[lyu07282]

It was never about money, it's about power. Money is just a mechanism, economics is a tool of justification and legitimization of power. In a monarchy it is god that ordained divine beings called kings to rule over us peasants, in liberalism it is hard working intelligent people who rise to the top of a free market. Through their merits alone are they ordained to rule over us peasants, power legitimized by meritocracy. The point is, god or theology isn't real and neither is money or economics.

[soraminazuki]

That sounds less like liberalism and more like neoliberalism. It's not a meritocracy when the rich can use their influence to extract from the poor through wage theft, unfair taxation, and gutting of social programs in favor of an unregulated "free market." Nor are rent seekers hard working intelligent people.

[lyu07282]

Yes yes there is quite some disagreement among liberals of what constitutes a real free market and real meritocracy, who deserves to rule and who doesn't and who does it properly and all that.

[soraminazuki]

I think liberals are generally in agreement against neoliberalism? It's much more popular among conservatives. The exception is the ruling class, which stands united in their support for neoliberal policies regardless of which side of the political spectrum they're on.

[lyu07282]

You have a very distorted view of what liberalism means, we say liberal democracies and liberal international order for a reason. They are all liberals. Reagan and Clinton famously both did neoliberal reforms. I'm not saying they did the wrong thing to reach justified meritocracy, or the degree to which the free market requires regulation by a strong government, or how much we should rent control land lords, I'm saying we are all fucking peasants.