tisonlyi

The entire economic model.

Houses are not investments.
Money as debt, rather than value.
Fantasyland faith in efficient markets.
The systematic dismantling and shipping overseas of the value-creating elements of an economy. (Hint: Industry/Manufacturing)
Finance as end to itself.
Tainted economic figures. (Inflation figures that measure nothing of tangible worth, for example)
Corrupt politics, based on a fantasy.
Redistribution of wealth in the wrong direction.
Destruction of value on the altar of consumption.
Exponential growth rates being acceptable, necessary and encouraged.

All of the above and more.
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As RB says, this Chicago-esque wet dream exploded in the Reagan/Thatcher era (but it started with Chile, a decade earlier and then New Zealand took to the doctrine with gusto), but in fairness, other than wholesale surrender of power by financial and industrial powers and the re-basing/revolutionising of all the industrialised nations, what the hell else but incredible indebtedness could possibly have driven their capitalist world out of the 70's slump/stagnation?

I think that was pretty much the one option left/available and it was taken to with the relish and zeal of fanatics - which both Reagan and Thatcher most certainly were.

As of now, I don't think there are any options left. At least not in the west.

(but hey! Just as Marx said; You must exhaust Capitalism before Communism can take hold.)

__________________
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--