For now, I live in the former most powerful country in the world prior to the rise of the US.
The fact that the Bank of England was historically a private business is awkward when it comes to explaining to some modern country why it's not OK that their central bank is giving the leader's nephew $100M in unsecured loans, and this sort of discomfort is part of why it was bought by the British government and gradually ceased operating as a private bank in my lifetime. When I was younger I knew people whose mortgage was issued by the country's central bank. Not like celebrities or politicians or anything, just bureaucrats who got a good deal, sort of "mates rates" but for a house loan.
To be fair, this has felt like the natural consequence of the "maximize capitalism without regarding the downsides" maxim the US seems to have been operated under for a long time. Corporations have been (indirectly) running the country for some decades at this point, it's just way more obvious and in the face now when a "businessman" sits as president.
I thought things would look up after the 2012 election, when people were looking for meaningful change. Unfortunately a charismatic demagogue entered the scene and has taken power. Since then, we’ve been on the worst possible timeline, and I don’t see an easy way out of this mess. It’s going to take a lot of work for Americans to trust each other again and for the rest of the world to trust us.
And it's easy to understand why they made that choice. I don't think they are dim-witted, ignorant of history, or unaware of how this gamble could turn out badly for them. Instead, it's because for all of the problems that they are having with the current administration, they still have their wealth, they still have some of their influence, and they also have the option to jump ship for greener pastures if worst came to worst.
You'll notice that nowhere in that equation is concern for the average working-class American.
The US drifted far from any form of pure open market laissez-faire capitalism or balanced regulated capitalism some time past.
The idea that if it was only somehow more pure in some ideological virtue, then it would have worked, you'll need really hard historical material empirical evidence to defend such a claim
Not that it wasn't white and pure enough but that if it was the shade whiter you advocate for, it would have somehow been a complete 180°, like some magical threshold
Kinda similar to the people who say of the SU "but it was not true communism".
