> The original architects of American global power did something very clever that no other empire had ever done before: they deliberately hid the instruments of their power.
> Specifically, they institutionalized the hard power of the post-WW2 American military into a "rules-based international order" and the organizations needed to run it.
> ...
> The reason they did this is because repeated use of hard military power is fragile and self-defeating: it engenders resentment and breeds defiance.
I think a similar thing happened to the people with the ideology of markets: they're presented as some neutral, optimal thing, but they aren't. They encode biases and preferences that suit powerful interests, which can take a lot of effort for a common person to discern. But since there's no leader or decision-maker to point to and defy, so it's hard to organize people about the problems, and then it's hard to point them at the right root cause/solution.
alt Hacker News
> The original architects of American global power did something very clever that no other empire had ever done before: they deliberately hid the instruments of their power.
> Specifically, they institutionalized the hard power of the post-WW2 American military into a "rules-based international order" and the organizations needed to run it.
> ...
> The reason they did this is because repeated use of hard military power is fragile and self-defeating: it engenders resentment and breeds defiance.
I think a similar thing happened to the people with the ideology of markets: they're presented as some neutral, optimal thing, but they aren't. They encode biases and preferences that suit powerful interests, which can take a lot of effort for a common person to discern. But since there's no leader or decision-maker to point to and defy, so it's hard to organize people about the problems, and then it's hard to point them at the right root cause/solution.