The prime responsibility of the state is to plan and manage, but plutocratic states refuse to face the responsibility.

Australians have privately organized a mass battery purchase to advance home battery technology. The state should have done this. In fact, I proposed such a thing in a legislative hearing in Massachusetts a year ago. Ten years ago, states were doing the same sort of thing for solar power cells.

The neoliberal ideology is both an excuse for this refusal and a way of covering up contrary actions. Every market is regulated; a market can't exist without some regulations or other. The market mechanism could be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if regulated with a carbon tax. If the state instead subsidizes fossil fuels, then it's managing society so as to run off the carbon cliff; but it can pretend that "the invisible hand is doing this -- we are only watching."

Neoliberal ideology is also an excuse to cut taxes to the point where all spending projects are impossible, again denying responsibility for the policies that are adopted.