I recently watched an interview of Rory Sutherland by the the Institute of Economic Affairs—a British think tank in your classic neoliberal Thatcher/Reagan tradition. Sutherland, a Georgist advertising executive, gave more of a two hour monologue than an interview, which I quite enjoyed. Throughout his monologue he consistently critiqued the overemphasis on free-market logic. His thought experiment on leisure time and the economy is exactly the type of economic weakness in neoliberal logic.

“I would love to do an experiment in one American state where they got four weeks paid vacation rather than two. My contention is that if Americans had more leisure time, it would benefit the economy rather than hurting it because they’d spend correspondingly more on leisure activities which generally the money spent locally and it creates quite a lot of employment rather than importing something from Shein for the 47th time that week.”

He also points out the unevolved concept of “freedom” that hinders neoliberal economic thought.

Economists always obsess about money because they assume that all other choices are made freely… but actually there are other currencies you can reward people with and I always say there’s money, there’s free time, there’s free where, and there’s free when.”

Maybe we need more Georgist commentators.