Not a key term within the discourse, so it's fine to use something like Wikipedia to get a simple understanding of the reference being made here (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenarianism)

It's worth thinking about who George Monbiot is. Does he gain anything by writing this article?

Sofa and Clive make a similar point here.

Do we have any evidence that it is indeed a "conscious attempt"?

Do we need convincing of neoliberalism's role in any of these "crises"?

What has changed since this date?

Which condition?

Who is David Kotz?

What can we find out about Scott Sumner?

Richard Kearney is illuminating on this point in The Wake of Imagination, establishing a difference between the Modern and the Postmodern imaginations. Contemporary academia is "Modern" and values PRODUCTION, not pomo, with a PARODIC imagination.

But this says a lot about how the writer (or who they claim to represent) a) teaches, and b) assesses student writing. If students are set an essay question that could feasibly be answered by regurgitating a lecture then there's something wrong with the approach to teaching and learning

Here's a five minute video explaining the Nexus of Contracts theory:

See Milton Friedman defending the "morality" of profit-seeking here.

In the second part of the video, the wonderful young man asking the questions brings up the case of the Ford Pinto.

How much do we still sympathise with this perspective in 2015?

The Categorical Imperative

Kant believed that as rational human beings we have certain duties. These duties are categorical: in other words they are absolute and unconditional – duties such as “You ought always to tell the truth” or “You ought never to kill anyone”. They apply whatever consequences might follow from obeying them. Kant thought morality was a system of Categorical Imperatives: commands to act in certain ways. This is one of the most distinctive aspects of his ethics. He contrasted categorical duties with hypothetical ones. A hypothetical duty is one such as “if you want to be respected, you ought to tell the truth” or “If you want to avoid going to prison, then you ought not to murder anyone”. Hypothetical duties tell you what you ought or ought not to do if you want to achieve or avoid a certain goal. He thought there was only one basic Categorical Imperative: “Act only on maxims which you can at the same time will to be universal laws”. ‘Will’ here means ‘rationally want’. In other words, the message of the Categorical Imperative is only act on a maxim you would rationally want to apply to everybody. This principle is known as the principle of universalizability.

Source: Warburton, N. (2004) Philosophy, The Basics: Fourth Edition, London : Routledge