The choices that the young Baby Boomers made in the 1970s-80s have liberated societies from their past strict constraints. But freedom had its price. In the words of George Packer, they made economies and societies that were “more entrepreneurial and less equal, more tolerant but less fair.” On the back of the Baby Boomers’ desire for freedom, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Milton Freedman, and other titans of neo-liberalism came to dominate the global consensus. For three decades, everyone sang from the same hymn book: public sectors are inefficient, private sectors offer the most efficient outcomes, monetary signals are the only thing that matters, and personal responsibility is the cornerstone. This philosophy, based on assumptions of perfect information and competitive markets, clashed with how human societies work, and the book discusses the painful legacy: inequalities, economic and financial instability, environmental degradation, destabilizing globalization, and social polarization.
