Gaius Publius: Neoliberalism, "Just Desserts,” and the Post-Climate-Crisis Economy

Chris Hedges has a terrific piece up at Truthdig that I couldn’t resist showing to you, since we’ve been talking about neoliberalism and also the convulsions that climate change will bring to the world.

This piece has a couple of parts, since there are a couple of intersecting thoughts. I’ll discuss each of those parts in turn (see the subheadings below and also the summary).

But first, a definition. We’ve talked before about how “neoliberalism” is the same as “old (pre-FDR) liberalism,” which is also the same as Adam Smith–style “free market capitalism.” In the context of Adam Smith, neoliberalism is just “liberalism.”