So a few weeks ago I was on the bus with a friend and neighbor for a meeting with other liberals and libertarians. We both discuss matters on different fields of the world. And we both came from a completely different field before we met. However, in any part of the world and especially in Europe neoliberalism is spoken about as the great evil. And usually from the far-left or conservative fields and even the far-right put it in a hostile context. But what is it?
My friend argued that neoliberalism was this term you can put a lot under to make it look good or bad. To a certain extent that is how it's used. But to be fair it is a lot more definable. So how do we define it from a liberal point of view?
The first thing we have to do is to define why it is not liberalism but neoliberalism. So in extent neoliberalism has neo (greek for new) added to it. So would it be the new liberalism? Short answer possibly. But after living with this idea from the 1970's and the perspective of this period in 2017 we have to conclude that it might not be even close to liberalism. Depending on what we look at. We have to look at the odd protectionist structures that have been put in place and how the liberalisation of markets have failed under neoliberalism. Of course, I can't make this claim without extending on this.
One of the issues of protectionism that has been forced onto cotenants by WTO agreements might be a good example. So a good example of this is plant based proteins are mostly produced in Sout-America while animal-based proteins are mostly produced in Europe. This actually done to a WTO agreement. In short, this might be what a government should do improving trade relationships in a global market. However, it protected that hard that in relation to a changing market it's not flexible enough and neither do people have the freedom or liberty to adapt to the changed situation. This specific agreement has locked food security on the 1980's production. Since then a lot has changed.
Another example of failed liberalisation of a market might be one may also consider (including myself) most successful. Deu to the free-market for energy supply small parties have been able to deliver a lot actual green energy. Where we might doubt that from other parties that have been around. The market access for green energy could be thanks to the liberation of the market. "The liberalisation of the renewable energy market, for example, has brought tangible benefits to the environment and has helped to accelerate the development of the sector – providing clean energy and creating thousands of jobs." [2]
But an example of the dutch market. To be more clear what neoliberalism is. And to be short it's the idea government is in the benefit of protecting commercial interest with regulation. As a clear example, I took this from a report.
**"The case of Eneco
To understand the real-life ramifications of TiSA’s one-way liberalisation policy, take the example of Netherlands energy firm Eneco. In 2013, the integrated energy company – which is owned by a group of local governments – came under pressure from liberalising laws from the Dutch parliament, was forced to split its production and distribution businesses. This led to Eneco cutting their renewables investment by 400 million euros and cancelling the construction of new offshore wind farms. You would need to be able to rethink liberalisation in such cases." [2]**
From this example, we are looking about one of the most painful things government and perhaps politics. It is rather a slow process to change and even worse when clear mistakes are obvious it can't fix it own mistakes easily. From this, we can also conclude we are not dealing with a free market.
The other perspectives,
Now, of course, there is another perspective neoliberalism principles rely on trade. Which is general is the best way to offer people the liberty to make their own choices but some idea's in neoliberalism about trade don't look that solid. Of course, I am not talking about the privatisation perspective. Companies can do what a government does probably better but certainly more sufficient. Cause simply a government decision making have proved often insufficient. I am talking about the general that trade is best for everybody, this may be if we look at the general idea of a trade. But the reality isn't a trade is an exchange of goods or services that benefit both parties. For example, people do make bad investments. And for a global market, the resources of every single country aren't equal, to begin with.
My friend gave me a post[3] about a group actually identified as neoliberal from there we can see a lot of common ground. With this group. Not unexpected of course. The liberals, new-liberals & libertarians have common ground. An important part of their identity might be completely shared.
**
"Pro-markets
Pro-property rights
Pro-growth
Individualistic
Empirical and open-minded
Globalist in outlook
Optimistic about the future
Focused on changing the world for the better"[3]
**
However the globalist part is important and as changing the world for the better, we all say that on every side of the spectrum. Libertarians and as well liberals as individuals might have different opinions about property rights. The latest neoliberal trend is free-trade agreements. e.g. TTIP, TTP, NAFTA, CETA, TiSA and so on. These include separate law systems like ISDS & ICS. These are not new. They have been around since the golden age for example. However, if we are talking about free-trade these seem to be more likely to be linked to the growth principle and not the market access alone. The liberty to trade the way you want and use your resources such as land may suffer under these agreements. As we have seen with the WTO agreements. We have a lot of common ground with Neoliberalism but we are also different for in my opinion good reasons.
For example, neoliberalism has developed as something that might keep the resources of government big. If we look into the spendings of the European Union a significant part is spent on keeping up animal farmers. According to RTLnieuws, almost 40% of the spending of the European Union is spending for agriculture in general. That means the EU spending some of your money for €0,32 a day it's making your choice. [4] Most of this money is spent to support the income of farmers. (70%) As we know what sectors are doing poorly lately we can assume where the most of this budget is going. Then there is market support. As a sort of collective insurance, this consumes about 10% of the budget.[4] What is left of the budget 20% is put into innovation. Which doesn't seem to have a clear definition?[4]
So now that I have tried to defined neo-liberalism and may have a small group of who identified them selfs as neo-liberals after calling them selfs libertarians. So one of the differences I noticed on the post[3] is that the NAP or non-aggression-principle has been completely absent in their definition so far in this post. So far it has been quite hard to find other groups that use that identity. So we will switch to science.
"David Harvey described neoliberalism as a class project, designed to impose class on society through liberalism.[107] Economists Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy posit that "the restoration and increase of the power, income, and wealth of the upper classes" are the primary objectives of the neoliberal agenda.[108] Economist David M. Kotz contends that neoliberalism "is based on the thorough domination of labour by capital."[16]:43 The emergence of the 'precariat', a new class facing acute socio-economic insecurity and alienation, has been attributed to the globalization of neoliberalism.[109]"[6]
[1]WTO agreement on agriculture
[2]TISA_report_EN by Greenpeace
[3]https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/coming-out-as-neoliberals
[4]http://www.rtlnieuws.nl/economie/home/zoveel-kosten-europese-landbouwsubsidies (2015)
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey