Neoliberals supported market contracts in sex but opposed state-subsidized rights

Evidence

In fact, the opposite is true: a scholar such as Richard Posner who otherwise supported the extension of the private commercial contract (in such areas as the trade in drugs, sex and babies) was unequivocally hostile to the idea of a constitutional right to sexual freedom, for the simple reason that it might impose an obligation on the state to actively enable and subsidize the freedoms in question. This was precisely what occurred when sexual privacy jurisprudence was extended to welfare recipients in the 1970s. Instead, neoliberals support the more limited notion that private contractual freedom (as opposed to a constitutional right to freedom) should be extended to all arenas of social and intimate life, on the proviso that the associated costs are fully internalized by the contracting parties. Failing this, neoliberals are no less willing than social conservatives to invoke the necessity of noncontractual obligations in marriage and parenthood and are more than prepared to call on their enforcement by the state. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 240

Categorization

• DEFINE: Draws the central distinction between private contractual freedom and a constitutional right — the load-bearing conceptual split of the whole passage.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberals favored contractual freedom for intimate life only if costs are privately internalized; Neoliberals judged human-rights claims by their conduciveness to markets — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 27

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals favored contractual freedom for intimate life only if costs are privately internalized #corroborates (0.92)
• Neoliberals judged human-rights claims by their conduciveness to markets #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 27