Copilot tells me-
Neoliberalism differs from classical liberalism primarily in its historical context, policy emphasis, and role of the state. Classical liberalism (18th–19th century) focused on protecting individual rights and limiting state power, while neoliberalism (late 20th century) revived some of those ideas but pushed them further—especially in favor of deregulation, privatization, and globalized markets.
🧭 Core Differences at a Glance
1. Historical context
Classical liberalism emerged in the 18th–19th centuries as a reaction against monarchy and mercantilism,
Sometimes it was also anti-Clerical (i.e. against the overweening demands of the Established Church) and was critical of the militarized Aristocracy- e.g. Junkers in Germany
emphasizing individual rights and free markets.
If profit remains in private hands, it is less likely to end up financing an oppressive regime. The Marxist counter-argument was that private Capital could hold the working man hostage- forcing him to work longer hours for a bare subsistence.
The Marginal Revolution (which overturned Classical Economics) showed how monopoly or monopsony or cartels reduced allocative efficiency and imposed a 'dead weight' loss on society. Furthermore, since the rich gain less 'marginal utility' from an extra dollar, they may be happy to pay higher marginal tax rates so that the very poor can survive with a modicum of dignity. Furthermore, nuisances & demerit goods (e.g. pollution or addictive drugs) could be taxed and the revenue could be used to promote merit goods or to repair damage done to the Environment.
We may say that Neo-Liberalism flows from the Marginal Revolution. Unlike Classical Liberalism, it is not attached to the notion that Society needs a class of leisured gentlemen with a Country Estate and a Town House in Capital which they can stay in while attending Parliamentary Sessions.
Economics & Politics could develop in a meritocratic and technocratic manner.
Neoliberalism rose in the 1970s–1980s as a response to Keynesian economics
which gave the Government a big role in the economy. This was necessary during the War and for post-War recovery as well as the acquisition of new weapon systems- e.g. nuclear missiles, satellites etc.
and the welfare state,
which was now taxing the working class on behalf of unemployed 'Welfare Queens'. Worse, it was subsidising loss making industries which were being run inefficiently.
promoting market-driven reforms.
which also meant that particular Trade Unions could not hold the country to ransom.
2. Role of the state
Classical liberalism: The state should be minimal—protect property rights, enforce contracts, and maintain order.
This was like the British Raj. India was literally a 'nightwatchman state' where the only public officials most people ever saw was the 'chowkidar' (night-watchman) unless someone in the village was literate enough to receive a letter carried by the post-man.
Neoliberalism: The state should actively reshape society to promote markets—deregulate industries, privatize services, and enforce competition.
Thus, in the UK, Mrs. Thatcher broke up the cosy relationship between stock-brokers, stock-jobbers (market makers) and discount houses. Suddenly, 'a job in the City' didn't mean putting on a bowler hat and having long lunches before departing for the weekend huntin', fishin' or shootin' in the country. Instead, you had chaps with degrees from the LSE with unpleasant accents who considered it a virtue to eat a sandwich at their desk while poring over computer print-outs.
This is not “no state,” but a market‑enabling state.
where women & darkies could thrive if they worked harder or were smarter than the rest. The blue blooded Gentleman had been pushed out of Politics & Government Service on the grounds that he was an amateur. Then the Law had been taken over by ghastly oiks from Grammar Schools. Now, even the City of London had become hostile territory for the toff.
3. Economic policy
Classical liberalism: Free markets with minimal regulation; belief in the “invisible hand.”
As opposed to the local magistrate fixing the price of bread and then scratching his head when bread became unavailable.
Neoliberalism: Aggressive deregulation, privatization, free trade agreements, and reduced welfare spending—essentially “classical liberalism on steroids.”
No. During the Seventies, there was stagflation and negative real interest rates. The thing was unsustainable. Everybody kept going on strike- even the grave diggers & the garbage collectors. Society was tearing itself apart.
4. Globalization
Classical liberalism supports free trade but was not shaped by modern global capitalism.
Neoliberalism embraces globalization as a core strategy—NAFTA, WTO frameworks, and global supply chains.
The rise of Sanders & Trump in 2015/16 put the world on notice that 'globalization' might be rolled back.
5. Social welfare
Classical liberalism: Generally indifferent to welfare; assumes markets will produce fair outcomes.
Or that nothing much can be done for the poor for a reason Malthus explained. Doesn't Christ say in the Bible 'The poor ye shall have always with you'?
