Neoliberalism makes the market, not experts, the arbiter of truth
Evidence
Neoliberal doctrine maintains that anyone should be free to propound any wonky falsehood they may wish, because the final arbiter of truth is the market, and not some clutch of experts who represent sanctioned science. If it just so happens to resonate with the commercial propaganda interests of the oil companies, well, so much the better. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Mirowski’s core thesis that the marketplace-of-ideas metaphor is smuggled into epistemology; links to Milgrom’s institutional economics and Hayekian knowledge dispersal. — connects to: Neoliberalism defines interest so as to render false consciousness unintelligible — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1869; Neoliberals restrict freedom to negative freedom to shield market epistemology from scrutiny — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 169; Markets are products of truth struggles, not validators of truth — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 288 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Neoliberalism’s deliberate epistemic inconsistencies enabled its long-term success
#expands(0.80) - Neoliberalism rests on a double truth separating elite doctrine from mass propaganda
#expands(0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2146 - Neoliberal thinkers rejected natural-rights foundations, deriving morality from market evolution
#expands(0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 28