| > then you've met a Neoliberal. By your definition. But the term has been used for a whole lot more in many different context and that makes it so useless. > The dogma of today's right-wing "mercantile" politicians is a perversion of Adam Smith. These politicians state that the invisible hand requires complete government deregulation in order to function. They ignore Smith's point that the invisible hand requires both free markets and government regulation of monopoly to function. No. That's not what they ignore. These "mercantile" politicians never had the slightest interest in Adam Smiths ideas or in limiting power of the state and or business in the first place. The point of Smith and his fellows (like Hume) at the time was that business would try to capture the state and that was one reason they tried to limited the power of the state and strengthen individual freedoms. Sure they might have been in favor of some regulation but what we have now is so far beyond the wildest dreams of Smith that it is hard to argue that, this is what he meant. The problem is that the state is forever growing and that no democratic procedures can prevent business (and voters) from competing to capture these rents, rather then the rents from the state. I would recommend 'Public Choice' economics because they think threw these different intensives very systematically. |