Excellent article. We have a political quadrant that opposes the social safety net and supports capitalism (conservatives), and one that supports the social safety net and opposes capitalism (progressives). We also have the libertarians who are different from conservatives but on these two axis are the same. But, there really isn’t a coherent group identity for the people who support capitalism *and* a safety net. I’ve been using left-libertarian, but honestly neoliberal sounds like a more literally-fitting choice, since it’s just progressivism updated in the face of the scientific findings of Economics.

No system works as well as markets for growth & technological advancement (which is the goose that lays the golden eggs of civilization, I doubt society would last long without collapse if progress in science & technology were to stall), but it results in some terrible individual situations due to being an efficiency-maximizing system, at least in purest form. I actually read a pretty good opinion piece that postulated that if we want a real-world example of how foreign a “paperclip-maximizer” AI’s decisions would be like, just look at efficiency-optimizing capitalism.

With that in mind, I think some sort of evidence-minded research and minimal state control to curb the uncaring destructiveness of markets when people’s well-being is orthogonal to its goals is necessary (which is to say, whenever it gets in the way of maximally efficient wealth-creation). But seriously, f**k anyone who wants to kill the goose of markets in favor of some pseudo-naturist “equilibrium”. My second least favorite group behind neoreactionaries.