Neoliberalism and all that
A good friend who has written about politics for many years told me bluntly this week that “all politicians are cowards.” And it’s more than tempting to assume that their motivations are approximately sociopathic, i.e., maximizing personal utility in an adversarial system. That system is supposed to reflect the will of the people, but increasingly, fails to do that, with a concomitant loss of confidence:
I have attributed this to the general mendacity of politicians, but the critique doesn’t hold up. Politicians have always been rats. But there was a time when people thought the system was working much better than now.
% who say they trust the federal government to do what is right just about always / most of the time
That long downtrend has been accompanied by an uptrend in the implementation neoliberal ideals, loosely, prioritizing markets over central government authority where possible. This may take the form of near-Libertarianism (as with Thatcher and Reagan), Clinton-Blairism, or just pragmatic patching, a la Obama.
This podcast by Extra Klein explores the topic, imperfectly (as he notes at the top), but very worthwhile nonetheless.
“Neoliberalism and its discontents” - (link)