People like neoliberalism for the same reason they like fascism: people want to believe in a utopia that mirrors their values. Belief is a hell of a drug.
Then ask them, framing the question in a familiar way, and they just parrot back.
LOL. Sounds like GPT. :-)
Fascism must be the least popular extremist ideology in 2022. I have never heard anyone in my life talk about how it might be a good idea, or how "real fascism hasn't been tried yet". Hell I have barely even seen it on the internet.
As far as I can tell it exists today only as an epithet, but happy to be proved wrong.
It typically calls itself anything else other than fascism when it reemerges but it shares all the same features.
In the US e.g. use of the term "cuckservative" would probably signal that you align yourself with most of the tenets of a fascistic ideology even if you dont explicitly call yourself a fascist.
If anything it's become a lot more popular over the last 15-20 years than ever before. No tiki torch marches in the 90s.
If you genuinely believe this, why the secrecy? Why not just be out and open with it like the communists are?
Typically they do remain a disorganized mess (as could be expected for an ideology popular mainly with opportunists and losers) but every so often some rich person feels threatened or ambitious and throws money at them and organizes them into a militia or something. Thats when they transition from an unpleasant crowd to a genuinely terrifying threat.
Neoliberals are likewise loath to actually call themselves neoliberals while they argue for privatising a publicly owned utility.
What's more, many modern-day political parties and governments avoid the fascist label but still incorporate fascist ideas into their platforms and strategies. Rhetoric that recalls a time when a country was a great empire but was brought down by certain people enjoying undeserved benefits, or that rejects social programs on the basis that not all citizens deserve them, or that endorses the suppression of certain people's individual rights or civil liberties—violently if necessary—is often rooted in fascist philosophy.
Fascism can be difficult to define and identify. This is partly because it is often modified to meet a specific fascist party's political goals and partly because it has many variations, many of which overlap with and arguably fit better into related ideologies such as socialism. Because of this vague categorization, considerable differences of opinion exist as to which governments qualify as truly fascist and which are instead some other system, such as right-wing dictatorships or authoritarian regimes—which are similar but do not follow fascist ideology."
- https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/fascist-c...
Just like dictators call themselves presidents, fascists call themselves other things.
As far as I can tell it exists today only as an epithet
It is authoritarian, and anti-republican. Anti-republicanism in practice: removing power from courts (especially supranational organs like the US supreme court), consolidating media power (aka removing or pushing to the fringe dissident media) and removing various transparency laws (in France, stuff like making sure the campaign accounting is public, or letting the public know the complete estate?(patrimoine) of the presidential candidates).
You can in practice have a fascist semi-democracy or oligarchy. Another key point is that unlike Bonapartism, and like Nazism and Stalinism, Fascism don't use plebiscite that much, historically only at the start, to help consolidate its power. This make it quite different from Gaullism (which is a very moderate Bonapartism). While Fascism, unlike Nazism, is not expansionist, it still have racist undertone and can use the hierarchy of races to justify colonialism and neo-colonialism, and appartheid.
Like other far-right ideologies, their myth can be resumed like this: "We (our ethnical/religious/cultural/national group) are the best in the world. But right now, we aren't at our rightful place. This is because these external groups (The French/the English/the Russians/the Chinese) are preventing us to reach it, aided by our internal enemies(The Gypsys/the Jews/the communists/the anarchists/the libs) that we have to render inoffensive by any mean."
I do see some fascists nowadays, but this is true that they are less anti-republican than they used to be 80 years ago, so a new denomination might be necessary? Unless anti-republicanism is just an inheritance from Bonaparte and not as central as i thought?
Regulations just stupid rules made up by stupid humans. They're not special. They're no more likely to be a net good or bad for the groups they apply to than some random policy that comes down from corporate.
Every regulation that removes a rung from the ladder and increases inequality sails under the flag of some noble goal. And useful idiots take that shit hook line and sinker.
If prosperity was as simple as playing regulatory whack-a-mole on every bad thing we see we'd be a hell of a lot more prosperous.
Read Atlas Shrugged if you want to see the opposite of your point of view.
Those more on the left treat it as a holy grail as if government spending wasn't historically very inefficient and prone to corruption.
Those more on the right think all the society that was built around them was free and came out of nothing.
I certainly don't like paying taxes but they're needed. I don't like goverment "intervention" but no free market is going to build a road in front of my house, establish a government with fiscal/monetary policy (and a currency - and no, no cryptocrap will solve this) and build relations with other countries.
And in fact old capitalists seemed much more society focused: they built railways, universities, etc. Instead of yet another web app
Decent infrastructure benefits everyone.
People that aren't poor participate in the economy and help business.
I shouldn't have to explain it only money terms, but in that way it makes sense.
Why should society pay more to keep people poor, the numbers don't add up.
Unless it's not about the money at all but about punishing people?
So, ultimately, it's a decision of some boss somewhere?
Remove "the poor" from the equation, and it's likely your quality of life would collapse. The market as operating doesn't recognise that in their remuneration because negatives are easy to externalise, and then roll down hill.