The good news? I think the neoliberal ice is melting.
This essay is a synthesis and capstone of my previous essays:
- Economics Is Not a Science – demonstrates how neoliberal economic myths lack scientific validity, explaining why Americans across party lines can’t recognize alternatives when politicians use “fiscal necessity” to justify destructive policies
- Your Mainstream Economics Decoder Ring – reveals how phrases like “fiscal responsibility” function as weapons that constrain our economic imagination, showing exactly how neoliberal politicians from both parties gain our approval for policies that betray our interests
- Depreciation Rules Transfer Wealth Up – exposes how seemingly technical tax policies systematically transfer wealth from working people to asset owners, demonstrating the hidden mechanisms of wealth concentration disguised as neutral economic rules
- Why Progressives Are Accidentally Helping Authoritarians Win – explains how accepting neoliberal economic myths enables technofeudal transformation by preventing effective opposition to policies that concentrate power
- The U.S. National Debt Is Caused by Underspending – exposes how deficit reduction mythology fundamentally misunderstands government finance, showing why the policies both parties promote actually harm economic stability
- Opportunity Economics – provides the alternative framework that could reverse technofeudal transformation, showing what we could demand instead of policies designed to make us economically dependent
Why “Sound Money” Beliefs Give Leaders Permission to Dismantle Democracy
For fifty years, oligarchs and concentrated wealth interests have systematically conditioned all Americans to accept artificial limits on our collective power. What began as corporate and industrial elite capture in the Reagan era evolved through financial sector dominance in the Clinton years to today’s tech and finance oligarchy under mainstream economic mythology as I discussed. From Reagan’s “fiscal conservatism” through Clinton’s “Third Way” to Obama’s deficit reduction, politicians from both parties have used the same economic myths to dismantle democratic institutions and create economic dependence while we cheer because the policies feel responsible. We’ve all been trapped by the same lack of understanding about our options for designing economic systems that serve everyone. The result: we have become unwitting accomplices as concentrated wealth interests completed what has now evolved into a technofeudal system—where today’s tech and finance elites rule economically fragile populations. This essay exposes how five decades of wealth concentration through neoliberal messaging delivered us into technofeudalism and reveals how we can organize together to build alternatives that could restore democracy and genuine opportunity for all Americans.
These myths create a simple but devastating trap: economic insecurity makes us politically exploitable.
- The Downward Political Cycle (Economic Fragility → Political Exploitability): Economic insecurity → Can’t afford to resist bad deals → Must accept worse conditions → Becomes more economically fragile → Even more politically exploitable → Spiral continues toward serfdom
Meanwhile, economic security creates political independence—the foundation to take risks, reject exploitation, build more security, and spiral toward genuine self-determination.
- The Upward Political Cycle (Economic Security → Political Independence): Economic foundation → Can afford to take risks and reject exploitation → Builds more economic security → Gains more political independence → Spiral continues toward genuine self-determination and the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness that America promises
Neoliberal myths disguise the deliberate creation of downward spirals as “responsible economics.” We can’t recognize that our economic fragility is being systematically manufactured because politicians from both parties have conditioned us to accept the same limiting beliefs about what’s economically possible.
This conditioning runs so deep it has captured even our universities. As I’ve demonstrated in Economics Is Not a Science, academic economics continues teaching these myths despite their failure to meet basic scientific standards. When even our institutions of knowledge discovery reinforce the same constraints, alternatives remain hidden from public view.
How the Myths Function Across Party Lines:
- Republicans: “Fiscal responsibility proves we’re fiscally conservative”
- Democrats: “Deficit reduction shows we’re serious about governance”
- Both Parties: “We make tough choices others won’t make”
- All Americans: “Sound economics requires accepting painful but necessary cuts”
Both parties use the same language to make destructive policies sound responsible. Understanding how to decode this economic language reveals how phrases like “tough choices” and “fiscal discipline” function as weapons rather than wisdom, constraining our imagination about what’s economically possible.
This bipartisan conditioning prevents us from recognizing our shared interests: economic security that enables future planning, genuine opportunities where effort pays off, thriving communities, and fair markets instead of rigged systems. Instead, neoliberal myths make policies that could create our collective empowerment feel like violations of responsible governance. The true alternatives—what I’ve called Opportunity Economics—remain invisible to most Americans because both parties promote the same constraints.
