the central conceit of neoliberalism has always been that it’s the most rational position and only the true adults in the room will accept its mandates.

this was all the more mindboggling in the aftermath of the World Wars, when state-driven planning resulted in absolutely massive economic and industrial booms and even better profit for the bourgeoisie than under “free trade”. it was literally just “ignore what happened over the last five years, ignore the evidence of your senses, we have to do deflation and remove funding from programs.” this total willingness to ignore history and science in the pursuit of maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie even at the expense of their own profits means that there is no hope that in the current day, neoliberal governments will follow China’s lead. hell, even mild Keynesianism and full employment measures would be regardless as giga-Stalinist ultracommunism now. this is bad for us proles of course, but pretty great if you’re interested in watching Western imperialism collapse - they will resist with all their might any attempt to take the offramp that would save the imperialist system