What comes to mind when we think of neoliberalism?

When the word first entered widely into left-wing vocabulary in the early 2000s, it likely conjured up scenes of men in suits walking briskly through big cities: the Gordon Gekkos and the Wolves of Wall Street; World Bank and International Monetary Fund bigwigs like Lawrence Summers or Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In 2018, neoliberalism calls to mind the seemingly more laid-back atmosphere of California. The people who run Silicon Valley style themselves as the heirs of the hippie movement, whether by wearing jeans at the office or by experimenting with free sex during their free time. (These same people, of course, are nonetheless working tirelessly to run every single element of our personal and work lives through an app.)

In their own way, each of these images represents the brave new world we imagine neoliberalism has created: both the banker’s world of “high risk, high reward” and the techie’s world of Uberized jobs and Tinderized relationships. Everything is monetized, and nothing is stable or sacred. With the arrival of neoliberalism, it appears, all that was solid has finally melted into air.