or three sentences. I was really confused by the change from donors to young midwit progressives who work at foundations. It seems very random and unconnected to the rest of the piece.
Naive Gdp skepticism and thinking the economy is over regulated should be able to coexist ala goodharts law
Uk style immigration, Korean social norms and electronic and synthetic opioids are all good for gdp at least In the short term.
I'm basing my comments on an interaction I had with him at the Claremont Review of Books. He wrote a wrong-headed, demagogic article attacking market-friendly economists. I wrote a letter to the editor saying that he did not understand the critique of government intervention that we make, and he replied with worse nasty demagoguery. Furman and Levin are wrong about him. Don Boudreaux has Cass's number.
> "But he only has a platform because of the sponsors who pay for it."
I find Arnold's argument here to be below his usual standards. Everyone who doesn't have FU money, as he puts it, "only has a platform because of the sponsors who pay for it".
The same is true of the vast number of well funded "neoliberal" and "progressive" thinkers as well. Except that their grift is the establishment grift. So they are just as unbelievable and falling back on only trusting people who have "FU money" is an obvious non-starter because that would eliminate most everyone.
All in all, it's an intellectual dead end. Once you stop engaging the ideas themselves, and start delving into who funds them and making your decisions based on that, you're talking politics. Which has its place, but let's not confuse the two.
Also, I'm very unconvinced that Yglesias is a paragon of speaking truth to power. Even with relative financial independence, he doesn't want to get cancelled anymore than anyone else on the left does. That obviously influences what he writes.
As a commentor on that article says, the argument is "overwrought". We may be kinder to the Professor and call it rhetorical flourish.
What I am struck by: 24 years after Jackson's presidency came a man in every way superior, both to Jackson and the Whigs, and to everyone who had come before or since. And who beseeched the "mystic chords of memory" to be touched "by the better angels of our nature". And yet they claim there are "Jacksonians".
And whatever quibbles one may have with Jackson, he was a bonafide war hero. To compare in any way the fist waver to him, shows how abysmally low standards have fallen.
The author says:
"fist-waving defiance and determination quieted any doubt about his personal courage."
Hey, if this quiets his doubt or your doubt or the doubts of however many Jacksonians there are, good for them! I doubt Jackson would have ever sought a "timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption" from fighting.
And to be clear, I'm obviously leaving out the ranks of Substack commenters from the discussion. I am about as pusillanimous as they come!