Comment by vezzy-fnord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vezzy-fnord | Hacker News Reader

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Criticisms of mathematical modeling in economics were most definitely given by Mises and Hayek. Historian of economic thought Mark Blaug was also very critical of how neoclassical production theory (particularly Edgeworth's formulation) distorted the meaning of "competition" from a dynamic process to a quantity. Ironically, it is the same far-left heterodox demagogues like Varoufakis (though he's hardly the worst) who nevertheless use it in this sense to argue for mercantilist programs. Neoclassical when it suits them, heterodox when it doesn't.

Anyone who uses the term "neoliberalism" is a charlatan. It is an absurd conspiracy theory that has since blown into an amorphous meme out of Marxist historiographers who struggle with the explanatory power (or lack thereof) of their framework.

Mathematical models do have their uses in formalizing assumptions and analyzing dependencies, so they're not all bad, even if the Cowles Commission did go overboard.

(Also let's not forget that the modern methodology of economics came as a result of the Keynesian research program, particularly since Hicks (1937)'s introduction of IS-LM, first modeled by Keynes himself in 1933 as four simultaneous equations.)

What makes the use of the term 'neoliberalism' to be a conspiracy theory? I thought it was a blanket term for the sorts of laissez-faire capitalist ideologies that sprang up since the 1980s, and whose proponents did have a big thing for namechecking Adam Smith and other classical liberal economists of the 19th century. You're surely not going to deny that there has been some sort of ideological drive in favour of free market reforms, privatization and "free trade" agreements of the WTO/TTIP ilk, are you?

I don't think people who use the term think it refers specifically to shadowy cabal of free marketeers conspiring with each other over some hidden agenda. It's just a term for what a bunch of people, many of whom are in positions of power, happen to openly think and do.

"Neoliberalism" is just an Americanism for economic liberalism, because the word liberalism is overloaded in the U.S., and is an autoantonym. That part of vezzy-fnord's comment is just a reflexive libertarian expulsion.

Not sure at all -- a lot of critique I've seen directed at "neoliberals" (and the term is exclusively used by critics), seems to target policies that are decidedly non-libertarian.

It is always used to critisize things from the left, which creates an impression that the term describes economically right-of-center ideologies, but that's IMO just because of the difference in vocabulary between different groups -- e.g. you may see the same thing described as neoliberal by the left, liberal by the right, and "statist" by the libertarians.

Thinking about it, "statist" is a similarly empty term used exclusively by opponents -- I've never seen anyone calling herself a "statist" either.

One reason is that the term is exclusively used by the ideological opponents of this "neoliberalism", and as a result it is necessarily ill-defined. A lot of people describe themselves as libertarians of various types, or even as classical liberals, but I've never met a person calling herself a neoliberal. Outlining a difference between these ideologies might be a good start, and would at least give the term some meaning, without it though it is nothing more than handwaving at people the speaker doesn't like. Had that actually been done, I might even call myself a neoliberal one day -- but as it stands, I can't, because no one knows what it is :)

> One reason is that the term is exclusively used by the ideological opponents of this "neoliberalism",

No, its not. Its used by defenders of neoliberalism quite a bit.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2010/Sumnerneolibera...

https://cambridgedevelopmentstudies.wordpress.com/2011/04/12...

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=31603

http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=94...

> A lot of people describe themselves as libertarians of various types, or even as classical liberals, but I've never met a person calling herself a neoliberal.

Which says a lot more about who you do (and don't) know than it says about anything else.

Thanks for the references, these are good articles, and I am happy to see that I was wrong and there are in fact some defenders of the term. Still, it is very predominantly seen in a critical context -- quite unlike, for example, "libertarianism" or "economic liberalism" or "classical liberalism".

But, even here it does not look well-defined at all: at best, authors simply classify specific policies as "neoliberal".

Even if everything you just said is true, not one word of it justifies the use of the term 'conspiracy theory' - which, in turn, is almost always a term used by the detractors of conspiracists. (And, of course, that doesn't mean the term 'conspiracy theory' isn't useful)

Yeah, I agree that the GP went overboard with the conspiracy accusation. There is of course no conspiracy; but it does indicate bias.

> Anyone who uses the term "neoliberalism" is a charlatan.

> It is an absurd conspiracy theory that has since blown into an amorphous meme out of Marxist historiographers who struggle with the explanatory power (or lack thereof) of their framework.

"neoliberalism" as a term is no more (and, arguably, much less) an invention of Marxist historiography than is "capitalism"; its true that both terms were coined by critics of the systems they describe, but that's not uncommon.

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