The election of Donald Trump marked the end of neoliberalism as the dominant hegemonic bloc of our time. Neoliberalism is an economic and political philosophy espousing economic freedom and laissez-faire policies as the means to achieve economic prosperity.
Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” (1962) provided the theoretical framework, promoting entrepreneurial freedom, strong property rights, free markets and free trade. For Friedman, protecting freedom requires limiting government, necessary to achieve the neoliberal ideal of an economy governed by prices and prices alone. Thus, Friedman opposed occupational licensure, laws forbidding discrimination, labor unions, government management of the public lands (including national parks), and other barriers to free markets.