[RobertoG]

Well, of course, now that the label it's fashionable, it's going to be used by everybody for everything. A little like using "nano" a few years ago, or "AI" nowadays. That doesn't mean that the term was originally void of meaning as you claim.

>"This is not all part of some grand 'neoliberal' conspiracy."

I beg to differ. Perhaps, conspiracy it's not the word, but very concrete policies have been imposed all around the world by very powerful actors. Those actors are clearly defined, and the times when this happened are also clear. So we can talk of a "neo-liberal" period. After all, we have to call it something.

>"The idea that the 'Washington Consensus' derive from the same basic ideas as the classical liberal ideas (such as Friedman) are also wrong"

Maybe they don't derive from the same basic ideas, but, for sure those ideas have been used to justify it.

[nickik]

> That doesn't mean that the term was originally void of meaning as you claim.

Historically it goes back to Post-WW2 German economist. You are also not using that definition.

The point is that the word 'neoliberalism' has gone threw a number of different definitions, and you are just focusing on one that was coined and almost exclusively used in a far left political movement, because they were unhappy with all classical liberals, everybody on the right and even the center left.

To be more exact the research shows pretty clearly that it was after the Coup in Chile where the left started criticizing that government any anything they saw related to it as 'neoliberal' and after that the term exploded and became ever broader in meaning.

There are a few papers that study the history and use of the word that you can search for.

> I beg to differ. Perhaps, conspiracy it's not the word, but very concrete policies have been imposed all around the world by very powerful actors.

Yes but if you look at those then you will notice that is was implemented by a wide variety of different parties with different ideologies. The reasons given were also different in different places with different goals.

The people who recommend the polices also came from different schools of economics and different backgrounds.

If you sum this all up as 'neoliberalism', is a waste oversimplification that mostly serves as a political 'its was better before neoliberalism' and has not much content otherwise.

> Maybe they don't derive from the same basic ideas, but, for sure those ideas have been used to justify it.

Again, sure, but if you just throw all into the same 'neoliberal' bucket then you will never understand the differences between the wide variety of opinion on these things. Development economics has a long an complex history with many different economists giving their input, the 'Washington Consensus' was one particular idea written down by one set of people with a wide variety of opinions inspired by lots of different ideas from the history of development economics and economics more broadly.

This of course includes Friedmans and many others. Many economists would agree with part of the WC and others would agree with the idea but not with the way it was implemented. Others disagree with the whole approach. All of them are often called 'neoliberal'. The opinions are very different, labaling it all 'neoliberal' is only helpful for politics, not for understand the how and why of individual polices.

[RobertoG]

>"Historically it goes back to Post-WW2 German economist. You are also not using that definition."

I don't know about other users of the word. Part of the wikipedia definition, that I agree with, and I think reflects the current consensus of the word is:

"These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980."

So, what make neoliberalism, as a word, informative is that it represents a change from another period. That makes, in my opinion, the word useful and informative. If you recognize there was a change, how do you call this period if not 'neoliberal'?

>"Yes but if you look at those then you will notice that is was implemented by a wide variety of different parties with different ideologies. "

Maybe we are looking to different things, but when I look to it what I see, for instance, is the IMF and a few other "american and european" institutions imposing development paths, that they didn't follow in the past, as the 'obvious' solution. And keep insisting in it, never mind the results.