> In the 1930s the fascists, communists, and New Dealers all took the reins and governed their societies in new technocratic ways.
... They are technological means by which to manage populations. As Yuval Harari puts it, the answer to "unnecessary people" is "drugs and computer games".
while "New Deal" have a lot of issues, note that 2 other approaches totally failed. At least for some time we considered them as failed ones. Unfortunately, a bit refreshed for some external appearance they start to be more and more popular again by populistically riding the issues of the "New Deal" approach while we all start to collectively forget why those 2 lost.
For some time it worked in Germany and USSR too. Paradigm shifts are natural part of technology development. Somewhat similar to large companies, societies without individual freedom tend to have harder time making through such paradigm shifts, either failing completely or doing it slower and much more inefficiently, and as a result lose to the more efficient societies with individual freedom.
The USA didn't New Deal hard enough to keep up with the rest of the "Western" world's more humane form of capitalism, which you can see in how consistently the USA lags behind other countries in measures of actual human progress and comfort.
While most "Western" countries suffered through similar technocratic, neoliberal turns in the 80s, they were built on a stronger social democratic base than the USA.
And don't get fooled by "horseshoe theory" ignorance: Fascist states were/are authoritarian by definition. Communist states were/are authoritarian by culture.
while "New Deal" have a lot of issues, note that 2 other approaches totally failed. At least for some time we considered them as failed ones. Unfortunately, a bit refreshed for some external appearance they start to be more and more popular again by populistically riding the issues of the "New Deal" approach while we all start to collectively forget why those 2 lost.