The Science Test: Exposing Five Decades of Failed Predictions
If neoliberal economic theories deserve the reverence both parties give them, they should pass basic scientific tests. The evidence reveals these aren’t legitimate theories—they’re myths designed to justify policies that concentrate power while maintaining our approval through appeals to fiscal responsibility.
Deficit Reduction Mythology: Claims government surpluses strengthen economies.
- Reality: Every sustained surplus in American history preceded recession (1920s→Great Depression, 1990s→dot-com crash). Politicians from both parties praised these surpluses as responsible governance, then blamed “external factors” when the inevitable crashes occurred. As I’ve explained in detail, the national debt is actually caused by underspending, not overspending, yet both parties continue promoting deficit reduction that removes money from our economy.
- The Ultimate Absurdity: Congress could eliminate the entire national debt tomorrow by simply appropriating for it—the Fed would create the money, Treasury would pay off bondholders, debt = $0. We don’t do this because our monetary operations haven’t been updated since the gold standard ended in 1971. Congress appropriates spending but refuses to appropriate for the interest costs of their own decisions, then acts shocked when debt compounds. The paradigm changed, the operation didn’t.
- How It Traps Us: Creates downward spirals by removing public economic security, forcing us into private debt dependence that makes us politically exploitable—all while maintaining artificial constraints that could be eliminated instantly through normal government operations.
Hard Money Deception: Claims creating money causes inflation and collapse.
- Reality: Japan created money for decades with minimal inflation. Massive U.S. money creation after 2008 didn’t cause hyperinflation. Countries imposing austerity saw deflation and economic collapse. We changed from a hard money regime to a soft money regime in 1971: the paradigm changed, but the operations didn’t.
- How It Traps Us: Prevents government from providing economic foundation, keeping us trapped in downward spirals where financial fragility enables political control.
Bipartisan Deficit Obsession: Politicians from both parties promote this myth. Reagan’s deficits led to bipartisan panic about fiscal responsibility. Clinton’s celebrated surpluses—praised by both parties—directly preceded the dot-com crash. Obama’s deficit reduction during the Great Recession prolonged economic suffering. Yet both parties continue celebrating policies that systematically remove money from our economy.
"Crowding Out" Fiction: Claims government spending competes with private investment.
- Reality: WWII government spending created America’s greatest boom. The Interstate Highway System enabled decades of private growth. Countries with high government spending have thriving private sectors.
- How It Traps Us: Makes public investment seem harmful while private control seems natural, preventing the upward spirals that would enable our collective independence.
The Pattern: These myths consistently make false predictions because they were designed to justify policies that concentrate power while maintaining our approval. The most damning evidence of their artificial nature: any “fiscal crisis” could be solved instantly through basic government operations. Congress could appropriate to pay off the entire national debt tomorrow—the Fed creates money, Treasury pays bondholders, crisis over. As I’ve explained in detail, this is exactly how our monetary system actually works, yet politicians from both parties prefer maintaining artificial constraints that enable wealth concentration while we debate “fiscal responsibility” around problems that could be eliminated through normal appropriation procedures. As I’ve detailed in Economics Is Not a Science, the entire discipline fails basic scientific standards, yet we make life-and-death decisions based on these deliberate falsehoods positioned as economic science, with politicians from both parties using failed theories to justify policies serving elite interests instead of ours.
The Oligarch Strategy: Building Wealth Concentration Through Our Consent
While we debate fiscal responsibility, concentrated wealth interests have implemented a consistent agenda across changing elite groups: creating a system where economic elites function as modern lords ruling over economically fragile populations who become modern serfs. What began with corporate and industrial oligarchs in the 1980s, continued through financial sector dominance in the 1990s-2000s, and has now evolved into tech and finance oligarchy. Neoliberal mythology provides perfect cover across all these phases by convincing us that policies making us vulnerable are “responsible economics.”
The methods have evolved with the dominant elite groups, but the goal remains constant: wealth concentration at the expense of democratic power.
