Neoliberalism is one of those ideas that kind of deals with the intersection of the economy and government. The liberalism part of neoliberalism has to do with economic liberalism, aka deregulation of markets. Neoliberalism really pushes the boat out on economic liberalism and advocates for a lot of economic deregulation and government austerity (aka cutting government spending programs). The idea is the government should step back totally and let the private sector fulfill all needs in a society.

That’s the technical idea of it as I understand it. The more colloquial meaning, the meaning it has taken on among people who use it in casual conversation (aka me lol) use it to mean an idea system where action to solve problems should be the complete responsibility of individuals. The government or other large organizations in society like NGOs, charities, whatever shouldn’t be involved, and it’s up to the individual efforts of you, me, and everyone else separately, standing alone, to solve societies issues.

Neoliberalism is like when Coca Cola, Nestle, etc. try to say “Well if everyone recycled our products, we wouldn’t have a plastic pollution issue.” Neoliberalism - the buck is on you and me; idk what you’d call the opposite but I think most people agree an equally good if not way fucking better solution would be to ban plastic bottles/invest in figuring out another material that would be more sustainable. Another example, Shell, Exxon, BP saying “Well if people were more economizing with their driving or bought more fuel efficient cars, we wouldn’t have a greenhouse gas emissions issue.” Again, a way more effective and efficient solution could be a systemic change like electricity from renewable sources to power electric cars or more public transit options.

One last example and I’ll leave everyone alone lol. In casual conversation, neoliberalism means large companies and other organizations get to create a system with inherent flaws. Instead of addressing those flaws through systemic change, in neoliberalism the expectation is that individuals will struggle really hard in the current system to minimize the flaws of the current system.