Evil Geniuses

Imagine walking into a corporate boardroom in 1970 and hearing executives complain that they earned "only" twenty times what their average worker made. Fast-forward to today, and that ratio has exploded to over 300 times. This dramatic shift didn't happen by accident or through some invisible hand of the market. It was the result of a carefully orchestrated campaign by America's economic elite to rewrite the rules of capitalism in their favor.

This transformation unfolded not through dramatic revolutions or sudden policy changes, but through countless small adjustments that seemed reasonable in isolation yet proved revolutionary in their cumulative impact. From think tank position papers to Supreme Court decisions, from tax code modifications to labor law interpretations, each change appeared mundane at the time but collectively rewrote the social contract that had governed American prosperity since the New Deal. Understanding this methodical dismantling reveals not just how we arrived at today's stark inequality, but also provides a blueprint for recognizing how determined elites can reshape entire economic systems while most citizens remain unaware of the transformation occurring around them.

The 1970s opened with American business leaders feeling genuinely under siege. Environmental regulations were constraining industrial operations, consumer protection laws were cutting into profits, and a new generation of activists was successfully challenging corporate authority across multiple fronts. Corporate profits were declining, union membership had reached historic peaks, and public opinion polls showed widespread skepticism toward big business that hadn't been seen since the Great Depression.

The turning point came in August 1971 when Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer who would soon join the Supreme Court, penned a confidential memorandum that would become the founding document of the modern conservative movement. Commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell's memo diagnosed what he saw as a systematic assault on free enterprise by universities, media, politicians, and activist groups. More importantly, he outlined a comprehensive counter-strategy that would span decades and touch every institution of American life.

Powell's blueprint called for coordinated action across multiple fronts. Business needed to establish a presence in universities through funded chairs and research programs. They needed to create their own think tanks to produce scholarly research supporting pro-business policies. They needed to build a pipeline of conservative lawyers who could reshape how courts interpreted regulations. Most crucially, they needed to play the long game, understanding that real change required shifting the entire intellectual framework through which Americans understood economics and government.

The response was immediate and well-funded. Wealthy industrialists like Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors, and the Koch brothers began pouring millions into a network of new institutions. The Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and Cato Institute emerged as intellectual powerhouses producing research that challenged liberal orthodoxy. The Federalist Society began cultivating conservative legal scholars who would eventually populate federal courts. Business schools started teaching Milton Friedman's doctrine that corporations existed solely to maximize shareholder value.

By the decade's end, this patient infrastructure-building was beginning to pay dividends. The economic stagflation of the late 1970s created perfect conditions for conservative ideas that had been incubating in well-funded think tanks. Supply-side economics, aggressive deregulation, and tax cuts for the wealthy were no longer fringe theories but mainstream policy proposals backed by impressive research and promoted by a growing network of conservative intellectuals. The groundwork had been laid for a complete reversal of the New Deal consensus that had governed American politics for nearly half a century.

Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 marked the moment when the conservative movement's long-term strategy finally captured the commanding heights of American government. Reagan himself proved to be the perfect messenger for this economic transformation, a former Hollywood actor who could sell radical policy changes with warmth and optimism, making them seem like common-sense solutions rather than ideological experiments. His administration moved with remarkable speed and coordination to implement the agenda that had been carefully developed throughout the previous decade.

The centerpiece of Reagan's economic program was a massive restructuring of the tax system that reduced the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, representing the largest reduction in tax progressivity in American history. This wasn't simply about reducing government revenue but about fundamentally altering the relationship between capital and labor. Simultaneously, Reagan's team systematically dismantled the regulatory apparatus that had constrained business since the New Deal, slashing enforcement budgets and appointing industry-friendly officials to key regulatory positions.

The most symbolically important moment came in August 1981 when Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers and banned them from federal employment for life. This wasn't merely about resolving one labor dispute but about sending a clear signal to corporate America that the old rules of labor relations no longer applied. Companies across the country began hiring permanent replacement workers during strikes, a practice that had been considered beyond the pale just years earlier. The balance of power between workers and employers shifted decisively and permanently in favor of capital.

