mikema63 wrote:I read a couple of people who are considered "neoliberal" in by various people including an economist or two whose writing is tolerable and I have never heard them suggest that economics should be considered anything like that or that moral views and impacts on people shouldn't be considered when making policy.
Who in your view has espoused this sort of neoliberalism where social impacts shouldn't be considered?
I believe it underlies the entire philosophical framework.
There are many mainstream economists who consider themselves adherents to neoliberalism. These are people who have been sucked in by the establishment. 'Dissident-economist' is a somewhat rare combination, for whatever reason.
Freidrich Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom' is a good exposition of the abdication of any moral responsibility. He introduces it as a political book, but I have argued that neoliberalism is itself predominately a political ideology (the economics analysis serves as justification). In the book, Hayek essentially argues that any efforts by the government to consider economic policies intended to help people, inevitably leads to totalitarianism. Government 'planners' are the enemies of the society they contrive. The 'planners' are the avatar toward which Hayek directs his fire. The conclusion is that government shouldn't intervene, at all.
But as I said, neoliberalism is highly interventionist. They hold that organization of society by the market is a natural arrangement, and so the government should intervene so as to subvert all things to the logic of the market. The premise itself is flawed. The policy results are therefore grounded on false logical premise. As a result, they are socially experimental in nature. The number one case for illustration of this is the goings on in Chile after the coup by Pinochet (which was directly supported by neoliberal interests).
Andre Gunder Frank wrote a book about it, 'Economic Genocide in Chile. Frank was an economics PhD from the Chicago School, and was there during the 'neoliberal (counter)-revolution'.
Frank was himself the unusual combo of 'dissident-economist', and rejected neoliberalism.
Freidrich Hayek attended the University of Vienna, which was likewise a foremost economics program of his time, and included the likes of Ludwig von Mises in its faculty, premier extoller of the 'Austrian School', to which contemporary 'libertarians' ascribe so much credence. Austrian economics shares with neoliberalism the ideal of 'market-fundamentalism', the market should be left to decide all. This is part of neoliberalism's heritage, through direct line through Hayek, and others.
Karl Polayni was a contemporary of Mises; and a Hungarian, who was transplanted to Vienna, then London, and ultimately Canada. Polayni was a 'dissident-economist' in his own right, economic liberalism was an utter scourge, and Polayni remains the foremost critic of market fundamentalism, e.g., economic liberalism.
Edit: I just remembered. Road to Serfdom was one of Margaret Thatcher's favorite books.
Thatcher, Hayek & Friedman