We're taught our whole lives that the 1930s New Deal era was a centralized technocratic dictatorship but this is demonstrably false. 1930s America remained thoroughly politically and economically decentralized and the deliberation and decision making architecture of its economy and governmental system remained dominated by a diffused, de…
We're taught our whole lives that the 1930s New Deal era was a centralized technocratic dictatorship but this is demonstrably false. 1930s America remained thoroughly politically and economically decentralized and the deliberation and decision making architecture of its economy and governmental system remained dominated by a diffused, decentralized, and heterogenous private sector that was primarily governed by truly competitive market structures and diffused public sector that was primarily governed by decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member political parties with real grassroots participatory governance structures, including on serious economic, scientific, educational/training, etc. matters. And no I'm suggesting this was some fairytale true everyone democracy and no I'm not suggesting there were no big powerful interests in the economy, but back that stuff was real and we were actually a decentralized democracy, and our private sector was indeed actually diffused, heterogeneous in practices, diverse in types, deliberately redundant, and primarily governed by competitive market structures
What the New Deal sought (vainly) was what WWII delivered in terms of the ascendancy of the PMC, technocratic governance, and all that goes with that. The war effort made everyone believe that the government could do great things.
We're taught our whole lives that the 1930s New Deal era was a centralized technocratic dictatorship but this is demonstrably false. 1930s America remained thoroughly politically and economically decentralized and the deliberation and decision making architecture of its economy and governmental system remained dominated by a diffused, decentralized, and heterogenous private sector that was primarily governed by truly competitive market structures and diffused public sector that was primarily governed by decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member political parties with real grassroots participatory governance structures, including on serious economic, scientific, educational/training, etc. matters. And no I'm suggesting this was some fairytale true everyone democracy and no I'm not suggesting there were no big powerful interests in the economy, but back that stuff was real and we were actually a decentralized democracy, and our private sector was indeed actually diffused, heterogeneous in practices, diverse in types, deliberately redundant, and primarily governed by competitive market structures
What the New Deal sought (vainly) was what WWII delivered in terms of the ascendancy of the PMC, technocratic governance, and all that goes with that. The war effort made everyone believe that the government could do great things.