I wholly agree that technological change begets social unrest. And that regulation, applying rules to the open market, with competent referees, has struggled to keep pace with technological change.
However. OC does not propose a theory for technological disruption leading to accelerating inequity.
My best guess of the probable root cause is when wages were decoupled from productivity. Productivity boomed, wages remained stagnant. The Productivity-Wages Gap. There are insightful, complimentary narratives of this phenomenon from Piketty, Turchin, many others.
Buy why did this happen when it did?
My current best guess is when finance got super charged by IT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization
When the majority of wealth creation transitioned from doing real world stuff to massaging balance sheets. When Capital transitioned from investment to rent seeking.
Advances in IT was the enabler, force multiplier, by dramatically decreasing transaction costs and improving financial analysis (eg playing what-if with spreadsheets),
Ok, fine. But why did wages stay decoupled?
At the same time, Capital led a sustained attack on Labor. Which hobbled the expected normal efforts society has historically done to redistribute wealth. There are many, many useful complimentary narratives about Milton Friedman, Chicago School of Economics, Heritage Foundation, etc.
Another "also true" story is Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So... Whereas other histories detail the obvious persons, ideologies, and culture war stuff, this book details the legislative knife-fight that actually made it happen.
PS- My starting assumption is the fight is, and always has been, wealth vs democracy.
Me: According to your book, America's political parties have flipped every ~70 years. It should have happened around the time of Ross Perot, so I guess we're overdue. Do you think another realignment is emminent?
Phillips: No. It won't happen while Wall St. and finance remains in control of our political discourse.
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It'll be amazing if Biden Admin is able to uncork the next cycle. But I'm not holding my breath.
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich [2003] https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Political-History-Am...
Here's a more recent account:
Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA [2015] https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So...
Edit: I changed "Last decade" to "Around 2005". Time flies. My bad.
This is an illuminating history of the lobbying and policy efforts to rollback The New Deal and so forth.
Lobbying America: The Politics Of Business From Nixon To NAFTA
https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So...
TLDR: The titans of industry who partnered with government for the greater good were pushed out by those opposed to government.
The environmental efforts of the time were also framed in terms of energy independence, economic growth, etc.
Also a huge motivator for promoting peace and stability in the Middle East.
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Everyone has probably seen https://wtfhappenedin1971.com, a graph that shows the point in time when wages where decoupled from productivity.
Apparently, Vaclav Smil argues that deflection point is because of the rising cost of oil. I'm willing to be persuaded.
However, I agree with u/pessimizer (upthread) that "Carter was the bridge from the New Deal to Clintonism" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34902957
Here's a hot-take from the right that I find agreeable: https://redstate.com/laborunionreport/2011/01/13/the-decline...
Another broader analysis from the left. TLDR: Labor's nadir was the '70s, inclusion of minorities (due to civil rights era reforms) undermined unity, foreign competition devalued domestic labor, and just plain old exhaustion. https://jacobin.com/2021/01/1970s-decade-strike-workers-labo...
The book Lobbying America is a history of Capital's decades long effort to roll back The New Deal, from the vantage of corporate America. https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So...
FWIW, that effort grew into the larger reactionary project, the culmination we're experiencing today.