Astral Codex Ten

neoliberalism

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neoliberalism

Article

neoliberalism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between May 04, 2021 and January 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “later termed “neoliberalism”, swept over the world”; “neoliberal insistence upon the individual as the foundational element”; “neoliberalism will need a new trick in order to survive”. It most often appears alongside US, Medicare, Richard Hanania.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: May 04, 2021
  • Last seen: January 06, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism
May 04, 2021 · Original source
Reading A Brief History Of Neoliberalism, I got the impression that our economic amnesia about the 1970s is no less striking. There was no 1929-style thunderclap market crash, just one damn thing after another. I read the book close enough to Passover that the Ten Plagues came to mind. The dollar glut (*spills drop of wine*). The Nixon Shock (*spills another drop*). The Economic Stabilization Act of 1970. The fall of the gold standard. The 1970s Steel Crisis. The 1973 Oil Crisis. Stagflation. The Winter of Discontent. The 1979 Energy Crisis. And the Angel of Death was the Volcker Shock of 1980, when unemployment crossed 10% and people mailed the Federal Reserve coffins and unused two-by-fours in protest.
Inline links: dollar glut, Nixon Shock, The Economic Stabilization Act of 1970, fall of the gold standard, 1970s Steel Crisis, 1973 Oil Crisis, Stagflation, Winter of Discontent, 1979 Energy Crisis, Volcker Shock of 1980
But we know how this ended. The US got Reagan. Britain got Thatcher. A tide of free-market sentiment, later termed "neoliberalism", swept over the world. Governments confronted public sector unions and left them shells of their former selves; a series of regulatory changes let companies do the same with their own workforces. Top tax rates went down; newly money-hungry executives launched an orgy of mergers and buyouts. Entrepreneurs founded new companies and forced the old dinosaurs to compete on an equal footing; the dinosaurs responded by downsizing and offshoring their employees. Employment went from a lifetime guarantee to a bullet point you put on your resume when applying to the next place. By 1990-2000, most of this had settled down, and for better or worse we had a stable new system.
Sound straightforward? Not if you read about it in David Harvey's A Brief History Of Neoliberalism. This treatment is almost the opposite of the way ABHoN describes events. Telling the story this way makes me feel like Jacques Derrida deconstructing some text to undermine the author and prove that they were arguing against themselves all along.
Inline links: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism
Open Thread 171
May 09, 2021 · Original source
1: Comments of the week: EHarding points out some misconceptions about the post-war US economy that I fell victim to. People who didn’t like my Neoliberalism review pointed to RedfordCastle’s comment as the best rebuttal, so check that out for the other side.
Inline links: points out, RedfordCastle’s comment
2: And Jack links to graphs of GDP growth in various world regions , showing that a common pattern is good growth until ~1980, poor growth until ~2002, then good growth until ~2012, then poor growth again. Relevant to the Neoliberalism review because neoliberalism took hold ~1980, and the book was written ~2002, so it would have been tempting to think neoliberalism = poor growth. The post-2002 growth complicates this picture - but what’s a better explanation for this pattern, and where can I learn more about it?
Inline links: graphs of GDP growth in various world regions
Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman
July 30, 2024 · Original source
We should use checks, balances, vetocracy, and redistribution to limit the power of any individual to some ceiling, although people can disagree on how high the ceiling will be and right now it’s pretty high. Slave morality hates power/excellence and refuses to justify it. Master morality says power/excellence is its own justification, and the rest of us have to justify ourselves to it. Liberalism says that sure, we can probably justify power/excellence, as long as it stays within reasonable bounds and doesn’t cause trouble. Slave morality ignores benefits and sets the importance of harms at infinity. Master morality ignores harms, and sets the value of “benefits” (not that it would think of it in these terms - greatness doesn’t exist to benefit others) at infinity. Liberalism accepts the normal, finite utilitarian calculus and tries to balance benefits against harms. A final secret of this compromise is that master morality and slave morality aren’t perfect opposites. Master morality wants to embiggen itself. Slave morality wants to feel secure that everyone agrees embiggening is bad. The compromise is that we all agree embiggening is bad, but leave people free to do it anyway. So half of Western intellectual output is criticisms of capitalism and neoliberalism, yet capitalism and neoliberalism remain hegemonic5. Everybody agrees to hate billionaires; also, billionaires are richer than ever. This isn’t a complete solution - sure, we’re a free country, but we’re also a democracy, and if people hate something too much they can ban it. But add in the utilitarian justifications above, and it sort of hangs together. X. Richard Hanania So liberal democracy is an uneasy compromise between slave and master morality. One natural interpretation is that the left is the party of slave morality, and the right of master morality. I appreciate how directly Richard Hanania proves that wrong. Richard is an honest-to-goodness Nietzschean master moralist, one of the last you’ll find. Like Rand, he tries to combine Nietzschean master morality with a civilized society and obedience to law. Unlike Rand, he’s not obsessed with presenting a bunch of multi-step proofs showing exactly how it works, and honestly I’m not sure of the exact details. I find him interesting insofar as it clearly works inside his own head and he’s clearly coming from a place of aesthetic coherence. He writes: We can call my philosophy Nietzschean Liberalism. The Nietzschean part consists of the following beliefs. Just as intelligence, a moral sense, aesthetic appreciation, and other factors place humans above animals, some humans are in a very deep sense better than other humans.
Inline links: 5
Highlights From The Comments On Boomers
January 06, 2026 · Original source
- There are many Boomers. Some Boomers pushed too hard to neoliberalism in some aspects of the economy and others focused on over-regulating the environment in other parts of the economy