I cannot resist highlighting the irony that Wikipedia, the purported poster child of neoliberalism, cannot even manage to get its own internal entry on neoliberalism straight. But that irony is achieved at too low a price: after all, Wikipedia can’t manage to get much of anything straight for very long (unless it is so arcane and dull that no precocious 12-year-old ever feels tempted to “edit” the entry). What it does manage to do is capture what passes for common knowledge of the median participant on the Internet at some specific point in time. The conviction that the truth “emerges” from random interactions of variously challenged participants in the precincts of Wiki-world (sometimes retailed in the popular press as “the wisdom of crowds”) only holds water if we are allowed great latitude in the definition of “truth.” Neoliberals have great faith in the marketplace of ideas; and for them, the truth is validated as what sells.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 2103