I think you are definitely on to something here. It’s definitely interesting how many different camps point to the mid seventies as the period where things started to go wrong. The term often used to describe the political ideology emerging in this period and coming to fruit fully with the election of Reagan would be “neoliberalism”. Often characterized as a distrust of centralized control, a laissez faire approach to governing, a dismantling of welfare and labor protections, and a defunding of things like research initiatives, It definitely seems like it was a turning point in our political mindset. The term is usually used to refer to both Republican leaders like Reagan and Bush and the Democrats of the era including Clinton and potentially even Obama. It also is closely tied to economic thinkers such as F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman.
That said the term has a lot of baggage attached to it to the point where it may be less helpful than I would like it to be. I say this mostly due to how the term has been colored by the Marxists that often have used it. Obviously these Marxists have their own narrative drum to beat and this means finding unbiased resources on the era using this term might be difficult. I think validating that this era is indeed characterized by the traits often ascribed to neoliberalism is a worthwhile endeavor.
In recent years a new group of liberals have adopted the term for their movement and have said specifically that one thing that separates them from the original neoliberals is that the modern version is much more comfortable with technocracy (I can dig up the source for this if anyone is interested). So even the people who have adopted the term neoliberal seem to suggest that this era is characterized by a distrust of technocracy which seems like a solid sign for your overall theory.
I’m still trying to find a good source on this in text format. One good resource would be this recent podcast from the neoliberal project on what they believe.
I think you are definitely on to something here. It’s definitely interesting how many different camps point to the mid seventies as the period where things started to go wrong. The term often used to describe the political ideology emerging in this period and coming to fruit fully with the election of Reagan would be “neoliberalism”. Often characterized as a distrust of centralized control, a laissez faire approach to governing, a dismantling of welfare and labor protections, and a defunding of things like research initiatives, It definitely seems like it was a turning point in our political mindset. The term is usually used to refer to both Republican leaders like Reagan and Bush and the Democrats of the era including Clinton and potentially even Obama. It also is closely tied to economic thinkers such as F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman.
That said the term has a lot of baggage attached to it to the point where it may be less helpful than I would like it to be. I say this mostly due to how the term has been colored by the Marxists that often have used it. Obviously these Marxists have their own narrative drum to beat and this means finding unbiased resources on the era using this term might be difficult. I think validating that this era is indeed characterized by the traits often ascribed to neoliberalism is a worthwhile endeavor.
In recent years a new group of liberals have adopted the term for their movement and have said specifically that one thing that separates them from the original neoliberals is that the modern version is much more comfortable with technocracy (I can dig up the source for this if anyone is interested). So even the people who have adopted the term neoliberal seem to suggest that this era is characterized by a distrust of technocracy which seems like a solid sign for your overall theory.
“The modern version is much more comfortable with technocracy”—I wasn’t aware of that. I would love to see a source on this.
I’m still trying to find a good source on this in text format. One good resource would be this recent podcast from the neoliberal project on what they believe.