Neoliberalism: Often reduces welfare programs,
or seeks, ineffectually, from letting them grow
arguing markets allocate resources more efficiently.
than who? The Beloved Leader?
Remarkaby, the Marginal Revolution blog has praise for the following interview published in 'Jacobin'
Power, Not Economic Theory, Created Neoliberalism
Interview with Vivek Chibber
Neoliberalism didn’t win an intellectual argument — it won power.
Power was ebbing away from States with ever increasing Public Sector Borrowing Requirements. Either they could turn into Banana Republics racked by hyper-inflation, or they could reform their finances.
Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites in the 1970s and ’80s turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms.
There was a displacement of elites. Out went the toffs and the three-Martini lunch Corporate Executives, in came the asset-stripping 'private equity' maven backed by Institutional Investors who wanted to get a better return for Joe Lunch-pail who was paying into a Pension Fund or Insurance scheme.
Neoliberalism’s victory over Keynesianism wasn’t an intellectual revolution
Yes it was. Previously, the most that was claimed for the market was that under ideal conditions it could be as good- not better- than the best 'Command Economy' outcome. That's what the two fundamental theorems of Welfare Econ & the 'folk theorem' of repeated games say. Then towards the end of the Sixties you have a whole bunch of mathematical results re. concurrency, computability, complexity, categoricity etc. which showed that no algorithmic process can yield the optimal result. Markets may be non-deterministic. They may involve 'co-evolved' process which tame complexity. In any case, volatility isn't a bad thing in itself. The 'volatility smile' may drives liquidity by concentrating trading activity in a manner which is 'regret minimizing' for the system as a whole. After all, we live in a world where all future states of the world, and their probability, are not known.
— it was a class offensive.
Against WASP elites who went to the right schools though, no doubt, some of the more presentable Corporate Executives, who had begun life on the Accountancy coal-face, may have been tolerated.
To roll it back, the Left doesn’t need to win an argument so much as it needs to rebuild working-class institutions from the ground up.
That would be worth doing, in any case.
Chibber speaks of Keynes as 'a blue blood from the upper crust of British society'. This is not true. His family were brush manufacturers in Salisbury. They were not aristocrats, clergymen or Army officers. They didn't attend public schools or go to University. Keynes's father did study at quite a good private school and then went to London's University College which had only been around for 40 years or so. He then went to Cambridge & settled down as a Lecturer on Economics. His son won a scholarship to Eton and then a scholarship to Cambridge University. He excelled in Mathematics but was also popular for his charm and wit. Had he not been so smart, he might have ended up as a clerk in a brush making concern in a provincial town. As things were, he placed second in the Civil Service exam. Otto Niemeyer came first and thus got the Treasury. Keynes placed second and got the India Office which was boring and declining in importance. He quit after a couple of years. That is why Marshall could lure him back to Academia by using his own money to pay Keynes's salary. In a sense this was the making of him because he could write what he liked and say what he pleased. Thus he eclipsed Niemeyer during the War as an advisor to the Government from 1915 onward . They particularly liked his buccaneering approach which was similar to that of the seasoned stock-broker or noveau riche City financier.
Thus, put simply, Power needed Keynes at a time when it was having to raise vast sums to defend itself & prevent military defeat. However, he was opiniated & Ministers had cause to fear his sharp pen. Both 'Economic Consequences' of the Peace & (later) Winston Churchill were of interest to a wider reading public.
After markets failed to recover from the crash, all governments had to focus on economic policy. One way or another, there was increased intervention. Keynes stood out for providing a seemingly 'scientific' justification for ignoring the deficit and increasing Government expenditure. But this would happen anyway because of re-armament.
Chibber says-
It’s not just that Keynes’s ideas were revolutionary, and the right ideas at the right time, and therefore they were taken up.
Actually, it was Oswald Moseley (later to found the British Union of Fascists) who set the ball rolling with this Memorandum of 1930 which called for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance and transform the British Empire into an autarkic trading bloc (the cry for Imperial Preference had been around for decades) , for state nationalisation of main industries, for higher school-leaving ages and pensions to reduce the labour surplus, and for a programme of public works to solve interwar poverty and unemployment.
