In commenting on the French — Sarkozy Forces the French to Join the 1980s — Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker and Moneyball) explains the British transformation of the 1980s:
A few years after Margaret Thatcher came to power and launched what at the time seemed a futile war to compel the English people to embrace business values, I found myself dazed and confused in a London corner shop.Down one aisle and up the other, I paced but found no trace of what I’d come for: the world’s finest pseudo-cookies. The shelf that once held those delicious McVitie’s wafers coated with milk chocolate was now stocked with less desirable items.
At length, I went to the middle-aged shop owner and asked where she’d hidden my favorite treats — this gift from the gods to those of us who want to pretend our cookies are merely crackers.
“We used to stock those,” she said, sweetly, “but we kept running out, so we’ve stopped.”
Right then I thought: Thatcherism is doomed. The English will never embrace efficiency, or money-making, or the-customer-is-always-right mindset, or any of those uneasy values that underpin modern capitalism.
I was wrong, obviously. The English have not merely embraced commercial values but have become so thoroughly imbued with them that London has displaced New York as the world’s money hub. A nation of people once embarrassed to complain that their soup was cold is now among the first to demand to speak to the manager.
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Of course, it’s possible to change a society and to drag it into the global economic monoculture. Mrs. Thatcher showed how: Break up collectives and make people feel a little bit more alone in the world. Cut a few holes in the social safety net. Raise the status of money-making, and lower the status of every other activity. Stop giving knighthoods to artists and start giving them to department-store moguls. Stop listening to intellectuals and start listening to entrepreneurs and financiers.Hate Becomes Love.
Don’t mind that artists and intellectuals hate you — or even that, for a time, the entire society seems to hate you. Stick to the plan long enough and the people who are good at making money acquire huge sums and, along with them, power. In time, they become the culture’s dominant voice. And they love you for it.