Neoliberal Madness

There’s an idiomatic expression, at least in American English, that goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results.” I’ve noticed this idiom pop up in a few Top 40 pop songs. First, there’s Olly Murs’s “Troublemaker,” in which Flo Rida raps,
            Maybe I’m insane
            Cause I keep doin the same damn thing
            Thinking one day we gon change
Then, there’s Usher’s “Numb,” in which he sings:
            Keep on doin the same old thing
            And you expecting change
            Well is that really insanity
            Or just a loser’s game
Usher’s formulation clearly shows that this is a specifically neoliberal conception of insanity: inflexibility is a loser’s game, not a winning bet. Neoliberalism requires flexibility and adaptability for success. Crazies/losers are inflexible—they keep doing the same old/damn thing, expecting this to work, expecting to win from this invariant behavior. (Interestingly, the probability should work out in their favor, right? Each coin toss is a 50/50 chance of turning up heads or tails, so if you keep calling heads, eventually you’ll win. So the question is: why is it compelling for us to think that inflexibility is probabilistically a losing bet, when in fact it might not be?)

If there are other examples of this idiom in recent/recent-ish song lyrics, I’d love to know!