The intellectual justification for these changes came from a new economic orthodoxy that elevated shareholder value above all other considerations. Milton Friedman's doctrine that corporations existed solely to maximize profits for shareholders became gospel in business schools and corporate boardrooms nationwide. This represented a fundamental break from the post-war understanding that corporations had responsibilities to workers, communities, and society as a whole. The concept of stakeholder capitalism, which had guided corporate behavior for decades, was systematically replaced by a narrow focus on stock price maximization.

The Reagan years established the template for what would become known as neoliberalism, a system that promised prosperity for all through the liberation of market forces but delivered wealth concentration on a scale not seen since the 1920s. Union membership began a steep decline that continues today, removing one of the most important sources of countervailing power against corporate dominance. By the decade's end, the foundations of the post-war social contract had been fundamentally altered, setting the stage for even more dramatic transformations in the years ahead.

The 1990s and 2000s witnessed the completion of Wall Street's conquest of the American economy, a process that transformed finance from a service industry into the dominant force shaping corporate behavior and national economic policy. This period saw the emergence of what economists call financialization, the process by which financial markets, institutions, and motives became increasingly central to the operation of both domestic and international economies, often at the expense of productive investment and long-term economic health.

The roots of this transformation lay in the deregulation of the 1980s, but it accelerated dramatically with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which removed the barriers between commercial and investment banking that had been erected after the Great Depression. Financial institutions grew larger and more complex, creating new instruments and markets that often seemed to exist primarily to generate fees and trading profits rather than serve any productive economic purpose. The rise of derivatives, leveraged buyouts, and exotic securities created vast new profit opportunities for financial firms while adding dangerous layers of complexity and systemic risk.

The rise of shareholder value as the supreme corporate objective fundamentally changed how American companies operated across all sectors. CEOs who had once balanced the interests of workers, communities, and shareholders now focused almost exclusively on boosting quarterly stock prices. This shift was reinforced by changes in executive compensation that tied CEO pay directly to stock performance, creating powerful incentives for short-term thinking and financial engineering over long-term investment in research, development, and productive capacity.

Curiously, this period of dramatic economic transformation coincided with unprecedented cultural stagnation. Unlike previous decades, which had been marked by rapid stylistic and cultural evolution, the period from the 1990s onward seemed frozen in time. Music, fashion, architecture, and design all settled into patterns of endless recycling and nostalgic revival rather than genuine innovation. This cultural stagnation both reflected and reinforced the economic stagnation that most Americans were experiencing, even as overall GDP continued to grow.

The 2008 financial crisis revealed the dangers of this financialized economy in spectacular fashion, but the response to the crisis only reinforced Wall Street's dominance. Banks were bailed out with taxpayer money while homeowners faced foreclosure en masse. The architects of the crisis faced few meaningful consequences while millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and life savings. The message was unmistakable: in the new American economy, financial institutions were too big to fail, but ordinary citizens were entirely on their own.

The 2010s marked the completion of corporate America's capture of the political system, as new forms of monopoly power emerged in the digital economy while traditional democratic institutions proved increasingly incapable of responding to public needs. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010 removed virtually all limits on corporate political spending, while a sophisticated network of dark money organizations allowed wealthy donors to influence elections and policy debates while remaining largely anonymous to voters.

The digital revolution created unprecedented concentrations of economic power that would have been unimaginable to earlier generations of Americans. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon didn't merely dominate their industries but became essential infrastructure that other businesses depended upon to reach customers and conduct commerce. This created new forms of monopoly power that traditional antitrust law, weakened by decades of conservative legal interpretation, was ill-equipped to address or constrain.

