There were forty years of warnings about the effects of neo-liberal economic policies, going way back to the 1970s.

All of those boring Keynesians and social democrats, warning about increasing polarisation and isolation within societies, dramatic inequality, the rise of far-right or left demagogues trading on the fears of people displaced by the evaporation of their jobs, either to emerging economies or to people imported to first world countries from third world ones, to do the jobs they had held (which amounts to the same thing.) All warned of and all have happened.

I am assuming that many people heard those warnings and were happy to take that risk.

And when you gamble, sometimes you lose. On the plus side, it might have all fallen over at the turn of the century, but cheap credit enabled the fantasy to kick on for seven more years.

I do not think it is reversible. You don't get to replay history.

We just have to see what eventuates.