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Which is exactly what Milton Friedman thought about central bank independence
That’s not an argument. Just because he supported something doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily neo-liberal. It can just be a sensible thing. You can be against Liz Truss’s acations and still be very right wing.
And, fine, let me rephrase my point. “Belief in the independence of institutions is not necessarily neo-liberal. As an example, I would suggest that a judiciary with a degree of independence from the government is widely supported across the political spectrum (and the opposite has been misused by far left and far right governments in history)
In the same way independence of financial institutions is not neo-liberal.
It is much more related to your level of trust in governments to behave well - whether right wing or left wing”
cookiemonster-
You've mischaracterised my position — I'm only talking about monetary authorities here. It's absurd to describe an independent justice system as neoliberal.
To create a technocratic 'automatic-stabilising' independent monetary authority is to exclude other forms of politics. Keynes wanted monetary policy to be actively wielded, not set from models of price stability, but used with intent to reduce unemployment as a political end.
This isn't just "Milton Friedman likes oranges, I like oranges, therefore I'm a neoliberal", it's a central maxim of neoliberalism. 'Sound money', automatic stabilisers, neutrality of the monetary system, all that stuff.
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+1
I think you've got to be careful about how you join the dots e.g. Trump was backed by conservatives and did some things conservatives liked ≠ Trump is a conservative
Ngl I relistened to that Origin Story this morning, so points are ringing around my head, but I think it's useful to separate out use of tools and levers from the neo-lib tool kit vs. being a idealogue where everything is a nail for you to swing your neo-lib hammer at.
In the same way I don't think anyone (here at least) is going to argue that Biden is a socialist, however pink some policies might be.
slippers
hugo7
Which is exactly what Milton Friedman thought about central bank independence — that it would be better to manage monetary policy by legislative rules, with less political involvement, to reduce the whims of politicians in the monetary system. In other words, central bank independence is a step in that direction, but not sufficient to safeguard money's independence from politics.
'Money is too important to be left to politicians' is a monetarist idea from one of the most well known neoliberal theorists. So yes, the degree of independence of (specifically monetary) institutions is very much correlated with neoliberalism.
I'm not talking about what I believe — I'm talking about whether one of the main policies of the New Labour period, the implementation of which has had incredibly wide-reaching consequences, can be considered neoliberal. And to try and bring this conversation back to the thread title again: we've got a new leader of a left-leaning party, trying to copy the methods of a previous leader of a left-leaning party, who we can at least partially describe as having some neoliberal-ish policies and ideas.