Thanks for responding, can’t really do this in 140 characters!
A bit of background may help: I thought your piece was quite cleverly written in a way to make the neoliberal label widely appealing. The reason I followed up on Twitter is that I felt your description of neoliberalism missed out some key areas, in particular regarding the role of the state. With this stuff missing, people may have read your piece and thought ‘Hey, maybe I’m a neoliberal!’ because you didn’t touch on some of the more objectionable areas.
When I asked about what the role of the state was in your version of neoliberalism — by “your version of neoliberalism” I was referring to the description of neoliberalism that you just wrote an essay about. I therefore interpreted the things you said in our Twitter exchange — that the state should be limited to defense, redistribution and pricing externalities — as an extension of the points you made in your essay.
In any case, if they are your empirical beliefs then I’m not sure what the issue is — what I wrote surely still stands (I was referring to you in the post after all)?
On the water point, I asked whether you thought the state had a role to play in regulating markets and monopolies and public goods and infrastructure. I didn’t choose water as an example of infrastructure, I chose it as an example of a monopoly. You said that you don’t think the state should have a role in regulating monopolies, so again my point still stands: how can you come to the conclusion that the state shouldn’t regulate monopolies and markets without first considering how all economic needs can be met without regulation? Especially for something so essential as water.
This is what I find annoying with freemarket types— broad brush statements about why we don’t government to do this or that, with hardly any consideration about what the actual impications would be. If you do think some form of government involvement is needed for utilities, why say that you the state should only be involved in defense, redistribution and pricing externalities? Just seems unnecessarily purist, so it shouldn’t be surprising when people occasionally pick you up on it.