Keynes liked it but struck a cautious note-
'I like the spirit which informs the document. A scheme of national economic planning to achieve a right, or at least a better, balance of our industries between the old and the new, between agriculture and manufacture, between home development and foreign investment; and wide executive powers to carry out the details of such a scheme. That is what it amounts to. ... [The] manifesto offers us a starting point for thought and action. ... It will shock—it must do so—the many good citizens of this country... who have laissez-faire in their craniums, their consciences, and their bones ... But how anyone professing and calling himself a socialist can keep away from the manifesto is a more obscure matter'
In other words, Keynes is saying, the majority of English people- who believe in thrift, hard work & the sanctity of private property will refuse to have anything to do with this scheme. Thus, it is unworkable. Still, crazy Socialists should be queuing up to support it.
If Keynes had been working at a community college somewhere or a technical institute, nobody would have ever known who he is.
Hardly anybody had heard of Otto Niemeyer though he probably did have his hand on the economic levers for at least some of that period. Keynes had a gift for self-publicity. Moreover he moved easily between the 'aesthetic' Bloomsbury set & Whitehall & the City of London. Meanwhile, mathematical economics was developing rapidly. After the crash, in America the Cowles Foundation was set up in 1932. Economics might be like engineering. Get in mathematicians to figure out how to raise efficiency. Talk of Class was old hat. Even in the Soviet Union, a similar mathematical economics was coming into existence. Indeed, there seemed a 'convergence' between the results being produced on both sides of what Churchill would call 'the iron curtain'.
Would what we call Keynesianism have prevailed even if Keynes himself repudiated it? Yes. Why? Rearmament did in fact put an end to the Depression. FDRs more Socialist methods had faltered & finally puttered out.
What he also had going for him was that he was the editor of the Economic Journal, which was the most influential journal at the time, the key journal of economics.
It would be fair to say that, because Keynes was Marshall's anointed successor, two generations of economists who had learnt the subject from the latter's 'Principles', could not dismiss Keynes out of hand. But, Marshall himself knew that nobody cares very much for Academic Economists. Keynes had the added glamour of combining the persona of a Government Adviser with that of Stock Market buccaneer.
He was also positioned at Cambridge University, which automatically made him extremely influential.
No. Plenty of dons wanted no political influence though they dearly loved to be seen with a Dowager Duchess.
And he had been moving in policy circles for twenty years already.
It would be fair to say that Keynes's students or collaborators had a vested interest in promoting his Gospel. During the War anyone who could claim some sort of economic expertise could get a cushy government job. Sadly, this remained the case after the war because of rationing & the need to acquire nuclear weapons & space rockets.
So, this is an instance where somebody who is a blue blood, who was in the halls of power, who has tremendous influence, bolts from economic orthodoxy, and presents ideas that at the time are very iconoclastic,
One might say that Keynes, because of his prominence, was under pressure to champion common sense. Thrift is a good thing in an individual. If the whole of Society becomes more thrifty, it becomes poorer. In logic, this is the 'fallacy of composition'.
which go against the received wisdom but are very appealing to policymakers who are looking for a way to justify breaking with policy orthodoxy. The combination of his being very well-positioned, very influential already, and then making an extremely elegant argument, put his ideas in a place where they could actually be used. Otherwise nobody would have known who he wasNo. This is an instance of Marshall's anointed heir doing the needful so deficits could grow without sober, hardworking, people growing suspicious that this was some sort of plutocratic swindle. There were plenty of people who believed that all the Bolsheviks were Jews in league with their cousins in Wall Street.
The thing about Alfred Marshall was that he represented late Victorian ultra-respectability. Keynes might be a bit flashy, but he isn't a Jew-boy. His people were brush-makers in Salisbury.
Chibber mentions 'bastard Keynesianism'. This is the idea that money wages are downwardly sticky. Workers are too stupid to understand the 'real balance effect'. Thus the government needs to prevent deflation which would set off a vicious cycle of unemployment leading to lower aggregate demand leading to more unemployment.
However, all sorts of prices are 'sticky' or 'administered. There is a combination of fix-price & flex-price markets. In the former excess supply or demand goes up or down. In the latter, prices go up and down so there all markets clear.
Chibber isn't saying 'if you teach in a top College you will have influence'.
even if Milton Friedman had not existed, even if Hayek had not existed, you would have still had a turn to neoliberalism, and that’s the key. This is what the Left needs to understand.
i.e. that they were wrong to keep gassing on about class conflict. Don't print too much money & then expect a price/wage freeze to eliminate inflation. That's all Friedman said. Once this became blindingly obvious, he could take the credit for it while Galbraith, who had been the previous cock of the walk, had to take a back seat. Hayek was part of a wider network of European and American intellectuals who wanted 'small government'. It was irksome that Americans could not own gold or that European tourists could only draw a limited amount of foreign exchange. There were too many well-paid civil servants doing nothing productive while inflation eroded the standard of living of people who had worked hard for their pensions.