The Historical Progression of Elite Capture:
- 1980s-90s: Oil Barons and Industrial Magnates – Figures like the Koch brothers used deregulation, union-busting, and corporate tax cuts while using deficit fears to justify cuts to programs serving working people
- 1990s-2000s: Wall Street and Banking Elites – Financial sector titans pushed banking deregulation, “too big to fail” policies, and financialization of everything while using “fiscal responsibility” to prevent regulation
- 2010s-Present: Tech Bros and Finance Bros – Silicon Valley moguls like Musk and Bezos alongside financial engineering elites created platform monopolies, algorithmic control, data extraction, and cryptocurrency speculation while using “innovation” rhetoric to avoid oversight
Creating Modern Serfs Through Systematic Economic Fragility: The techniques adapt to each era’s dominant technology, but the result remains consistent: we’re trapped in debt dependence, economic insecurity, products designed to break, and weakened collective power. Whether it’s industrial pollution, financial fraud, or digital manipulation, each generation of elites uses the same neoliberal myths to justify policies that concentrate wealth while fragmenting our resistance.
Current Technofeudal Phase Mechanisms:
- Platform Monopolies: Tech oligarchs control the digital infrastructure we depend on for work, communication, and commerce
- Algorithmic Manipulation: AI and data analytics enable unprecedented behavioral control and wealth extraction
- Financial Engineering: Cryptocurrency, private equity, and complex derivatives concentrate wealth while creating new forms of economic dependence
- Digital Surveillance: Technology enables monitoring and control that previous oligarch generations could only dream of
The betrayal mechanism remains elegant across all phases: while we focus on deficit reduction, the dominant elites of each era implement wealth concentration serving their specific interests. Neoliberal fiscal responsibility rhetoric cuts programs providing our economic independence while preserving systems creating our economic dependence. Meanwhile, technical policies like depreciation rules systematically transfer wealth from working people to asset owners through seemingly neutral tax code provisions that most Americans never learn about. The complexity of these mechanisms—from monetary operations we don’t understand to economic language designed to confuse us—ensures we become unwitting accomplices in building systems designed to exploit us, with the methods evolving from industrial to financial to technological control.
American Surrender: How Fiscal Myths Weaken Us Globally
Neoliberal myths have devastating consequences for American strength. While our politicians invoke fiscal responsibility to justify cuts, other countries invest in their futures and surpass us—exactly what technofeudal interests want: a weakened America unable to resist elite control.
Infrastructure Surrender: China spends 8% of GDP building world-class infrastructure enabling economic dominance—with China’s 2023 GDP of approximately $17.7 trillion, that’s roughly $1.4 trillion annually. America limits ourselves to 2% of GDP (approximately $540 billion of our 2023 $27 trillion economy) due to artificial fiscal constraints both parties accept. This creates crumbling systems that make American businesses dependent on better infrastructure elsewhere while weakening our resistance to elite control.
Education Abandonment: Other countries invest massively in education while our politicians use fiscal responsibility to cut education programs. This creates downward spirals where Americans become less capable of recognizing economic manipulation while becoming more dependent on elite-controlled information systems. Both parties participate in this systematic weakening of our collective intelligence.
Global Leadership Abdication: China invests trillions in global influence while our politicians cut aid programs, surrendering global leadership while claiming fiscal virtue. Both parties accept constraints that make America less capable of independent action, trapping our entire country in downward spirals of dependence.
We’ve Been Pushed Over the Edge
After decades of gradual conditioning, recent policies have pushed us past the tipping point into full technofeudal transformation. What began as slow erosion became rapid demolition, with leadership from both parties willing to abandon American strength to complete the transition to modern serfdom.
Eliminating Our Knowledge Infrastructure: Current cuts to 40+ federal education programs aren’t just budget reductions—they’re systematic elimination of the knowledge base we need to recognize and resist manipulation. While other countries invest in education to strengthen their populations, America deliberately weakens our own capacity for democratic resistance.
Abandoning Our Global Strength: Eliminating international aid programs hands economic and political influence to competitors. This isn’t “America First”—it’s America surrender, creating international weakness that serves elite interests seeking to complete domestic transformation without external resistance.
Dismantling Our Democratic Tools: Clawing back Congressional appropriations eliminates our institutional capacity for collective resistance. When democratic processes can’t deliver, we lose faith in collective action and accept individual subjugation as inevitable.
Judicial Capture Completed: The Supreme Court’s January 2025 ruling on nationwide injunctions represents the final institutional surrender. By systematically weakening judicial power to constrain executive authority, the Court eliminated the last institutional check on authoritarian rule. As Justice Jackson warned in dissent, this creates conditions where “executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.” The ultimate goal of technofeudal interests—eliminating any institutional power that could constrain elite rule—has been achieved.
