Neoliberal ‘freedom’ prioritized cross-border capital mobility over domestic welfare.

Evidence

It reveals much about the neoliberal notion of freedom that they saw the most powerful threat to the freedom of individuals and to Western civilization as such in the government regulation of foreign exchange, that is, in regulations instituted in an effort to enhance economic stability and general welfare, which posed little restriction on those not engaged in international investment and trade. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 423

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the conventional meaning of ‘freedom’: a regulatory regime serving stability and broad welfare was feared more than any internal constraint, revealing that the neoliberal freedom at stake was specifically the freedom of mobile capital.
• SEED: Angles toward an essay comparing the intellectual history of ‘freedom as exit’ — capital’s escape hatch — against the earlier civic-republican freedom that made flight from one’s community disqualifying.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberals sought enforceable capital flight rights that outstripped human rights protections. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 481; Neoliberal trade doctrine plus corporate reengineering drove offshore capital flight — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 171; Neoliberals pushed floating exchange rates and open capital flows that disciplined welfare spending. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 792 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism replaces the welfare state with a traffic-cop state #expands (0.82)