It would be fair to say that magazines & TV shows were able to communicate economic ideas to the much better educated post-War voter than even FDR's 'fireside chats'. In Britain, you had Brian Walden on TV methodically tearing down the older sort of Cabinet Minister who repeated 'Butskellite' cliches. But what mattered most was fiscal drag. Inflation meant your pay packet went up but you were dragged into the tax net. Suddenly, you started to hate the 'scroungers' and 'welfare queens'. Self-employed people were furious that feather-bedded Unions were holding the nation to ransom while they were having to work harder and harder just to maintain their standard of living
There are only two key players when it comes to policy changes of this kind.
There is only one player. Financial markets. If they think your policy is shit, they sell, sell, sell. Look at Liz Truss. She was popular but she only lasted 50 days as Prime Minister. Things are different in America but if markets are in turmoil Congress grows restive and you lose the mid-terms.
The key players are the politicians, because they’re the ones who are pulling the levers. But then, it’s the key constituency that actually has influence over the politicians.
The least important part is intellectuals. You might say voters have some degree of influence, but really, in a money-driven system like the United States, it’s investors, it’s capitalists — it’s big capital.
Financial markets rather than this capitalist or that capitalist.
They’re the ones who are pushing for these changes.
That means that if you want to understand where neoliberalism comes from, or rather if you want to understand why it came about, the answer is, it came about because capitalists ceased to tolerate the welfare state.
Markets pay for the welfare state. If they take fright, you borrow at higher and higher real rates of interest to finance transfers. This 'crowds out' private spending and investment leading to stagnant productivity & excess capacity- which means more people are on the dole and thus transfer spending has to go up yet again. This is a vicious circle which everybody became aware of during the Seventies.
Now, why did they tolerate the welfare state at all? Most people on the Left understand the welfare state was brought about through massive trade union mobilization and labor mobilizations and was kept in place as long as the trade union movement had some kind of presence within the Democratic Party, within the economy more generally, because those unions were powerful enough, employers had to figure out a way of living with them.
The way to do this was to threaten to shut down unless they got a Government bail-out. So you have Labour on the dole & Capital on the dole & the self-employed either emigrating or shifting to the black economy. This is the Latin American solution. Your cab-driver has a government job as an engineer but the pay isn't enough to buy groceries. So he bunks off work (there is no work for him to do, because the money in the budget has run out) to drive a cab. At night he waits tables. He is trying to get his hands on some dollars so as to be able to emigrate.
Part of what they did to live with the trade unions was to agree to a certain measure of redistribution and a certain kind of welfare state.
The reverse is the case. The Unions need the welfare state otherwise desperate non-Union workers will be 'black-legs'. But they won't be happy. The Communist Party will grow till some crazy Fascists gain power and you get a gangster regime.
As long as that was the case, politicians kept the welfare state going.
It is still going. Work-fare was popular with African Americans because they want strong families- not Welfare Queens.
This is why, in that era from the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s, Keynesianism or the economics of state intervention of some kind was the hegemonic economic theory.
Re-armament, War, Post-War reconstruction, and then the Cold War meant that the Public sector didn't get scaled back. On the one hand, 'state capacity' had increased. But there were diseconomies of scale to bureaucracy.
The theory became hegemonic because it was given respectability by virtue of the fact that everybody in power was using it. Because it’s being used by people in power, it has great respectability.
No. So long as unemployment was low and prices weren't rising too much, politicians pretended that they were very wise or, at least, that they listened to very wise men.
This is why, in the 1950s and ’60s, Milton Friedman was in the wilderness — same guy, same ideas, equally intellectually attractive, equally technically sophisticated, but he was in the wilderness.
No. He said that he was in the Academic wilderness in the Forties- i.e. before McCarthy & Eisenhower. But his mathematical skills permitted his employment by the Federal Government. He designed the payroll withholding Tax scheme needed to fund the War. He was a reputable economist but it was his articles for Newsweek from '66 onward which really pushed him into the limelight. Like Galbraith, he wrote well and his 'Free to Choose' TV series from 1980 onward made him a celebrity. Sadly, his theories weren't working out too well for Thatcher & Reagan both of whom did a quiet U-turn.
