Why we are Fighting for a Free Future
On elite failure, groupthink and the need for a paradigm shift in political and intellectual life
The contemporary West faces an accumulating triad of crises: economic, social and political. The symptoms are increasingly plain. Housing has become unaffordable for a generation; real wages have stagnated or declined for many; and a growing number of citizens are turning away from traditional politics toward populist movements.
These are not isolated or accidental developments, nor are they merely the result of poor short-term decisions. They are products of a long-standing institutional order now unravelling: social democracy, founded on managerialism and ultimately financed for over 50 years by chronically easy money.
The crumbling consensus
In 1941, James Burnham published The Managerial Revolution, arguing that capitalism had been displaced by a new system in which power was no longer held by capitalists or the public but by professional managers – technocrats, bureaucrats and administrators.
Today, the governing apparatus across Western democracies continues to exhibit the hallmarks of Burnham’s managerial society: centralised planning, elite control over largely unaccountable bureaucracies and reluctant public acquiescence to ever-expanding administrative structures. Managerialism remains dominant, often unconsciously so.
Overlaying this administrative framework has been a system of social democracy that purports to deliver prosperity and equality through redistributive taxation, state spending and pervasive regulation. But the funding of this system has for over 50 years relied on currency debasement – state-planned expansion of the supply of money as new debt. As I have argued in my prior writing, this monetary manipulation inflates asset prices, transfers wealth unjustly and props up unsustainable public spending.
The apparent prosperity of recent decades has been bought with easy money: it is an illusion resting on a bubble which will burst.
The result is a brittle social order. Younger people are locked out of asset ownership. Middle incomes are squeezed. Governments promise solutions but deliver disappointment. In the absence of serious alternatives, electorates understandably turn to simplistic answers and strong rhetoric. This turn to populism is not the cause but the consequence of elite failure.
The problem of groupthink
At the heart of our predicament lies a failure – of intellect, morals and culture – among those who govern and shape ideas.
As Hayek set out in The Intellectuals and Socialism, the dominant ideas in society do not originate with politicians or the general public but with intellectuals – those who interpret and disseminate ideas for others. Today, those intellectuals include not only academics but also journalists, think tank staff, civil servants, commentators and other trusted opinion formers. Their role is crucial in shaping the bounds of respectable thought.
Groupthink – the psychological phenomenon where a desire for consensus overrides rational appraisal – is endemic among these professions. From universities to newsrooms, government departments to NGO networks, there exists a remarkably narrow band of permissible opinion. As my business partner Professor Paul Dolan and his colleagues have demonstrated in the UK Government’s controversial MINDSPACE framework, behaviour is shaped more by social norms and status quo bias than by deliberate reasoning. Even well-intentioned, free-thinking individuals often default to institutional conventions. In this sense, behavioural science explains not only the choices of the public but also the blind spots of the elite.
In policy-making, the consensus revolves around certain unexamined assumptions: that government is the primary instrument of progress; that regulation corrects market failure more often than it generates it; that central banks can fine-tune economies; and that redistribution is justice. These assumptions are rarely debated. They form the paradigm within which all political discussion takes place.
That paradigm is now failing.
Public choice and the illusion of benevolence
Public choice theory – developed by economists such as James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock – further illuminates the failures of modern governance. Public choice assumes politicians, bureaucrats and voters are motivated by the same incentives and constraints as other individuals. Governments are not omniscient problem-solvers but coalitions of agents acting in their own interest within specific institutional structures.
Yet this insight remains absent from most journalistic coverage and political debate. Policy failures are explained by execution errors, lack of funding or party politics – not by the structural incentives that produce bad outcomes. As a result, bad policy is rarely discredited; it is merely “reformed” by another round of intervention.
When government failure is misunderstood as market failure, the answer is always more government. This feedback loop is reinforced by groupthink among the individuals who shape public opinion: how could they be wrong?
The need for a paradigm shift
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn described how scientific progress does not occur through steady accumulation of knowledge but through periodic “paradigm shifts” in which a prevailing framework is overturned by an incompatible rival. Before the shift, anomalies accumulate; after the shift, a new model reorders facts previously misunderstood.
The same mechanism applies to governing philosophy. The liberal order based on free enterprise, constitutionalism and limited government was eclipsed by a paradigm that places faith in the omnipotence of the state. That paradigm is now visibly failing. But a new one will not emerge automatically.
