Putting it <i>incredibly</i> crudely - rich people started hoarding money, which made everyone else feel financially and personally less safe.<p>It&#x27;s still happening. The effects for most of the population are:<p>Less disposable income
Less secure employment
Fewer employment choices
Less free time away from work
Increased debt
<i>More anxiety</i><p>None of the above are good for creativity or individual freedom. (They&#x27;re not really good for anything.) And more anxiety usually means less tolerance of all kinds because the stakes for any bad decision are much higher.<p>In the 60s, universities were full of smart people with tenure, and the mandate of a university was education and research.<p>In the 10s, universities are full of adjuncts on poverty wages, and the mandate has become expansion and profit.<p>Wall St used to be under control. Now it&#x27;s a place where physics PhDs - the ones who could be working on quantum gravity and nanoengineering - go to die.<p>&gt;The same processes might be at work in other areas, e.g. the takeover of music and film industries by &quot;MBA thinking&quot; over people who actually care about art.<p>I&#x27;ve heard it called the Capitalist Counter-Reformation - analogous to the period of retrenchment and the reestablishment of regressive values and rigid power structures after the freedom and heterodoxy of the early Renaissance.<p>We&#x27;re basically living in the 16th century - not a happy time - but with Internet. We have 21st century science, and 16th century politics and economics, with aristocratic nation states instead of aristocratic city states.<p>Hopefully we won&#x27;t get The Inquisition. (I&#x27;d like to say I&#x27;m optimistic, but it&#x27;s hard.)