In fact, I’ll tell you a little story. I was in the archives in India when I was researching my first book on planning. And lo and behold, I find a letter from an International Monetary Fund economist. That letter is a three-page letter sent to the Planning Commission of India on how to plan effectively, on how to do price controls correctly, on how to manage demand conditions. It seems like it’s coming from some dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian economist. The author was Milton Friedman.
This is nonsense.
In 1955, the Indian government was engaged in preparing its Second Five Year Plan and, because the US was a big donor, it asked the Eisenhower administration for assistance. It sent Friedman & Neil Jacoby- a right-wing advisor to the Republican administration. Friedman went to India in the fall of 1955 under the auspices of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration (as the foreign aid agency was dubbed at the time). Once in New Delhi, Friedman was assigned to advise Mr. C. D. Deshmukh, the Minister of Finance- a right-wing ICS man who resented the powers usurped by the Planning Commission. His memo reflects the thinking of centre-right Indians who wanted light industry- e.g. textiles- to expand and to earn foreign currency to pay for investment in heavy industyr.
Friedman wrote- 'The chief problem in the Indian program that impresses on the tendency to concentrate investment in heavy industry at one extreme and handicrafts at the other, at the expense of small and moderate size industry. This policy threatens an inefficient use of capital at the one extreme by combining it with too little labour and an inefficient use of labour at the other extreme by combining it with too little capital. The presumption for an economy like India’s is that the best use of capital is in general somewhere in between, that heavy industry can best develop and be built upon a widely diversified and much expanded light industry. We may hasten to add that this is only a general presumption which may well admit of special exceptions. Perhaps, for example, the steel industry is one exception in India.'
This was what Indian industrialists were thinking at the time. Maybe the Soviets & East Germans & so forth can set up good steel plants which make a profit. The steel can then be used in construction and for making 'wage-goods' e.g. bicycles which we can export. Friedman knew little of India but he was talking to Oxbridge educated people- some with a business background, others from elite Government cadres. He is saying what they- and Deshmukh- want him to say- viz. ' Cutting off particular investment projects may not make resources available for other uses but may simply eliminate savings that would otherwise have been available. Much saving is made to finance specific investment projects. If it cannot be used for that purpose, it may well be directed to consumption or to the accumulation of bullion or its equivalent.' This paints a vivid picture to an Indian but not to an American (who was forbidden to hold gold at that time).
Why is Friedman writing this letter in the language of a mid-century technocrat committed to state control?
There is no such letter. Deshmukh wanted him to say what he actually did say. He didn't want to linger in India. The climate is horrible. You get dysentery. If you want to help the poor, go to Israel which was very poor at the time.
He was seeking entrée. He knew that “if I want to be relevant, if I want to be heard, I’m going to have to give them advice of the kind they want to hear.”
He was saying what the Finance Minister wanted him to say. Sadly, Nehru wasn't interested.
I’m not saying he sold out. I think he believed what he believed, but he said, “My ideas don’t have a chance in hell right now. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to do the best I can, given the filters that are in place.” And the filters in India at that time were, “We don’t want to hear from you anti-planners. We’re going to do planning. If you want to be of use to us, tell us how to plan better.” Friedman said, “OK, my free market stuff is out the window. I’m going to be as good a planning economist as possible.”
This simply isn't true. He had helped Deshmukh put the Finance Ministry's view- stuff like switching to value added taxation to get more revenue & less disincentive for the organised sector (which it is cheaper and more convenient to tax) . But Nehru was the head of the Planning Commission. He didn't understand that, for poor people, only Budgets matter.
That little story tells you something. What it says is ideas that are going into the halls of power go through certain filters. And the filters are essentially the policy priorities that the politicians have already committed to. Now, what creates those priorities? It’s the balance of class power. Social forces are setting the agenda.
What was setting the agenda in India was stupidity- that of Nehru & Mahalanobis. The second 5 year plan ran out of money very quickly.
If the social forces, that is, say, trade unions and community organizations, have set the agenda for politicians such that they think the only rational thing to do is to institute a welfare state, then they will bring in economists who help them design a welfare state. That gives intellectual influence to those economists. Economists who are saying “Get rid of this whole thing” are cast out into the wilderness. That’s how it works.
I suppose you could say that a lot of sensible economists in India were 'cast into the wilderness'- i.e. they emigrated to the US or UK. But they made more money.