We must deliberately change the questions that are asked by journalists and the public and faced by civil servants and elected representatives. Instead of “What new subsidy or regulation can solve this problem?”, the right questions might be “Which existing interventions are causing this problem?” or “What institutional arrangements would allow this issue to be resolved without central direction?” And when spending is announced, “Which taxes will rise, what will be cut or what will you borrow?” Financial consequences ought always to be fleshed out.
This requires courage, clarity and a resolute and well-informed intellectual, social and political movement. That movement must expose the institutional decay of managerialism: centralised control, overregulation and politicised bureaucracies which claim impartiality, blind to their own shortcomings. A movement for freedom must redirect attention toward the power of voluntary cooperation, dispersed knowledge and individual responsibility.
Mistakes we must avoid
Most people will by definition believe in the present paradigm until it shifts in a revolutionary leap. It would be a mistake to think those of us fighting for a free future will be welcomed as insiders: we are the disruptors and we must be civilised as we embrace that position in society.
It would be a mistake to think a Labour government will solve the problems we face. The Labour party is the embodiment of the failing managerial paradigm. They were welcomed back to government as the sensibles in charge – they are failing. As the political party most wedded to the present governing philosophy of our age, it seems unlikely Labour will lead a movement for freedom.
The Liberal Democrats are enjoying a renaissance as disillusioned centrists turn to them from the Conservatives, perhaps largely over our leaving the EU. But the Liberal Democrats have no apparent guiding philosophy and the EU is the fullest development of the managerial idea. Perhaps as a party believing in nothing, they may adjust to a new prevailing wind but it would be a mistake to expect the Liberal party to provide leadership towards liberty.
The Conservatives were once the traditional party of freedom but their problems are more immediate, practical and political, centred on survival: they seem unlikely to find the capacity or appeal to lead the necessary charge for freedom.
As Reform enjoy their surge, it would be a mistake to think they have a coherent guiding philosophy shared by their members and supporters beyond a wholly justified and correct desire for profound change.
It would be a mistake to think the managerial approach to society would work if only we brought in more talented people. That is to fall into the spell of Plato and to confuse two categories of human action: the government’s way and society’s way, bureaucracy or prices, profit and loss.
Finally, it would be a mistake to give up in despair.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
What is required is a radical change of context within which all political parties, officials, journalists and others operate. That is what we must create.
Toward a free society
To secure the transition, a new strategy is required – one rooted in intellectual rigour, behavioural insight and practical action. We must be prepared to challenge received wisdom, not from a place of cynicism but from constructive dissent, often collaborating with adversaries without seeking complete consensus.
As behavioural science shows, change is not merely about presenting facts but about shaping environments that make new choices easier. MINDSPACE identifies factors such as messenger credibility, incentives and social norms as key levers. These insights must now be deployed to build a coalition for real change: we cannot afford to neglect ethical tools for shaping a better future.
The movement for a free society must be hopeful but uncompromising. It must not merely oppose state overreach but actively demonstrate the moral and practical superiority of freedom. It must reject technocratic paternalism in favour of self-governing individuals. And it must seek to transform the public conversation, not merely to participate in it.
That transformation begins with recognising that we are living through a paradigm failure. The institutions of social democracy and managerial governance, supported by debased currency, are no longer capable of delivering the prosperity, security or freedom they once promised. A new paradigm grounded in liberty, constitutional restraint and sound money is not a utopian ambition. It is the only viable route to a future which is more prosperous, happy and free.
Conclusion
Our challenge is to procure this paradigm shift swiftly, before the breakdown of the old order produces something worse than gridlock: authoritarianism, scapegoating and collapse. The clock is ticking. Ideas still have consequences. But they must be deployed with urgency, coherence and resolve.
We must work to ensure that when the public and their representatives look for answers, they find not the exhausted promises of salvation by the state, but the liberating arguments for a society based on freedom, dignity and responsibility.
Further reading
Groupthink: this article from The Provocation People.
Behavioural science, MINDSPACE – Influencing behaviour through public policy
Public choice theory, the IEA’s primer.
This brief explanation of Kuhn’s paradigm shift.
And the category error which is confusing bureaucracy with private sector methods of organisation: Mises, Bureaucracy.
Sound money needs also to be honest ( Tomlinson ).
Backrocks Going Direct is the Global public Private partnerships blue print for consolidating and fixing the Command and control technocratic dictatorship. It has failed.
Thanks for articulating these insights Steve.
Steve that's exactly right with one problem. That is you need to be able to express each of those paragraphs in a sentence or two , and it needs some serious hook lines. That people who are forced to suffer the problems of managerial incompetence by the bloated, dishonest, self serving state, addressed only by adding incompetence and more taxes, will easily recognise and identify with. Dictated in hate....