Outsourcing is not usually a topic that fuels headlines. It’s dry. It’s the kind of thing the most boring guy on the podcast at the office drones on and on about while you desperately try to change the subject.

We didn’t want to dwell on Carillion’s collapse too much — Season 2 is all about stepping away from the news cycle — but it was a spookily appropriate news hook for the feature this week: the first installment of our Millennial Guide to Neoliberalism.

We’ve spoken about this topic a lot this season. We spoke about it last week with Michael Hobbes. We’re likely to keep on talking about it. So we thought it’d be useful to dive into it things a little deeper to make sure everybody knows exactly what we’re complaining about all the time.

Take a listen to the episode to hear Warren explain the topic to me, answering millions of my incredulous questions. For this guide, I am the podcast version of an incapable infomercial boob.

﻿

Me IRL

I’ve thrown in a quick and dirty guide below if you need to copy paste this stuff. You know, for when you’re trying to win an argument on the internet or some other noble pursuit. Godspeed.

Part 2 of the Millennial Guide to Neoliberalism takes in the big thinkers behind it all and how they became mainstream. You can check it out here.

Part 3 brings us into the 1980s and Neoliberal leaders like Thatcher and Reagan. Get that here.

Part 4 takes us into the 90s and the rise of the Third Way. Listen to that here .

. Part 5 brings us right up to the financial crisis — the end of the End of History. Listen now.

What is Neoliberalism?

It’s basically “capitalism set loose”. It defines society as a market, and people as profit-and-loss calculators. It sees competition as the only organising principle for humanity. It sees the role of government as simply an enabler to business — an enforcer of property rights and contracts. And it’s been the dominant political mindset of the last 40 years, restricting the range of acceptable thought in our politics.

Why should I care about it?

You might not know it by name, but you’ll have seen it all around you. It’s why government seems to have ceded authority to big business. It’s why the world loses around $500bn a year from tax evasion. It’s why we aren’t making poverty history, and inequality is worsening. It’s why our public services and social safety net are being stripped back. And it’s why those in power don’t seem to be doing anything to stop this.

What are its main features?

Lower taxes – most often paid for through cuts to public spending. Privatise public services – i.e. turning them into profit-generating businesses owned by executives and shareholders. Deregulate the private sector – particularly the corporate sector, who have the greatest lobbying power.

Defining a political movement is very tricky (just ask somebody what exactly the differences between socialism, communism and Marxism are) but these three policies are a common thread of the Neoliberal era. If you see these three things together, you’re probably looking at Neoliberalism.

Why do people like it?

Neoliberals argue economic freedom underpins all other forms of freedom. They also argue that the capitalist era has seen far greater equality, prosperity and social mobility compared to what came before.

Marxists on the other hand argue that capitalism leads to dominance by wealthy capitalists, no better than feudal society. You don’t have to be a Marxist to be a critic either – you can point to things like sweatshops or climate change as examples of economic freedom fucking things up. Pretty much anyone with an international perspective points out that history books see the capitalist era positively because they were written by Western countries — most other countries have had a pretty raw deal sometimes worse than the feudal or tribal setups before.

…

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Part 1 of the Millennial Guide to Neoliberalism is all about what it is and its precedents. Next week is all about how it was born and implemented over the last seventy years. We’ll start getting all the big names in: Reagan, Thatcher, Hayek, Fukuyama.

Use one of the links below to make sure you don’t miss it.

You know the drill:

Follow us on FB – www.facebook.com/connectedanddisaffected/

– www.facebook.com/connectedanddisaffected/ Follow us on Twitter – twitter.com/CandDPodcast

– twitter.com/CandDPodcast Subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes – itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/connected-disaffected/