i tend to describe neoliberalism as the project to expand the scope of market logics, including into domains that had previously been insulated from them. 1/

i’d agree it’s useful to specify that the project eagerly and openly makes use of the state to those ends, rather than treating state action as taboo or its opposition, as libertarians do. 2/

(there’s a kind of resonance, at the same time as neoliberalism makes active use of the state to expand the scope of market logics, it applies itself to the state, working to put the deliberative mechanisms of the state under those logics.) 3/

(i look forward to reading the post! not podcast!) /fin

I guess I’m not sure I’m resisting. I understand that you and @rajakorman.bsky.social diasgree on whether it was good or bad, I agree that neoliberalism sought to constrain state action in favor of the cementing the use and extension of market logics. 1/

I just think “the encasement of markets in public systems of regulation and adjudication” is poor description of that. I only understand what you and @rajakorman.bsky.social seem to mean by that from this conversation. 2/

The phrase is ambiguous. What you and @rajakorman.bsky.social are using it to denote is that public systems were made into a “case” that protected the extended role and domain of market logics. Which, fine, no disagreement. 3/

But a more natural reading of the phrase is that under neoliberalism the state encased in the sense of cabin, fix, restrict, restrain markets, rather than protect against whatever might challenge them. Which sounds like embeddedness or social democracy. 4/

I like both of you, and delight that you genially agree on the phenomenon and tease each other about whether it’s good or bad. I agree on the phenomenon too. 5/

But if you are mooting a definition of neoliberalism, perhaps an is-it-a-woman-or-a-duck phrase that most readers would, I contend misread (that I misread before I had the benefit of this thread) is perhaps not great. /fin

Sure. Encasement certainly doesn’t imply in service of humanistic values. But it’s a bit of a peculiar term to use for cementing the aggrandizement of, rather than constraining (for better or for worse) market logics.

I’d not want to conflate neoliberalism with social democracy, as I’m gently, perhaps unfairly, chiding @rajakorman.bsky.social for doing. Nor would I want to conflate it with fascist reaction to market logics.

How neoliberalism relates to market logics is distinct and specific, and not something I think usefully described or suggested by “encasement”. To me that suggests cabining or restraining, and that’s not the way neoliberalism distinguishes itself from libertarianism.

I think if you mean by “encasement” in the second prong of your definition encasement within a stylized supranational market system, you should be explicit about that. 1/

As it stands, your definition sounds like it are describing about Polanyi when it is really describing Dani Rodrik’s golden straitjacket. /fin

But not just any entity. Entities whose role is to ensure a kind of stylized market logic governs, not to encase or embed markets Polanyi-style into some large civil society that balances market logics with social and humanistic values. 1/

It’s to metastasize a certain version of market logic beyond what nation-state level libertarianism could ever do. 2/

I think that is very bad, a bug not a feature is too dry a way to put it. But we don’t share the same politics. (It’d be interesting to compare how much we share the same values, to what degree our dispute is about different ends or different means.) /fin

Neoliberalism was heavily influenced by and sympathetic to libertarianism, not a phenomenon in opposition to it. It differs in that minimization of the state was not necessarily its objective. Sometimes colonization of new domains by market logics require new government infrastructures. 1/

For example, finance of education by Federal loans as “investment in human capital” was a neoliberal but not libertarian idea. Both Clinton and Obama’s health care proposals involved expanding government to bring market logicks into those spheres. Neoliberal, not libertarian, proposals. /fin

i object to this definition, because what i think what people (and I) mean by neoliberalism is precisely the opposite of its second prong: “the encasement of markets in public systems of regulation and adjudication”. 1/

on the contrary, i think the sine qua non of neoliberalism is the colonization of spheres previously insulated by market logicks. running education like a business, law + economics, cost/benefit analysis at market prices (including of regulation itself). 2/

all of these are what puts the neo in neoliberalism. /fin