In 1984 and Brave New World, we saw extremely effective authoritarian governments of different sorts.
While of course elements of those books exist in our structures today, there is one key difference: Western governments, and western elite, are now incompetent. They have inherited a once meritocratic, productive system, and turned it into precisely the opposite.
Despite this, the authoritarian impulses of these fools are increasing. In the U.S. the power of the federal government has correlated precisely with its decreasing competence. Garbage public schools, useless regulations, terrible laws which every citizen violates 5+ of which every day, leading to the dysfunctional anarcho-tyranny which we now live in.
Does anyone know any books or media which actually got this right? I'm guessing maybe cyberpunk/corporatist dystopias?
Brazil is right up your alley! (The director's cut. Not the theatrical release). It's a Terry Gilliam directed darkly comic mix of 1984 crossed with diesel punk pollinated with the worst of British bureaucracy and I highly recommend it
Excellent suggestion.