In the 1970s and ’80s, those policy priorities — that is to say, the New Deal as a priority — changed for reasons that have nothing to do with intellectual influence.
In other words, the goal of minimizing unemployment was given up. One reason was that 'transfers' (i.e. how much you could get on the dole) had risen. Why get a job in the factory when you could strum your guitar & plan for how to spend your millions after you became a pop star?
The change came about when the American government was now committed to rolling back and dismantling the welfare state and giving more rein to free markets.
It turned out voters would tolerate mass unemployment on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. All they cared about was real wages- i.e. inflation was Public Enemy number one. The elderly were able to organize themselves politically so as to get a pretty sweet deal. Nobody gave a shit about trailer trash or the Projects.
Once that happens, this little guy who was out in the wilderness for thirty years
He was doing well in Chicago. Had Goldwater won, he'd have been in clover. Nixon, sadly, was the first and last avowed Keynesian. Had Reagan, not Ford, taken the Republican ticket and defeated Carter, Friedman would have been in clover. As it was, Carter appointed Volcker who was a monetarist of a sort. But Friedman's ideas were gaining influence even in the British Labour Party.
named Milton Friedman suddenly comes to the center of the halls of power and his ideas now get circulation. They get circulation because politicians now are willing to hear him. That’s what drives it.
If a guy calls the market right and the market knows the guy did so, it makes sense to pretend to be doing what that guy tells you to do because his prophesies might be 'self-fulfilling'. But this is true in many other fields. The guy famous for predicting a war or an epidemic or whatever is the guy everybody wants to be chummy with.
Therefore, when I said previously that Friedman had won the debate by the end of the 1970s, I mean that he won out because the political anchor that had sustained the Keynesian economists had come loose.
In other words, higher inflation wasn't reducing Inflation. There was Stagflation.
What happened was that the ship was now being redirected in the direction of neoliberalism.
No. Raising inflation was now itself raising unemployment for a reason Friedman explained in his Nobel lecture. Countries which continued to do stupid shit had hyperinflation and began to look more and more like banana republics.
Ideas can have power, but only if they’re attached to agencies with power.
Agencies with power look for ideas which will enable them to keep that power or else they lose it sooner rather than later. The same is true of Agencies with money or Agencies with great fashion sense or Agencies that are very good at making people laugh so hard they shit themselves.
In and of themselves, free-floating ideas only have power if people who have an interest in seeing those ideas fulfilled and have the power to then effectuate those ideas take them on.
This happens, if they are ideas which yield greater power. Consider Islam. Iranians like it but nobody thought it could yield power in this world rather than felicity in the next. Ayatollah Khomeini's dynamite idea was 'velayet-e-faqih', guys like himself should extend their duty to help the poor to taking over the entire state. Many Ayatollahs became billionaires. Those who didn't like them were beaten or killed or ran the fuck away.
These are the two key things. They have to be attached to agencies of some kind: social forces, organizations, institutions with power.
A Trade Union is an institution. It may have a lot of power. But, if it overplays its hand & the industry shuts down, then it has no members and no money.
And then those institutions and agencies have to see their own interests as being expressed and aligned with the ideas.
No. They have to get money to stay operational.
So let’s go back to neoliberalism. How did the free-market ideas attain influence?
Markets are useful. We buy and sell stuff on them. That's how ideas about them gained influence. Sadly, some of those ideas were stupid. Others weren't and enabled 'market makers' to become very fucking rich.
It’s because capitalists and wealthy people in the United States pushed for a shift away from the welfare state for reasons that had nothing to do with the appeal of the ideas.
Women pushed for a shift away from rape for reasons that had nothing to do with the appeal of the idea to rapist scumbags.
Chibber's basic point has to do with Galbraith's 'countervailing power' argument for Trade unions. Faced with a monopsony (single buyer), maybe a monopoly (single seller) improves allocative efficiency. If employers are 'cartelised' let there be 'collective bargaining' with a single Union. Sadly, technology changes, tastes change, the fucking A-rabs put oil prices up, wars in distant countries start costing us blood and treasure. What worked 50 years ago doesn't work now- e.g. my penis.
Why can't we go back to the way things used to be? I'll tell you the answer. Compound interest. The passage of time causes the interest accruing to Capitalists to go on increasing. That is why, when Biden said 'let me put the calendar back to 1972' the Capitalists said 'No! Then we'd have to give back all the compound interest we have collected! Kindly, take one for the team and just turn senile already.'
That's the only reason Trump is now POTUS
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