Thread by @Noahpinion

1/I think it's worth noting that it's the threat of consumer boycotts, rather than collective direct action, that has allowed one single teenager to stomp all over Fox News.

m.scmp.com/news/world/uni…

2/To me, this is a quintessential neoliberal action.

It USES the market system, but it's not simply the action of the market system.

It's not people just buying and selling what they want, like in Econ 101. But it relies on people's ability to choose what they buy.

3/Furthermore, Hogg's anti-Fox campaign is entirely reliant on Twitter - a consumer product that a corporation made in order to get rich, but which is now being repurposed for causes that have nothing to do with getting rich.

4/And this is an advantage of neoliberalism over socialism, I think.

With socialism, you have to first pay a huge overhead - getting control of the government - before you start fixing things. That's one hell of a startup cost!

5/Neoliberalism, by contrast, lets you whip up a quick patch for a social problem. Direct consumer action, a technocratic policy fix, etc.

It's kind of a low-overhead, nimble approach to social issues.

6/Now I'm not saying socialism sucks, or that neoliberalism always works better, or that neoliberalism always solves social problems.

I'm just pointing out one of neoliberalism's advantages.

7/To the extent that neoliberalism is any one coherent thing, it's David Hogg, not David Koch.

It's a way to further social justice and social improvement without causing dramatic upheaval.

8/As an anthropology professor of mine once said, "You can sit around waiting for the revolution, or you can get out there and make things better for some people."

Maybe there's room in this world for both approaches.

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