Podcast Summary:

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer
Episode: The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America (with Mehrsa Baradaran)
Date: November 25, 2025
Guest: Mehrsa Baradaran, Professor of Law at UC Irvine

Overview

This episode explores how neoliberalism has quietly captured America's legal and institutional structures, leading to growing inequality and the erosion of democracy. Host Nick Hanauer, along with co-host Goldie, interviews law professor and author Mehrsa Baradaran about her latest book, The Quiet Coup, delving into the ideological, legal, and societal mechanisms by which neoliberalism has facilitated the looting of America.

Baradaran offers a nuanced, historically-rooted critique, emphasizing that neoliberalism is less about economic theory and more about an overarching ideology and system that pervades law, institutions, and even personal belief structures. The conversation traces neoliberalism’s origins, its interplay with race and power, the commodification of society, and practical ideas for resistance and reform.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Neoliberalism as Ideology, Not Just Economics

• Neoliberalism is an all-encompassing ideology rather than a mere set of economic policies.
  • "Ideology is a system that you live in... It takes some time actually for you to understand that it's an ideology." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 03:08)
• Most people do not see it because it's “the air we breathe, the water we swim in” (Nick Hanauer, 04:18).
• Neoliberalism treats the market as a near-religious, untouchable force:
  • "It's more like a religious idea... it's that the market is this thing out there that cannot be perturbed... So yes, it's an economic idea, but really it was... as I say, literally... the matrix." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 03:08, 04:37)

2. Historical Evolution and the Adaptability of Elite Power

• The methods of oppression have become more sophisticated over time, migrating from blunt force to internalized ideologies.
  • "The more advanced you get in society, the more the tyranny and the oppression gets... nuanced and... deep." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 04:37)
• Neoliberalism adapts in response to resistance, much like the villain Voldemort in Harry Potter (07:16).
• Democracy is repeatedly reframed as a threat to elite interests, which then adapt their rhetoric and tactics to preserve power (12:16).

3. Neoliberal Capture of Legal and Institutional Structures

• Neoliberalism has taken root in courts, agencies, and legislative bodies.
  • "I wanted to follow everything that neoliberal did through every branch. So this is what it did in legislature, this is what it did in the agencies. And... the courts." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 08:38)
• Judges are trained to see justice through the lens of market efficiency rather than true fairness, embedding neoliberal logic in legal systems.
  • "Posner says efficiency is a proxy for justice. Justice is too hard and messy... so you must go at efficiency." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 09:51)

4. Economic Efficiency as a Proxy for Justice

• Decisions favor what is considered "efficient" for capital, not for the public majority:
  • "Efficiency, the way that Pareto and capital efficiency... if the corporation's gaining a million dollars and everyone else is only losing $20,000, that's Pareto efficient." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 10:17)

5. Race as a Lever of Division and Control

• The neoliberal turn was a reaction to the civil rights gains and an attempt to maintain elite power by weaponizing race.
  • "As soon as the inequality gets too large... race becomes the most effective political weapon." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 15:05)
• Racial division is used to prevent class solidarity and maintain the elite’s advantage.

6. Neoliberalism: Racism, Sociopathy, and Exploitation

• While racism underpinned earlier neoliberal thinkers, exploitation is no longer racially exclusive—capital will exploit anyone.
  • "They’re not racists, they're sociopaths... They'll steal from poor white people just as happily as poor black people." (Nick Hanauer, 19:24)
• Race remains a powerful divisive tool but is ultimately subordinate to the imperative of capital growth.

7. Capital as an Autonomous, Metastatic Force

• Capital operates like a self-perpetuating algorithm; exploitation becomes automatic and unmoored from productive use.
  • "Once capital is unleashed above the nation state, above anything else... capital must grow... at 20%... It's debt, it's exploitation." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 22:10)
• Society and individuals become resources to be commodified, moving from land, to labor, to thoughts and even social circles (27:51-29:02).

8. The Limits of Policy and the Need for New Stories

• Traditional Democratic institutions are unable to rein in capital’s expansion:
  • "If we can't regulate the banks, we don't have a government, we don't have a democracy anymore." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 25:11)
• The system is constructed around legal abstraction; solutions require new social stories, not just policy tweaks:
  • "All we need is new ideas. And that sounds really easy, but it's tricky." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 32:02)

9. Concrete Ideas for Change

• Baradaran suggests creating genuinely democratic, public investment vehicles—“public equity firms”—as a way to redirect capital toward beneficial ends (38:55-39:00).
• Real change requires both alternative institutional structures and the reprogramming of collective stories and beliefs:
  • "It just takes new stories. It just takes us routing our money and putting it where it belongs." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 32:09)

10. Personal Motivation and the Human Cost of Ideology

• Baradaran’s work is deeply personal, shaped by her experience growing up during the Iran-Iraq war—a conflict stoked by money and neoliberal interests:
  • "All my research was headed to trying to figure out why what happened, happened. And the answer is... a war started for money." (Mehrsa Bharadaran, 40:11)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Neoliberalism is the matrix, literally the matrix. And it's everywhere, it's pervasive. It's in our family structure, it's in our relationship structure, it's in the way we think about ourselves in the world." — Mehrsa Baradaran (04:37)

• "Posner says efficiency is a proxy for justice. Justice is too hard and messy... so you must go at efficiency." — Mehrsa Baradaran (09:51)

• "Efficiency, the way that Pareto and capital efficiency... That's the efficiency that then gets lodged into every agency decision on environmental, every agency decision on banking, everything." — Mehrsa Baradaran (10:17)

• "It's not even efficient anymore... The zeros and ones are growing faster on these balance sheets than they can ever be put to productive use... and that has to stop because that's absolutely unsustainable." — Mehrsa Baradaran (23:04)

• "If we can't regulate the banks, we don't have a government, we don't have a democracy anymore." — Mehrsa Baradaran (25:11)

• "Markets are not efficient. Markets are an evolutionary system for generating new solutions to human problems. They work better than anything else ever devised. And if they're well structured, they can be for the good. But given where we are, what do we do to reel all this in?" — Nick Hanauer (31:24)

• "All we need is new ideas. And that sounds really easy, but it's tricky. The logistics aren't hard." — Mehrsa Baradaran (32:09)

• "I was born under bombs. I was born in 1978 in Iran... And that was neoliberalism. Neoliberalism fed the Shah billions of dollars because they wanted Iran's oil. And then the revolution happened because Iranians didn't want to be oppressed." — Mehrsa Baradaran (40:11)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction: Neoliberalism’s real-world consequences (00:02–01:14)
• Baradaran’s main thesis: Ideology vs. economics (03:08–04:37)
• How the ideology pervades society and law (08:38–11:02)
• Neoliberalism, race, and political strategy (12:16–16:33)
• Neoliberalism’s modern face and Trump (16:52–18:55)
• Capital as a runaway algorithm / system (20:13–23:16)
• The PG&E/Paradise Fire example (23:16–25:11)
• Commodification of everything / legal abstraction (27:51–30:20)
• Reclaiming markets and possible solutions (31:24–39:00)
• Personal motivation for this work (40:11–41:25)
• Final reflections on ideology and narrative (42:26–46:57)

Conclusion

This episode, through a lively and deeply informed discussion, uncovers the ways in which neoliberal ideology has become embedded in American laws, courts, and everyday thought patterns—fueling elite power at the expense of democracy and equality. Baradaran, Hanauer, and Goldie agree that reclaiming genuine democratic agency means not only restructuring institutions and markets, but also disrupting and rewriting the foundational stories we collectively believe about economics, justice, and value.

Recommended reading:

• Mehrsa Baradaran, The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America (see show notes for links)