1/12 Neoliberalism is an absolute misnomer. Laissez-faire, French for “Let (people) do (as they choose).” Describes a system or point of view that opposes regulation or interference by the government in economic affairs. 
2/12 What we have instead is corporatism, and it kills the SME sector. Corporatism favours monopoly. The Germans recognise this, so they have their own version of neoliberalism called 'Ordoliberalism' identifying the monopoly flaw in neoliberalism.
3/12 When we talk about monopoly, it is not just in the classic sense of single providers but when you have corporate interests supplying most good and or services. What it does is lowers the transaction cost to serve a market.
4/12 In effect, it exploits customers and workers. Amazon is like the epitome of this effect. Through lowering the transaction cost, it sent traditional SME's to the wall, screwed suppliers and ultimately provides less choice not more for the end customer.
5/12 Harvey Norman is another example of how lowered transaction cost closes competition enterprise bargains wages to a low value and ultimately leads to a vanilla offering in the community.
6/12 Government loves neoliberalism as it allows them to lower their transaction costs streamlining revenue to their coffers. In turn, due to the size of their transaction they, in turn, screw the government like a supplier gaining the best transaction price (sweetheart tax deals
7/12 Employees lose, as we saw with Google, using third parties to facilitate staff on bad employment deals and zero hour contracts. Under corporatism everybody losses apart from the company.
8/12 Competition cannot compete as they have lowered the transaction cost to such an extent that you cannot survive to provide an alternative service. The general public loose through lack of diversity, (it is why so many chains are basically identical in product offering)
9/12 Some new breeds of business develop on the back of technology as they find ways to lower the transaction cost even more. See Uber, automated checkout, etc. Again the consumer loses (higher transaction cost, 'slower checkout'.) Competition loses cannot compete with a machine.
10/12 This model allows the Government to crow about how great the economy looks, GDP, GNP, etc., as the numbers look great on paper, but does not and will not transpire to money in people's pockets.
11/12 It is easy to say Germany profits from the EU, and to some extent that is correct. However, one of the fundamental reasons is they have measures in place that drive diversity of the market, anti-monopolistic market forces that empower the entire business sector.
12/12 We and many Western countries went the other way, with an ideology justifying crony capitalism is part of the story of neoliberalism. Unless you can invigorate the SME sector, the base economy, you will never see more money in your pocket.
*Sorry folks, left my glasses at work, a couple of typos in there, but I am sure you can work that out. Need to visit Specsavers where the transaction cost is so low, the optometrist is a duopoly.
