A light history story: Is Neoliberalism Really Over?

China, Africa, Automation – Reading the Next Round of the Global Economy

If you had to pick one word that haunted the global economy for the last 40 years, a lot of economists would still say:

“Neoliberalism.”

Deregulation, privatization, free trade, small government.
On paper it sounds like “efficiency and growth.”
On the ground, it often felt more like this:

Restructuring and mass layoffs,
Precarious contracts and gig work,
The constant fear of being fired “at any time,”
Soaring housing and education costs,
While your paycheck hardly moves.

Bundle all of that together and you get what many now call:

“The dark side of the neoliberal order.”

So how long does this system last?
Is it really about to collapse and be replaced by something completely different?

Rather than shouting “it’s all doomed” or “everything’s fine”,
this piece takes a slower walk through what is actually changing right now –
and what those changes might mean for a “post-neoliberal” world.

1. Neoliberalism: What Was the Actual Problem?

Very roughly, neoliberalism pushed four big ideas as policy:

Free movement of capital
– Looser controls on cross-border investment and finance.
Shrinking the public sector
– Privatization, selling state-owned firms, marketizing public services.
Labor market “flexibility”
– Easier layoffs, more temp and contract work, wage restraint.
Fiscal austerity
– Smaller welfare states, tighter budgets, cutting social spending.

The result, in many countries:

The top 1% saw their share of income and wealth grow,
The middle saw wages stagnate or slide,
Insecure work became a normal life condition, not an exception,
And even with all that, growth was often weaker than promised.

In other words:
the pain was widely socialized, the gains were highly concentrated.

2. China, India and the Limits of the “Cheap Labor” Model

The first playground for global capital under neoliberal rules was simple:

“Go where labor is cheap and plentiful.”

China, after “reform and opening,” rode that wave for decades with near double-digit growth.
India plugged itself into global value chains through IT and services.

But that model is now hitting its limits:

Wages in China have steadily risen,
Environmental rules are tighter,
Labor rights claims and social tensions are growing.

In other words:

“Just being the world’s cheap factory floor”
is no longer a stable long-term strategy.

Factories have already started shifting to:

India,
Southeast Asia,
Bangladesh,
Vietnam…

But we only have one planet.
You can’t keep outrunning rising wages forever by moving to “the next cheap place.”
At some point, there is no “next.”

3. Is Africa the “Last Labor Reservoir”?

The original post that inspired this essay imagined a grim scenario:
global capital “invading Africa” as the final reservoir of cheap labor.

Reality is messier.

Africa’s population is already about 1.4 billion,
And is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050.

So the issue isn’t “too few people.”
The real problem is:

Jobs, education and infrastructure are not keeping up with that population growth.

At the same time, Africa today is not just a passive victim of “foreign exploitation”:

China is funding railways, ports and industrial zones,
Western governments and firms are pushing renewables and digital infrastructure,
Local fintech, agri-tech and other startups are popping up and drawing capital.

Are there new forms of inequality and conflict in that process? Absolutely.
Do many projects fail? Of course.

But the simplistic vision –

“One day the US sends in troops and runs the whole continent like a giant colony”

– really doesn’t match what’s happening on the ground.

4. Automation and AI: The End of Work, or Just a Re-Shuffle?

The original piece we’re riffing on argued:

“Science will reduce the need for labor so much that permanent mass unemployment becomes inevitable.”

That’s overstated, but the direction of concern is worth taking seriously.

Robots, factory automation and AI are already:

Replacing repetitive manual tasks,
Eating into middle-skill office and technical jobs,
And reshaping whole sectors at high speed.

That does not mean “all jobs disappear.”
New technologies always create new types of work too.

The deeper problem is this:

The new jobs often demand more education and higher skills,
and those who can’t clear that bar fall into even more precarious work.

The classic neoliberal answer was:

“Reskill yourself. Compete harder. Survive as an individual.”

But in many countries, we’ve reached the political and social limits of that mantra.

People increasingly feel:

The risks are individualized,
While the gains are privatized.

That’s a recipe for backlash.

5. Is Neoliberalism Really Heading for an End?

Since the 2008 financial crisis, then COVID-19, the climate crisis, and rising US–China tensions, the global landscape has shifted a lot.

We now see:

The US and EU returning to industrial policy and subsidies,
Supply chains being treated as national security assets,
Welfare, emergency income support and public healthcare being politically rehabilitated.

What’s striking is that these moves aren’t just coming from left-leaning governments.
Even many conservatives now accept that:

The era of shouting “markets solve everything” is over.

We’re in a post-neoliberal mood, where:

The state is expected to step back in strategically.

But this doesn’t mean:

Capitalism collapses tomorrow,
And Marx’s final stage communism rolls in automatically.

A more realistic picture:

Some regions drift toward “repaired capitalism” – more welfare, more regulation.
Others evolve into “neo-capitalist blocs” – heavy state intervention plus digital surveillance and authoritarian controls.
Still others experiment with hybrid models that don’t fit any neat textbook.

So instead of:

“One Great Depression → Worldwide Revolution → One New System”

we’re more likely entering a long, messy multipolar contest among several kinds of regimes.

6. So What Should We Actually Be Thinking About?

The original article ends with a big claim:

“We need a globally unified planned economy under the banner of humanism.”

As an ideal, that sounds noble.
As a realistic political program, it feels… very far away.

Still, there are concrete questions we can extract and actually work with:

1. In an age of “growth without jobs,” how do we share income?

Universal basic income?
Social dividends from natural resources or data?
Shorter working hours?
Stronger regulation of platform work?

2. How do we rebuild welfare states without repeating past inefficiencies?

How do we tax large corporations and ultra-wealthy households effectively, not symbolically?
How do we guarantee quality in public services while keeping them democratically accountable?

3. Can we redefine “growth” under climate and resource constraints?

Is there a model that prioritizes quality of life, safety and ecological sustainability
over just “a bigger number each year”?

4. How do we stop AI and automation from becoming a pure monopoly game?

Rules for data as a public resource,
Transparency and fairness in algorithms,
Support for open-source ecosystems and public interest tech.

Depending on how societies answer these, the “end of neoliberalism” could mean:

A transition to a more just and stable order,
Or a slide into something more unequal, more repressive, and more brittle.

The direction is not predetermined. It’s a political choice.

7. In the End, It’s Not “Will It Collapse?” but “How Do We Change It?”

One healthy instinct in the original piece is this:

It refuses to believe that the current system will last forever.

Where it trips up a bit is here:

A hyper-dramatic Africa invasion scenario,
A binary choice between “human extinction or world revolution,”
Old numbers and very absolute, prophetic language.

For today’s readers, that can start to feel like:

“Retro left-wing sci-fi” rather than serious analysis.

If you’re writing this for an ad-driven blog, you’re usually better off if you:

Update facts and figures with the latest data,
Offer scenarios and options, not “I alone know the future,”
End with concrete questions that readers can relate back to their own lives
– housing, job insecurity, pensions, student debt, and so on.

Use the reframed structure above as your backbone,
then wrap it with:

A few of your own experiences,
Some vivid examples from Korean society (real estate, temp work, pension debates…).

That alone is enough to build a piece that grabs clicks and reading time,
without sacrificing depth or honesty.

A light history story

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Is Neoliberalism Really Over?