We haven’t drifted toward technofeudalism—we’ve been rapidly pushed over the edge and have now crossed into it. With all three branches of government captured by interests that serve wealth concentration rather than democratic governance, institutional resistance has been systematically eliminated while neoliberal mythology makes the final transformation feel like responsible governance.
The Alternative: Building Collective Power Through Economic Truth
The hope is that Opportunity Economics offers the comprehensive framework for preventing technofeudal transformation: genuine entrepreneurship, real market competition, economic security enabling true independence, and policies that strengthen our democratic capacity while preserving diverse communities. But most of us don’t understand the economic tools available because we’ve been systematically miseducated about how capitalism actually works.
What We Could Build Together:
- Genuine Market Competition: End corporate monopolies while enabling upward spirals through real economic opportunity for everyone
- Economic Security Enabling Independence: Provide the foundation that creates upward spirals, allowing us to reject exploitative deals and build genuine collective independence
- Community Democratic Control: Local autonomy with federal resources supporting independent capacity, breaking downward spirals at every level
- Democratic Economic Power: Policies strengthening our control over economic development, ensuring upward spirals become self-reinforcing
Why These Remain Hidden: Politicians from both parties use neoliberal myths precisely because alternatives would create the upward spirals that could reverse technofeudal transformation. If we understood the economic tools actually available—the mechanisms of capitalism that could serve working people rather than exploiting us—we would have the knowledge and economic security to demand leaders who serve our collective interests rather than elite control. The comprehensive framework I’ve called Opportunity Economics shows exactly what these alternatives could look like, but they remain hidden because understanding them would transform the balance of power.
Most of us have no idea how government finance actually works, don’t understand that the national debt is caused by underspending rather than overspending, and haven’t learned about the evolution of economic ideas that could inform better choices. This isn’t accidental ignorance—it’s systematic miseducation designed to prevent us from recognizing the economic tools that could transform our collective political power.
The Choice: Escape Technofeudalism or Accept It
The evidence is overwhelming: economic myths enabled systematic betrayal across party lines, disguised technofeudal transformation as responsible governance, and turned all Americans into unwitting accomplices building systems designed to exploit us. The final institutional capture has been completed.
But reversal remains possible when we organize together around economic truth. The first step is collective education—all of us understanding how economic systems actually work rather than accepting the mythology designed to exploit us. Learning to decode economic language reveals how phrases like “fiscal responsibility” function as weapons rather than wisdom. Understanding how government finance actually operates shows why the constraints we’ve all been taught to accept are artificial rather than real.
For All Americans – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents: We can still have genuine independence, strong communities, and economic security—but only by recognizing how neoliberal myths enabled our systematic betrayal across party lines. There are tools of capitalism that could serve our actual interests, but we’ve all been systematically prevented from learning about them. Economic literacy is the foundation of our collective political independence, and it’s now our only path back to democracy.
When enough of us understand how mainstream economic myths function as weapons, we can see why we’ve all lost control over our economic lives and political futures together. The solution isn’t accepting the technofeudal constraints that divide us along party lines—it’s learning about economic tools that could restore genuine choice and democratic power for everyone. Individual understanding becomes collective power when enough people recognize we’ve all been deceived by the same neoliberal system.
Politicians from both parties used neoliberal myths to gain permission for building elite control while we enthusiastically collaborated in our own subjugation across party lines. The future of American democracy depends on all of us recognizing this systematic betrayal, learning about the economic alternatives that actually exist, and organizing together around knowledge that could transform the balance of power.
Organized action using better economic tools is how we build the alternative that works for everyone. This essay serves as my deeper commitment to enabling economic security as the foundation for our collective political power, maximizing human agency, freedom, fulfillment, and conscious self-determination for every American. As I like to say: “capitalism and democracy—two great tastes that taste great together.” When properly understood and democratically controlled by all of us, they are the path to that vision—but only when freed from the neoliberal myths that currently hold both hostage to elite interests.
This is already happening. The ice that has frozen our economic creativity for fifty years is beginning to melt. Politicians like Zohran Mamdani are challenging neoliberal orthodoxy and articulating policies that resist technofeudal transformation, proving democratic alternatives are politically viable right now. The choice between accepting technofeudalism and escaping it is ours. But only if we learn the economic tools we need to make that choice real, and then organize together to implement them.