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# Shorting neo-liberalism
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/shorting-neo-liberalism/
- Published: 2008-10-07T17:10:09.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:41:50.000Z
- Author: Tony Curzon Price
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:49

I posted [Gideon Rachman's](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cf1efdcc-93bb-11dd-9a63-0000779fd18c.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) FT column on oD's [The World](http://groups.diigo.com/TheWorld/bookmark?ref=opendemocracy.net) link-watch page on diigo earlier today. Gideon writes:

*Investment bankers, the shock- troops of the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, were allowed to bet their banks on this new market, because regulators and politicians believed so firmly in the magical and self- regulating qualities of the market.*

The same process of intellectual overshoot happened with other signature ideas of the Reagan- Thatcher era: privatisation, scepticism about environmentalism and democracy promotion.

Well ... I think there is a kind of "democracy promotion" --- the kind [openDemocracy stands for](https://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-opening/barnett%5Fhilton%5F2792.jsp) \--- that is not neo-liberal and is in the wings, waiting for its open moment, as it were.

That apart, Gideon's judgement of \`\`overshoot'' is very welcome. I wrote asking him about the idea of "progress" -- did he think that was oversold too? The pessimistic conclusion to his column, in which he saw just a batting back and forth between over-regulation and over-deregulation, suggested that he might be shorting progress too. Can we socially learn from these crises?