Technology

Basically, capitalism got a boost after WW2 because the US built out its industry during the war while the rest of the world burned. The west has been riding that ever since. Now the whole mythology of capitalism being a superior economic system is coming apart because China used socialism and state planning to catch up, and now surpass capitalist states. Starting from utter devastation, China has now become the dominant global economy.

I'd personally argue this is the biggest reversal, bar none other, in terms of the contrast between the first Cold War and this new cold war. The more ascetic leftists may be rather put off by this dynamic but it is a paradigm shift that places the West in the dilemma the 20th century socialist bloc was held under, which the (now late) Michael Parenti articulated in "Blackshirts and Reds."

The human capacity for discontent should not be underestimated. People cannot live on the social wage alone. Once our needs are satisfied, then our wants tend to escalate, and our wants become our needs. A rise in living standards often incites a still greater rise in expectations. As people are treated better, they want more of the good things and are not necessarily grateful for what they already have. Leading professionals who had attained relatively good living standards wanted to dress better, travel abroad, and enjoy the more abundant life styles available to people of means in the capitalist world.

It was this desire for greater affluence rather than the quest for political freedom that motivated most of those who emigrated to the West. Material wants were mentioned far more often than the lack of democracy. [...]

[...] In 1989, I asked the GDR ambassador in Washington, D.C. why his country made such junky two-cylinder cars. He said the goal was to develop good public transportation and discourage the use of costly private vehicles. But when asked to choose between a rational, efficient, economically sound and ecologically sane mass transportation system or an automobile with its instant mobility, special status, privacy, and personal empowerment, the East Germans went for the latter, as do most people in the world. The ambassador added ruefully: "We thought building a good society would make good people. That's not always true." Whether or not it was a good society, at least he was belatedly recognizing the discrepancy between public ideology and private desire.