Thanks to decades of neoliberal economic malpractice it’s difficult, if not impossible, to run a small business in America. The last election made it clear that this state of affairs is a political problem as well as an economic one.

Economist Philip Pilkington writes that Austrian economist and early neoliberal, Friedrich von Hayek’s delusion that markets equal ‘freedom’ has become conventional wisdom. “In polite company, and in public, you can certainly be left-wing or right-wing, but you will always be, in some shape or form, neoliberal – otherwise you will simply not be allowed entry to discourse. Each country may have its own peculiarities, but on broad principles they follow a similar pattern: debt-led neoliberalism is first and foremost a theory of how to reengineer the state in order to guarantee the success of the market– and that of its most important participants: modern corporations”.

Neoliberalism, unlike laissez-faire capitalism, demands a powerful state repurposed in the service of corporations and the apex predators that own them. Unfortunately, this emphasis on the wellbeing of corporations has had a deleterious effect on small businesses and workers.

I’ve argued repeatedly about the need for government spending on infrastructure to facilitate a true “free market”. Single-payer health care, quality public education, mass-transit transportation options, high-speed internet, clean water, sewage systems, etc. are all public utilities that make running a small business and employing workers possible and beneficial. Yet, neoliberal ideology postulates the privatization of all of these things, and you can see the results. The US is a high-cost economy with privatization tollbooths erected across key nodes of the economy. It’s not a productive economy but an extractive one. Rent-seeking has replaced innovation.

There has been a silver lining for the 1%, who pocketed 50 trillion, with a T, thanks to neoliberal economic policies that transferred the wealth from lower and middle-class Americans. Who says politics is boring? Nothing is more political that who gets what, and who gets stuck with the bill. Neoliberal economics has been the dominant ideology during the transfer, and the primary function of ideologies is to justify elite behavior, in this case, theft.

I suppose that a pleasant life with health care, child care, higher education, public transportation, and housing provided by the state at modest cost would make government popular. Likewise, it seems obvious that there should be a political party that represents my sentiments.

What’s ironic is that the the US never would have developed into a manufacturing and economic powerhouse had it followed neoliberal nostrums. It’s a historical fact that no significant industry, and no key technology, has ever been developed without some level of planning and government encouragement. If our young republic would have been overseen by the World Bank, IMF, and their neoliberal experts, the US would still be exporting cotton.

Conveniently, we have China for a counter example to neoliberal insanity. The Chinese have ignored neoliberal economics, and instead have embraced mixed state planning and market competition, which features state-led industrial upgrade programs, intense market-based competition and rapid improvement in industrial mastery. China has also invested heavily in infrastructure. Pull up some Youtube of Chinese high-speed trains, to remind you of what’s possible.

Here’s the truth. A society can’t be organized solely by the “market”. It’s hard to believe that we ever fell for such economic malpractice.