a sober account of nature as not necessarily the work of intelligent purpose, but as an ordered realm of beings belonging to classes with definite characteristics and, in the case of living beings, functions and specific ways of thriving that reveal not only what is, but what is good. To understand what a heart is means to comprehend what a healthy heart is and does. To know what a beaver is means to grasp its thriving existence as a being that builds dams and eats bark and raises young, for which it is good to do these things and good to have the clean water and trees and freedom that they require. Something analogous, though much more complex, is true for human beings.

But as we reject guidance from nature, do we have any grounds for our belief in the equal dignity of human beings and in equal political rights except feelings? And are not feelings an especially easy thing to change?

A levelized morality that is rational, global, and actively meliorist fits almost perfectly with this new-age liberalism. This levelized morality can be calculated and outsourced just the same as a manufacturing job. If, for example, it’s more efficient to make an air conditioner in Mexico than in Ohio, then you gut the town in Ohio and ship the parts from Mexico. With EA’s levelized morality, if your money is most effective fighting malaria in Africa, then you stop caring about your neighbors and outsource your moral caring there.

All humans lean on moral frameworks to make daily decisions, structure their lives, decide what to do with their time, and determine how to act in the world, including elites.

What I want to convince you of is that the values of neoliberalism don’t just dictate our economic lives but also influence our moral and spiritual lives, and that neoliberalism does so by asserting values that directly conflict with what it is to be human. Fortunately, there is a convenient way to investigate this influence. Gray’s list (“individualist, egalitarian, universalist, and meliorist”), is essentially the philosophy of Peter Singer.

Neoliberalism also focuses on wealth generation.

A big focus of neoliberalism is on the individual.

But perhaps the most interesting claim of Gray’s list is that liberalism is “meliorism.” If you think about it, it is quite odd that a political philosophy founded on freedoms could evolve to the point where its defenders believe its purpose is to make the world better.