Voters blame governments for privatized failures rather than the companies responsible

Evidence

Although excoriated by both neoliberalism and neoconserva-tivism, the concept of the Nanny State continues to haunt capitalist realism. The specter of big government plays an essential libidinal function for capitalist realism. It is there to be blamed precisely for its failure to act as a centralizing power, the anger directed at it much like the fury Thomas Hardy supposedly spat at God for not existing. ‘Time and again’, James Meek observed in an LRB piece on water privatization in Britain, ‘Conservative and Labor governments have discovered that when they give powers to private companies, and those private companies screw up, voters blame the government for giving the powers away, rather than the companies for misusing them’. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 128

Although excoriated by both neoliberalism and neoconserva-tivism, the concept of the Nanny State continues to haunt capitalist realism. The specter of big government plays an essential libidinal function for capitalist realism. It is there to be blamed precisely for its failure to act as a centralizing power, the anger directed at it much like the fury Thomas Hardy supposedly spat at God for not existing. … ‘Time and again’, James Meek observed in an LRB piece on water privatization in Britain, ‘Conservative and Labor governments have discovered that when they give powers to private companies, and those private companies screw up, voters blame the government for giving the powers away, rather than the companies for misusing them’. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general pattern of scapegoating the welfare state documented in earlier chapters of this book and to Hardyesque atheological anger as cultural diagnosis. — connects to: Ethical appeals to individual responsibility let impersonal structures evade accountability — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 139; Wrongdoers blame regulation for harm that deregulation enabled.; Lost profits privatize while losses nationalize in statist capitalism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1153 (+5 more)
• ADDENDUM: The pattern of blaming a weakened state rather than the actors who caused harm parallels sacrifice-as-stabilizer logic in stratified societies.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 128

Broader Connections

• Wrongdoers blame regulation for harm that deregulation enabled. #corroborates (0.80)
• Neoliberalism induces risk-bearing then blames the victims when risk fails #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 351
• Lost profits privatize while losses nationalize in statist capitalism. #qualifies (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1153
• Corporations deflect blame for industrial disasters even when fault is evident #exemplifies (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2708
• Austerity self-perpetuates by generating consent for privatizing governments #corroborates (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 235
• The crisis narrative blaming government interference absorbed leftwing grievances to defend market orthodoxy #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 496
• The bad-apples framing deflects blame from systemic causes #complicates (0.70)