Naked Capitalism has republished the article If You Look Behind Neoliberal Economists, You’ll Discover the Rich: How Economic Theories Serve Big Business. Below is the paragraph they chose to introduce the artilce.

But this leads to the main paradox of neoliberalism. Its economic system needs a strong state, even at the expense of constraining democracy, to guarantee property rights and the working of the free market, while actively maintaining the rule of neoliberal social philosophy. At the same time some of its proponents tend to dismiss strong states (Mirowski, 2013). In fact, laissez faire was the last thing neoliberals wanted to achieve. This paradoxical stance towards the state led Milton Friedman, the policy entrepreneur to become an advisor of the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet to transform Chile into a policy playground.

I found the article to be a very enlightening explanation of how our economic theories got corrupted in the 1970s. I got my economics education in the 1960s, so that must be what saved me from some of the corrupting influences.