Love the Cage: How Reagan, Thatcher, and a Talking Point Named ‘Freedom’ Made Us Worship the Market

It’s the early 1980s. Disco is dying. The Cold War is freezing back over. Inflation is out of control. And your average voter is tired—tired of high taxes, union strikes, and politicians who can’t stop saying “malaise.”

Enter Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K.—two leaders who didn’t just run against their opponents.
They ran against the idea of the postwar state itself.

And they did it with one word:
Freedom.

Not freedom as in liberation from tyranny.
Not freedom as in equal opportunity.
But freedom as in:

“You’re on your own now, and that’s good.”

The Big Sell

Both Reagan and Thatcher inherited economies still clinging to the remnants of Keynesianism—welfare programs, public infrastructure, strong unions, and a belief that government should at least pretend to help people.

But they had a different script, written by Friedman, Hayek, and the ghosts of Pinochet’s Chicago Boys:

  • Government isn’t the solution. It’s the problem.

  • Markets are natural.

  • Taxes are theft.

  • Unions are bullies.

  • Poor people? Lazy.

Reagan called it trickle-down economics.
Thatcher called it There Is No Alternative.
But the strategy was the same:
Unleash capital. Blame the state. Redefine democracy as shopping.

Destroy to Liberate

In the U.K., Thatcher smashed the miners’ strike—not because coal was the issue, but because unions were.

In the U.S., Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers for going on strike. It was a warning shot: your job can be taken. Your benefits aren’t guaranteed. And you’d better smile about it.

They didn’t dismantle the state.
They reprogrammed it—from provider to protector of markets.

Now police forces got militarized, but housing subsidies got slashed.
Military budgets ballooned, but public schools were told to do more with less.
“Freedom” meant the freedom of capital to move, not people to live.

The Cultural Coup

But here’s the genius: they didn’t just change policy. They changed culture.

Suddenly:

  • Getting rich was moral.

  • Losing your job was your fault.

  • Collective action was suspicious.

  • Taxes were oppression.

  • Billionaires were job creators.

Even the Left started shifting—New Labour, Clintonian Democrats—they didn’t fight the cage. They repainted it. They called it “modernization.”

And so the neoliberal operating system wasn’t just installed.
It was loved.

We worshipped the market not because it served us—but because we were told it was us.

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