I think you are mired in the details and missing the big picture which is so much more important (and interesting) than neoliberal talking points. I read a lot of praise for the do-gooders, lever pullers, social engineers, experts and smartest men in the room for their top down meddling, manipulations, interference and interventions. But you only need to read what Keynes actually wrote to realize he isn’t so well intentioned: “For a little reflection will show what enormous social changes would result from a gradual disappearance of a rate of return on accumulated wealth.” What gradual disappearance of a rate of return? This means pushing interest rates to zero — he understood the inverse relation between rate of return and asset prices. The enrichment of the few and consequent wealth disparities. He goes on to explain how this would rock the bedrock of a free capitalist society: “In short, the aggregate return from durable goods in the course of their life would, as in the case of short-lived goods, just cover their labour-costs of production plus an allowance for risk and the costs of skill and supervision. Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity value of capital.” And, “all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.” And, “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.”… he mapped out a plan to destroy capitalism. He gave us the recipe for “overturning the existing basis of society.” All you have to do is “a continuing process of inflation,” which will “confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” This “brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires” to the “profiteers, who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat.” And indeed this is exactly what has happened over the decades.
I think you are mired in the details and missing the big picture which is so much more important (and interesting) than neoliberal talking points. I read a lot of praise for the do-gooders, lever pullers, social engineers, experts and smartest men in the room for their top down meddling, manipulations, interference and interventions. But you only need to read what Keynes actually wrote to realize he isn’t so well intentioned: “For a little reflection will show what enormous social changes would result from a gradual disappearance of a rate of return on accumulated wealth.” What gradual disappearance of a rate of return? This means pushing interest rates to zero — he understood the inverse relation between rate of return and asset prices. The enrichment of the few and consequent wealth disparities. He goes on to explain how this would rock the bedrock of a free capitalist society: “In short, the aggregate return from durable goods in the course of their life would, as in the case of short-lived goods, just cover their labour-costs of production plus an allowance for risk and the costs of skill and supervision. Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity value of capital.” And, “all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.” And, “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.”… he mapped out a plan to destroy capitalism. He gave us the recipe for “overturning the existing basis of society.” All you have to do is “a continuing process of inflation,” which will “confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” This “brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires” to the “profiteers, who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat.” And indeed this is exactly what has happened over the decades.