Can you elaborate on this? From what I can tell, the outcome that you’re speaking of has occurred for the opposite reason.

Looking at the data for the US, there seems to be an even more exponential curve between 2015-2020, which would imply that these trends could have been further exacerbated by the reduction of government regulation. The same is likely true for the concentration of wealth, the loss in small businesses, disenfranchisement, etc.

I think a possible explanation would be that the increasing desire for more government regulation, or at least functional government, runs counter to the world, which is increasingly ruled by inhuman, (even anti-human) forces. This breeds a desperation in people as they realize that humanity is viewed as a resource, not an end in itself, for the inhuman forces (call it capital, technology, whatever) to consume and mold toward their own ends. While the left is obviously more in favor of “big government”, I think it’s easy to forget that conservatives are also perpetually in rebellion against a government they feel has abandoned the goal of protecting the traditional structures they hold dear, while also delegating the role of speech police and moral authority to the dreaded socially liberal wings of Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Are you saying that capitalism and technology are inhuman forces? That humans were in some idyllic state before 1800?

Probably not in 1800, but the post-war "big government" era from about 1950's to 1980's (depending on the area) was relatively idyllic in many places.

The government has gotten enormously bigger and more pervasive since then.

Ok, if you say so.

Don't take my word for it. Just take a look at any chart of state/local/federal spending.

in the US, prior to 2001 the department of homeland security (a signigicant portion of the government) did not even exist.

The Department of Education is another massive bureaucracy that is really hard to discern a benefit from.

No, not at all, just that (post) modern techno-capitalism has grown out of the need to justify itself via appeals to humanism. Another way of looking at this is by considering the difference between life/death drive in psychology as they relate to humanism/anti-humanism and how that manifests in systems.

I have no idea what that means.

I can explain if you’re genuinely interested

Do you really believe that government regulation has been reduced?

Regulation and government involvement in economy very much so. This was/is the core of the neoliberal turn.

Consider all the labor regulations since. All the complexity of the taxes. The design of cars today is completely driven by regulations - for example, the tendency for cars to all look alike comes from regulation of every aspect of them.

Regulation has driven a lot of industry out of America, as it made it too expensive to operate here.

In what area has government been reduced?

Education, for sure.

In tech, while there are some regulations, I definitely believe that more need to be established, especially regarding the topic of the article. Tech is a bit too loose right now, with the exception of the health industry.

> Education, for sure.

Are you sure? Hasn't government K-12 spending per student increased far faster than inflation? And how about all that federal money for student loans?

Keep in mind that money always comes with strings attached.

> Regulation has driven a lot of industry out of America, as it made it too expensive to operate here.

Do you have any sources? I think most offshoring is driven by significantly lower labor costs in other countries. For example, China has a highly controlled economy, but American companies still offshore work there simply because labor is cheaper. Indeed, we've seen some "onshoring" in recent years[1] now that automation is far more prevalent and labor cost is less significant as a portion of operating costs.

[1] https://www.engineering.com/story/automation-is-making-onsho...

No, I don't have a specific cite. But the reason for offshoring is always going to be about lower total costs, of which labor is a large component. There are quite a lot of regulations around labor and benefits, along with the NLRB which is very tilted towards the interests of unions. California recently passed a law where the wages of fast food workers are set by some government board.

Yes, the reality is we've been in a starve the beast situation for decades in the US. It's a spiral as the bad actors get to say "See, we have X but X doesn't work" leaving out the conditions they've forced on X to cause these deficiencies. Repeat until the X thing is dead or completely toothless.

This reads like it was generated by Heritage Foundation GPT.

“The era of big government is over.”

— Bill Clinton, 1990 something

We’re still living in Reagan’s World and they still don’t get it.

Big government has increased by leaps and bounds since Reagan's era ended. Just take a look at the federal budget.

In the US 9/11 ended "big government is over". FUD handed everything over to the fed's on a silver platter.

You seem to have formed your conclusion first.

I smell a free market libertarian.

Hello from socialist Sweden. For generations we have looked to the government to solve a lot of our problems. Can't remember any mental illness epidemic when I was a teen though.

What are you 70? It the same here and I would guess in most of the “global Protestant north”

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/livsvillkor-levnadsvanor....

Malmo has some now

Is Scandinavia poor and miserable?

They do seem rather miserable.

Maybe they just don't have to pretend to be cheerful all the time.

https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2023/world-happiness-trust-...

Scandinavia is ethnically homogenous.

That's not really true, and what does that have to do with the parent's assertions?

Take Canada as an example then. It has a strong welfare state, is neither miserable and poor, nor ethnically homogenous.

To be clear, neither Canada nor Scandinavia is perfect nor perfectly happy.

Lots of countries are ethnically homogenous and yet, they are fucking hellholes.

<snort>

    Alban Uzoma Nwapa (born 26 August 1957), better known by his stage name Dr. Alban, is a Nigerian-born Swedish musician and producer with his own record label, Dr. Records.

    His music can best be described as Eurodance/hip-hop reggae in a dancehall style.

    He has sold an estimated 16 million records worldwide and is most famous for his worldwide 1992 hit "It's My Life", from the album One Love.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Alban

Welcome to Sweden (1990): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uPDfuC3Jck

This isn’t true outside of the daydreams of right wing cucks and Americans.

Well, if the Big Government was not so hellbent on helping making billionaires trillionaires at the expense of the working class, maybe the poor could learn to be more self-reliant.

Pretty hard for a lot of people that doesn't make multiple hundreds of thousands dollars an year to not depend on the government, when lax fiscal policies completely devalue their money while inflating the assets and the pockets of the oligarchic class.

Get real, the oligarchs don't want less government, they want less of the big goverment money going for other people than the oligarchs. Not a single one of them want free markets, not one of them wants fiscal discipline, not a single one of them want real free trade.

They nurture crises for years so they can extract more when we cannot ignore the crisis anymore, and emergency measures are required. They have postponed the energy transition, their foundations and their grants helped to demonize nuclear when we desperately needed for it to evolve and expand. Now we are faced with an emergency, and we are pretending that nobody is going to make loads of money out of renewables, and that probably it is going to be the same people who made lots of money from oil. The bills will explode for the common folk, like they are doing in Europe, and in the end, if we escape deindustrialization, they will use the government to extract money from the people again to finally nuclearize our power generation.

So, if we want to talk about big government, let's talk about big government, but let's be honest and admit that big government, big corporate and big finance are basically siamese twins.

fiscal policies in the US have been very far from "lax" -- they have been highly engineered via "quantitative easing" to artificially grow the economy (the debt, really) through massive money-printing and asset inflation programs.

"Lax" policies would have avoided repeated and continuous intervention and let the chips fall where they may.

This mode of thinking is very prevalent on the left but it’s actually the opposite on the right, which is instead anti government. So it really isn’t a universal shift.

if it was true we should see a downward trend in west european countries

Do Danes, Norweigans, Swedes, and Finns agree with you? I doubt it.

The idea of the welfare state is so popular around here that even the rightest of the right can't really criticize it much.

Almost all economic reforms are done "to save the welfare state". Especially reforms that slowly dismantle it.

Danes, Norwegians*, Swedes, and Finns will have the opinions that their governments tell them to have. Pretty much everywhere in the world and at any year of history, the average citizen will say that his government/president/king/warlord/chairman/pope is the best that has ever been. So "popular opinion" doesn't mean much.

Nowadays it's mostly commercial outlets and interests that tell us what opinions to have.

Whenever anything bad happens, there's always a cry for "there oughtta be a law against it!" and laws get crafted and passed when emotions are running high. This doesn't make for good laws.