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Comment by 1_2__4 | Hacker News Reader

> Why haven't product liability laws caught up with information services?

I fear that the simple answer is because we no longer live in a country (or political climate, if you prefer something more optimistic) where regulatory and legal structures like product liability are thought of being the role of government. The neoliberal response to this is "the market will punish Equifax and other, more responsible competitors will take their place or force them to change their ways." The very concept of human beings exerting political will to make a company do something is almost unfathomable these days.

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I'm curious what you mean by "neoliberal" here. It's not a term I'm very familiar with. It is especially confusing to me because what you went on to describe is traditional Conservative reasoning.

'neoliberal' is not directly related to 'liberal' (in the sense that, in the US, 'liberal' basically refers to democrats). many of both republicans and democrats can be considered neoliberal.

neoliberalism is notionally centered on things like free markets, globalization, free-trade, privatization, deregulation, etc. and can be seen as a sort of pro-business or pro-corporate philosophy.

i'd say 'conservative' is really a question of preferring the status-quo, or perhaps traditionalism. consider that 'conservative' can imply potentially very different views if you contrast US and EU conservatives (or elsewhere). a conservative is better contrasted with a 'progressive' who enthusiastically seeks (perceived) beneficial changes to the status-quo or traditions.

> neoliberalism is notionally centered on things like free markets, globalization, free-trade, privatization, deregulation, etc. and can be seen as a sort of pro-business or corporatist philosophy

“pro-corporate”, perhaps, but corporatism is a different thing and opposed to neoliberalism. (It doesn't come from “corporation” in the sense of the business enterprise, but from the same root referring to a body, in this case referring to the whole of society as a single body.)

ah, right, my mistake. thanks!

Kind of a buzzword these days, but the Wikipedia describes the term pretty effectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

It is, in my opinion, designed to be confusing.

Neo-Liberalism is the ideology of the discovery of law through economics (which is held to be a sort of axiomatic "scientific" given). Basically if corporations were people -- and hey look here, they are -- and were to get together and dream up an ideology for themselves -- you know, corporations of the world, unite!! -- they would task some of their human lackies to manipulate their institutions to install Neo-Liberalism as the world wide political-economical regime.

Any other questions?

From what I can tell, "neoliberal" is a way of saying "crazy libertarian" without raising the hackles of libertarians.

> From what I can tell, "neoliberal" is a way of saying "crazy libertarian" without raising the hackles of libertarians.

While neoliberalism and libertarianism are in the same direction, they aren't the same thing. Neoliberals are generally fine with government restricting what can be bought and sold, they just want most legal goods and services to generally be provided by private enterprise with limited regulation, and with only very limited barriers to international trade in goods and services that are legal in both the source and destination jurisdiction.

Not really, the traditional conservative answer would be more along the lines of companies should be allowed to do whatever they want because ultimately that's better for the individual. The neoliberal argument is closer to one of the inevitability of markets, both in the negative in the positive: the invisible hand will solve this, and the invisible hand is inexorable so it's futile and wrong to try and do anything except let it do its work.

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