Neoliberalism and the Distortion of Value – A Recursive Dynamics Case Study

This paper applies the Recursive Dynamics (RD) framework to neoliberal political–economic systems, treating instability and inequality not as policy errors or ideological failures, but as the result of self-sealing recursive feedback loops that have decoupled from external validation. Using the Recursive Disclosure Index (RDI) as a diagnostic tool, the paper examines how advantage loops form, stabilize, and become resistant to reform through the progressive suppression of disclosure, regulatory capture, and erosion of buffering capacity. Rather than predicting economic outcomes, the RDI is used to assess the structural health of recursive feedback in political–economic systems. The analysis reframes familiar phenomena—including wealth concentration, regulatory failure, narrative capture, and institutional brittleness—as expressions of declining admissibility and increasing directional structural locking. Particular attention is given to the role of discourse constraint, including contraction of the Overton window, as an emergent structural mechanism rather than an external ideological imposition. This case study is explicitly diagnostic rather than normative. It does not propose alternative economic models or policy prescriptions. Instead, it demonstrates how Recursive Dynamics can identify when systems that appear coherent by conventional metrics are in fact operating in a self-sealing recursive regime with elevated collapse risk. The paper serves both as a substantive critique of neoliberal institutional dynamics and as an empirical illustration of Recursive Dynamics as a cross-domain analytical framework.