Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Nothing in the grandparent comment is particularly neoliberal; now, if it stated that neoliberal policy assured (or even made more likely) the kind of economic resilience that it suggests is what matters, that would be different, but as it is it is compatible with the criticism of neoliberalism that is common from the center-left to the far left (though each position in this range also has many more criticisms of neoliberalism) that it favors myopic microoptimizations over systemic health and resilience.

Heck, as a center-leftish frequent critic of neoliberalism, I mostly agree with the statement: while who was hit hardest has some effect, differences in the trajectory of the rebound from the bottom tends to matter more for the post-crisis position than differences in the depth of the bottom.

View on HN

"efficiency" and "innovation" are neoliberal buzzwords. They are the very same buzzwords that were used to justify the cuts to our supplies and offshoring of our supply chains that led in part to this crisis.

It is absurd on its face to summarize Germany's ascendancy to "efficiency" and "innovation" when, you know, complicated geopolitics is a thing. It is literally fluffy propaganda.

> "efficiency" and "innovation" are neoliberal buzzwords.

No, efficiency and innovation are real things. Neoliberals tend to think that they are areas that neoliberal policy produces better outcomes on, and in the case of efficiency at least there is a strong theoretical case that this is true in a very narrow range of hyper-idealized conditions.

People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important (though perhaps not of as paramount importance as neoliberals tend to portray them), but often disagree with neoliberals as to the optimality of neoliberal policies at producing them outside of the kind of simplified conditions that dominate the first couple weeks of undergraduate economics classes.

> People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important (though perhaps not of as paramount importance as neoliberals tend to portray them), but often disagree with neoliberals as to the optimality of neoliberal policies at producing them outside of the kind of simplified conditions that dominate the first couple weeks of undergraduate economics classes.

People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important _up to the point where needs are met for all_. No leftist uses efficiency/innovation as a target (and if they do chase it for the sake of productivity they are by definition not left of capital).

> People who are not neoliberals often agree that efficiency and innovation are important _up to the point where needs are met for all_. No leftist uses efficiency/innovation as a target (and if they do chase it for the sake of productivity they are by definition not left of capital).

Plenty of leftists, agree with neoliberals that utilitarian efficiency ought to be a key goal of an economic system. Leftists, unlike neoliberals, are unlikely to believe that the capitalist markets optimize for utilitarian efficiency, because, even aside from the general failures of the rational choice model due to imperfect information, etc. (which neoliberals often also discount), capitalist markets effectively weight individual utility differently based on the individual’s wealth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com