There has never ceased to be cooperation between the state and big business - the description given by the elder Galbraith in The New Industrial State is still current, with the necessary adaptations. In Europe this accommodation includes the unions (which is why Goldfarb says Merkel is not about to dismantle the German unions). But the state has abdicated the common good. First by inaction, and then when business broke its toys, by shoveling money into their maws.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

Welcome to politics. There is no objectively correct or ideologically neutral way to intervene in the economy. (But there are manifestly incorrect ways to do it - see, e.g. the bank bailouts.)

The question is not "whether planning?" - it is "planning to what end?"

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Hence they fall back on a policy of state non-intervention and deregulation, which is a policy choice and does have consequences as it sets the (dis)incentives within which market actors operate.

On this blog Jerome a Paris and others have written eloquently on the effect that the regulatory environment has on the development of energy and transport infrastructures, and in particular how a deregulated market in which sovereign debt is not allowed to be used for funding infrastructure development is incompatible with the stated policy goals in the area of energy and transport. Specifically, short-term profit pressures and private funding incentivate fuel-burning power plants over renewable energy installations.

So, conscious state non-intervention in the economy is a deletereous policy choice.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma