[yyy888sss]

Liberalism means freedom in all spheres (including economically and socially), no need to add the neo- prefix. When you have freedom in a global economy there will be massive income inequality (think about Lebron James or Elon Musk vs the average person) but everyone is better off. Technology allows the best athletes to entertain millions, and the best entrepreneurs to serve billions.

[prox]

That’s not true. “The best” here is simply an effect of amongst other : first mover advantage, already secured liquidity to be a first mover, the network effect, and the money to push massive campaigns to influence a topic. So we are not seeing the “best” in the context where everyone is better off.

I would argue that Europe who have more social economies the everyday person is better off. Less student costs, less medical costs, lots of utilities provided for the people. It took ages to get an infrastructure bill in the US.

[belter]

Fortunately, this Atlas Shrugged variation of Liberalism, and it's tragic results are quite visible for all to see in societies like the United States.

Meanwhile...., In other places, in societies with a lesser number of Elon Musk's or Lebron Jame's, countries like the Nordics or even France, Germany and others, those millions of normal persons, enjoy 30 days of holidays per year, state sponsored retirement benefits, free or almost free healthcare and free or almost university level education.

[usrn]

Those countries are more demographically/culturally uniform and are higher trust societies. Even Bernie Sanders admits this is necessary for large social programs.

[jhgb]

> Those countries are more demographically/culturally uniform and are higher trust societies

What does that even mean?

[germinalphrase]

There is a vein of thinking that “diversity causes division” in the United States and this undermines our political willingness to create effective universal safety net programs.

High trust vs low trust societies tend toward egalitarian vs clannish communities respectively.

[lupire]

it means society can only thrive pre-integration or post-genocide/ethnic cleansing.

For example, Northern Ireland cannot exist in the successful European model until the Catholics are gone, or all the Protestants are gone.

[jhgb]

Which is a strange thing to claim because e.g. in Germany, Protestants and Catholics "coexist in the successful European model", whatever that means. Claims of "can only thrive" are trivially refuted by counterexamples.

[noworld]

Interesting, freedom to do what?

[yyy888sss]

Freedom to do whatever you want as long as it does not infringe the rights/freedoms of anyone else.

[hamter]

> as long as it does not infringe the rights/freedoms of anyone else

that seems like the hairy part

[lupire]

Like freedom buy from slaveowners and to dump poisons into the environment, as long as you don't interfere with others freedom to suicide or starve or clean the poison.

[mantas]

And freedom to define those rights/freedoms as you see fit.

[orta]

"Neoliberalism" is a specific term for the conceptual forms of capitalism the west has been under since the 70-80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

[yyy888sss]

But the 'neo' refers to the resurgence of basic ideas of freedom, not a big change in philosophy over the original liberal ideas.

[lupire]

Specifically, neoliberalism was a created to return to the Roaring 20s to rollback the post-Great Depression attempts at economic stability.

Less sardonically, neoliberalism is classical liberalism in the 20th Century but with an 18th Century perspective that ignores the oppressive potential of corporations that are more powerful than nations. Neoliberals have a hard time figuring how to hold "corporate persons" accountable for their violence against humanity and our environment, because they never cared to solve the problem of dilution of responsibility.