In some circles it was never a negative term to begin with. In other circles it will remain a negative term forever, regardless of what you do.
One interesting consequence of the Internet is that we're becoming very aware that for every label you could ascribe to yourself, there is some group out there who holds a deep, visceral hate for that label, so deep that they wish you would just cease to exist. I guess this was probably the case beforehand, but without instantaneous global communication, you generally weren't aware of the people who hated you. I remember that when I was growing up, terms like "American", "patriotic", "tolerant", and "generous" were unambiguously good, but now for each of those there is some group who considers them a dog-whistle for people they despise.
The term itself was hardly known/in use to the general public before the crash 2008 and occupy. Since then it was only known as basically a different word for greed.
As another commenter (who obviously decided to delete his comment) wrote here, I also doubt that a re-branding will ever be successful. It's not like coming up with a new term in economy is something hard to do.
I doubt any of that matters to Stripe, whose customer base consists of small-to-midsize businesses who need to accept payments over the Internet, oftentimes for marketplace-based business models. By virtue of the problem that they want solved, this group is going to skew towards free markets, free trade, globalization, and all the tenets that r/neoliberalism embraces. They may not themselves want to adopt the label (particularly in front of their own customers, who bring their own baggage associated with it), but they'll be sympathetic to the ideas.
Also, the term is still not known/in use to the general public. The set of people who are politically active via Occupy, Tea Party, Trumpism, #Indivisible, etc. is a small subset of all people, and relatively disjoint from the set of people with successful Internet-based businesses.
You did not have to be active in Occupy or any of the other groups to hear the term. Hell, my mother knows is and won't connect anything good with it. The main reason is what happened 2008 and for those who cared a little bit: deregulation. People who take neoliberalism are not necessary anti free market. Those would be the extremists again.
> They may not themselves want to adopt the label (particularly in front of their own customers, who bring their own baggage associated with it), but they'll be sympathetic to the ideas.
So you agree that there was no rehabilitation then?
I still don't understand why you wouldn't just come up with a new term. Is this bad marketing knowledge or intentional?
FWIW, my mother certainly doesn't know what it is, and I just asked my wife and she has no idea. I'd heard the term in the rehabilitated, Sam Bowman sense, but had to go look up the Wikipedia page to see what the controversy was about. I don't particularly identify with any of the labels of mainstream (is there such a thing anymore?) political movements.
It's a really common mistake to assume that the people you hang around with are representative of all people. The U.S. (let alone the world) is a really big place, and we don't all read the same media anymore.
Alright, let's say here in Europe...although that doesn't make you and your wife look quite good here. I guess this is where the Europe vs. US memes grow. I mean, do you watch news? How could you have missed what were the poster words back then?
However,
> They may not themselves want to adopt the label (particularly in front of their own customers, who bring their own baggage associated with it), but they'll be sympathetic to the ideas.
still stands here. Just from a quick lookup on wikipedia, you got to this statement. So if this is even obvious to you, we don't really have to talk about any kind of rehabilitation. The real issue would be some terribly bad informed people.
Occupy came from the US the crash happened there first.
But yes, as we see above, there are people who probably don't watch news or watch selective news? I don't know. It's weird.
Good we have the Öffentlich Rechtlicher Rundfunk I guess ;)
Look at the posts there, it's people having fun with people who identity as neoliberal without any sense of irony. Neoliberal is a dirty word among pretty much every group of contemporary politically minded folks.
I understood you very well. But maybe we are not talking about the same "elites" because I have no idea how you get the idea. They didn't care about the connotation back then. Why should the negativity of it be relevant today?
One interesting consequence of the Internet is that we're becoming very aware that for every label you could ascribe to yourself, there is some group out there who holds a deep, visceral hate for that label, so deep that they wish you would just cease to exist. I guess this was probably the case beforehand, but without instantaneous global communication, you generally weren't aware of the people who hated you. I remember that when I was growing up, terms like "American", "patriotic", "tolerant", and "generous" were unambiguously good, but now for each of those there is some group who considers them a dog-whistle for people they despise.