vimothy

yurp
liberalism in general, and neoliberalism in particular, does have an issue with democracy though doesnt it. it's an old problem, and one which explains why it makes sense to talk about liberal democracy - you need some checks and balances to ensure that democracy always returns liberal outcomes. otherwise ppl might vote in tyrants. neoliberals, from one pov, just place greater weight on the market as a guarantor of personal freedoms than others do
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Yes it does, Hayek does talk about this. But Padraig also said he and Friedman were hostile to personal freedom.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Yes it does, Hayek does talk about this. But Padraig also said he and Friedman were hostile to personal freedom.
right, I see where the confusion is arising

if you look back you'll see that I never said Hayek or Friedman were hostile to or against personal freedom, I said they were contemptuous of all personal freedoms besides the "freedom to choose" i.e. to take part in the market.

that one specific freedom is indeed the basis of their position - they think that all other freedoms flow from that freedom, which is what @vimothy says above i.e. neoliberals see the market as the best guarantor of personal freedoms in general - but at the same time they're actively hostile to anything that impedes the optimization of society for the market. that is, in name of the supposed freedom the market brings they're happy to trample over many other kinds of personal freedom, i.e. using the power of the state to impose austerity and other widely unpopular policies, as well as to dismantle parts of society that resist market logic as Thatcher did. as I said in the other thread neoliberals - the "neoliberal thought collective" as Mirowski puts it - resemble, with deep irony, nothing so much as a vanguard of Communist intellectuals imposing their ideas on the people in the name of the people's supposed ultimate freedom.

"indifferent" to other kinds of personal freedom might be a better way to put it than contemptuous, but the contempt comes out whenever there's a clash between the freedom to participate in the market and any other kind of freedom. thus their general contempt for democracy - it's only useful if it advances their goals. if not, they find some other way to advance their goals, which is exactly why Hayek stressed the importance of creating think tanks - Institute of Economic Affairs, Manhattan Institute, etc - to get upstream of having to actually sell the public on their ideas.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
you can also describe the neoliberal attitude to freedom by contrasting it with libertarians, which I was going to do in the other thread but never (I think?) got around to. libertarians are for the same - more or less - final goal - a minarchist, free-market oriented society, but unlike neoliberals they're not willing to use the state to impose that on people. in other words llibertarians, for all their other fucking crazy ideas, do actually value personal freedom, not merely the freedom to participate in the market (which really means give in to market imperatives, but whatever). where neoliberals are perfectly happen with an authoritarian, centralized state - see Hayek's comments on preferring a liberal dictatorship to an illiberal democracy - the crushes all those non-market related freedoms. as I said before it's all very "we had to bomb the village in order to save it".
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
another way to say it would be that Austrian economists etc are disinterested in the political processes by which markets come into being. they just want it to happen, they don't really give a shit how it happens. trample a little freedom in the process, trample a lot, whatever, the end justifies the means.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
what I would agree with is that the word "neoliberalism" itself is often nebulous and poorly defined - are ordoliberals are actually neoliberals? who really knows - but whatever you want to call it and whatever boundaries you want to place on it, it's possible to denote certain economic ideas beginning with Carl Menger on thru Mises and Hayek to Friedman et al to current ppl like Tyler Cowen or whoever, centered on a fundamentalist belief that the market is the greatest processor of information and so to promote the freedom of the market is the ultimate good.

@craner if you want me to spare you a dump truck of quotations I'll grant you reprieve, but only if you retract your original claim that I, yunno, had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. without that, I'll have to go forward. indeed you are, as the saying goes "free to choose".
 

craner

Beast of Burden
what I would agree with is that the word "neoliberalism" itself is often nebulous and poorly defined - are ordoliberals are actually neoliberals? who really knows - but whatever you want to call it and whatever boundaries you want to place on it, it's possible to denote certain economic ideas beginning with Carl Menger on thru Mises and Hayek to Friedman et al to current ppl like Tyler Cowen or whoever, centered on a fundamentalist belief that the market is the greatest processor of information and so to promote the freedom of the market is the ultimate good.

@craner if you want me to spare you a dump truck of quotations I'll grant you reprieve, but only if you retract your original claim that I, yunno, had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. without that, I'll have to go forward. indeed you are, as the saying goes "free to choose".

Ok, I retract the claim. Although I still think The Constitution of Liberty would be worth your time.
 

luka

Well-known member
Wow! This is the most humiliating and absolute complete destruction of Craner ever witnessed. Absolute annihilation but without any tang of sadism.
 

luka

Well-known member
do you think Padraig is right here? Because if he is right it proves my dictum that 'one' should never read.
 

luka

Well-known member
Because what he is saying is exactly the understanding of Hayek you get 'from the water' without the need to actually bore yourself rigid by reading him.
 
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