#99 Rage Against The Dying Of The Light 🎧

<em>This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: </em><strong><em>how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?</em></strong><br/><br/><em>PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.</em><br/><br/><em>- RSJ</em><br/><br/>The West German band Scorpions released their anthemic number <em>Wind of Change</em> sometime in early 1991. It is hard to find a better popular culture artefact that captures the mood in Europe during those times. The Berlin Wall had come down, democratic revolutions were sweeping across the countries of eastern Europe and it was clear the liberal democratic order running their economies on the ‘Washington consensus’ had won the Cold War.<br/><br/>The lyrics had both that triumph and a hope for future contained within:<br/><br/>“The world is closing in<br/><br/>Did you ever think<br/><br/>That we could be so close, like brothers<br/><br/>The future’s in the air<br/><br/>Can feel it everywhere<br/><br/>Blowing with the wind of change..<br/><br/>The wind of change<br/><br/>Blows straight into the face of time<br/><br/>Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell<br/><br/>For peace of mind”<br/><br/>To broaden things a bit beyond Europe, the 90s were also the time when China was entering the global economy and India was ‘reforming’. Things seemed to be all converging towards the same end. The ‘end of history’ as Fukuyama put it was nigh. Liberal democracy was the ultimate political system. Nothing could better it. We just needed to wait for every n