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The liberalism in neoliberalism doesn't really refer to liberals in a modern American sense.

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You know…those socially conscious people wielding iMacs in coffee shops everywhere. [Man in a coffee shop on a laptop]

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Instead, it refers to liberalism in the classical sense. [Computer vanishes]

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The original liberals, like Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were capitalists who

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gave society an overhaul right before the Industrial Revolution.

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The original liberals wanted companies to be able to do whatever they wanted without [Rousseau stood in front of a busy city]

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the government nosing in to regulate things.

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The government just got money for infrastructure like roads, schools, and emergency services [Man holding up dollar bills]

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by taxing income.

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The idea is that this encourages companies to build lots of factories, which then makes [Factory appears]

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lots of jobs. [Workers begin going into the factory]

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And everybody goes to work whistling a happy tune.

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It might sound good on paper…especially to big money guys…but there are some holes

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in this idea. [Holes appear in the 'plan' paper]

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This free-wheelin’ approach was abandoned during the Great Depression, the massive economic

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collapse that showed to many that maybe the free market couldn’t always make it on its own.

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Afterwards, some felt like the free market was like a dog that’s fine running around [Dog running around]

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in the yard, but needed an electric fence to keep it from running out on the road. [Dog touches the electric fence and is bounced back]

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Government spending bailed the US and the World out of the Depression. [Government uses money to get US out of prison]

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But things still weren’t working quite right.

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After WWII, the stock market was still feeling a lot of ups and downs there, which caused the government [Stock chart going down]

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creep back to liberalism.

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This was called…neoliberalism.

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Most conservatives in America today would probably call themselves neoliberals. [Man wearing a republican party shirt]

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Neoliberalism is the theory behind every point in the Washington Consensus, a blueprint that

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can supposedly help developing nations, like in Africa, successfully get on the capitalist bandwagon. [Africa gets on a horse and wagon]

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The theory is that investors are happiest doing business in countries with the following [Business people talking]

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things on their resumes…

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Low debt…

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Low taxes…

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Market-determined interest rates…

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Social stability…

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And low worker protections…

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But things don’t always work the way neoliberals wish they would.

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For one thing, real-world investors don't only look at a country's tax rates and stability [Man holding a piece of paper that says 'tax rates']

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and go…Yeah, this country is good enough. [Man stamps the U.S.]

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Actual factory-builders take into account a whole bunch of other stuff when deciding [Men in suits and hard hats at a building site]

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whether to build a factory in a given country…

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There’s the level of education of the population, poverty rates, crime rates, homelessness rates, and

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most importantly, public health.

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No matter how great interest rates are, no factory owner wants to build in a town of [Factory owner looking for build locations]

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sick dying homeless uneducated criminals.

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A big problem with neoliberal ideas is that they don’t take into account…ya’ know…people.

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Let's say there’s a cobalt miner and a single mother.

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The market has declared that her wage is $2 a day.

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The market has also determined that food for her and her kid is $4 a day. [Woman and child smiling]

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According to neoliberalism, she and her child should starve rather than introduce inefficiencies [Woman hits neoliberal man with a hammer]

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to the market.

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When many Africans saw these kinds of scenarios play out, they were like… [Group of African people]

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How bout we not do the starve-and-die-plan?

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But, like we said, companies don’t want to build in places where people are starving

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and dying.

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So where’s the money to pull a country that’s been ravaged by colonialism out of its slump? [Money falls onto destitute person]

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The government.

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In reality, neoliberalism can actually cost the government of a developing nation a ton

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of cash.

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The governments of developing nations have to foot the bill for infrastructure projects, [Government member with a pile of bills on his desk]

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pay down massive debt, and all kinds of other stuff to get their countries prettied up for investors.

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If a country, like Gabon for instance, actually could afford it, then it'd work out great.

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In Nigeria, the oil industry is booming, so awesome. [Woman with thumbs up in front on an oil refinery]

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Low government regulations have made Kenya a major corporate and banking center, so that

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worked out too.

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But most of Africa after independence was just too poor to make neoliberalism work. [African slums]

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And touting the wonders of Neo-Liberal free market development was like talking about

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how great it would be if unicorns rode in on spaceships and gave everyone pots of gold. [Pots of gold fall out of a UFO]

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