Meanwhile, the cultural stagnation that had begun in the 1990s deepened into a kind of temporal paralysis where American society seemed incapable of imagining genuine alternatives to the status quo. The constant recycling of past cultural forms created a sense that meaningful change was impossible, making it easier for political and economic elites to maintain arrangements that served their interests while leaving most Americans behind. Innovation continued in narrow technological domains while broader social and economic structures remained frozen in patterns established decades earlier.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the full extent of American capitalism's transformation from a system focused on productive capacity to one optimized for financial extraction. While millions of workers lost their jobs and small businesses closed permanently, the wealthy saw their fortunes grow dramatically as asset prices soared thanks to Federal Reserve interventions. Essential workers, many of whom had been labeled "low-skilled" and paid accordingly, proved to be the backbone of the economy during the crisis.

The rise of populist movements on both the political left and right reflected growing public awareness that the economic system was no longer working for ordinary Americans, but the political system had become so captured by elite interests that meaningful reform seemed impossible through normal democratic processes. The fundamental question facing American democracy was whether it retained the capacity for self-correction, or whether the concentration of economic power had become so extreme that the system could only be changed through crisis or collapse.

The transformation of American capitalism from the 1970s through the 2010s represents one of the most successful elite political projects in modern history, demonstrating how a relatively small group of wealthy individuals and corporate leaders can systematically reshape an entire economic system through patient institution-building and strategic political action. What began as a defensive reaction by business leaders who felt threatened by 1960s-era social movements evolved into a comprehensive restructuring of American society that reversed decades of progress toward greater equality and democratic participation.

The core insight from this history is that economic systems are not natural phenomena governed by immutable laws, but human creations that can be deliberately altered through organized effort and sustained commitment. The conservative movement understood this principle and acted upon it with remarkable discipline and effectiveness, building the intellectual infrastructure and political coalitions necessary to implement their vision over multiple decades. Their success provides both a sobering lesson about the fragility of democratic institutions and an empowering example of how determined groups can create systemic change.

The path forward for American democracy requires learning from both the successes and failures revealed in this history. Just as the conservative movement built alternative institutions and developed new frameworks for understanding economic policy, those seeking to create a more equitable system must invest in long-term institution-building rather than focusing solely on electoral politics. This means supporting independent media, funding progressive think tanks, training a new generation of public interest lawyers, and creating educational programs that help citizens understand how economic policy affects their daily lives.

Most importantly, this history demonstrates that the extreme inequality and corporate dominance that characterize contemporary America are not inevitable outcomes of technological progress or global competition, but the predictable results of specific policy choices made by human beings who could have chosen differently. Understanding this provides hope that different choices remain possible, but only if enough Americans recognize what has happened and commit to the sustained effort necessary to build something better.

The question facing America today is whether its citizens will use these historical lessons to construct an economy that works for everyone, or whether they will continue accepting an arrangement that primarily serves the interests of a wealthy few. The answer will determine not just America's economic future, but the survival of its democratic ideals in any meaningful form.

The systematic dismantling of American democratic capitalism over the past five decades reveals how patient, well-funded elite movements can fundamentally reshape entire societies while maintaining the appearance of normal democratic processes. The conservative counter-revolution succeeded not through dramatic coups or obvious authoritarianism, but through the methodical capture of institutions, the strategic deployment of ideas, and the gradual normalization of arrangements that would have seemed outrageous to earlier generations of Americans.

The core contradiction at the heart of this transformation was the gap between its promises and its actual results. Supply-side economics promised that benefits for the wealthy would trickle down to everyone else. Deregulation was supposed to unleash innovation and competition. Financialization was meant to allocate capital more efficiently. Instead, these policies produced an economy characterized by stagnant wages, declining mobility, and increasing instability for most Americans, while delivering unprecedented wealth and power to those already at the top. The lesson for contemporary Americans is clear: lasting change requires the same kind of long-term thinking, institutional investment, and strategic coordination that created the current system. Democracy can be restored, but only through sustained effort by citizens who understand both what they've lost and what they're fighting to build.