I’m not so sure it’s that easy to simply exit neoliberalism, particularly if the country in question has natural resources required to keep the machine running. Look at what happened to Saddam Hussein who was assassinated in 2000 when he decided that Iraq, with the world’s fifth largest reserves of oil, would denominate its oil sales in Euros rather than dollars.
The other big challenge is societal mindset: what does it take to shift an entire country’s citizenry from believing in the status quo to embracing a new social contract? This shift is as difficult as giving up a religion. It can be done, but psychologically it’s not as easy as you make it sound. If it were easy it would have happened already.
I love your question about how quickly a country can be revived. Of course, the first step is to decide what the measure of success is. It cannot continue to be GDP. We need a global discussion about what this revival could look like.
