At the Walter Lippmann Colloquium, Hayek had laid out two models of relief: one gives the unemployed worker a dole at the level of his former wage; 'the other is designed on the model of the poor law in England'. The former threatened to trespass on the margins of neoliberal freedom, making workers unwilling to submit to the market and move for work. Only the deterrence of the latter could reconcile relief with a market-pricing mechanism. For all their criticisms of the paternalism of the welfare state, the neoliberals believed that those destitute few who were eligible for state relief had forfeited their independence, their personal responsibility – and possibly their freedom too.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 218