modern malaise - by Ava - bookbear express
In the 80s Thatcher and Reagan broke down trade barriers and ceded government power to banks and corporations. This created a consumer world driven by debt, where everything was assessed by utility. Politics essentially “became a wing of management, saying that it could stop bad things from happening instead of imagining how things could be better.”
Now politics feels like pantomime, with both parties bickering over social issues while neither has the political will to meaningfully affect the economy. Curtis: “Online psychodramas create waves of hysteria that make it feel like the world is transforming. In fact, nothing actually changed in the last four years. Trump made himself a pantomime villain, and we booed rather than imagine an alternative.”
Money became our religion, and now money is starting to run dry, as the world’s largest economies slow in their growth. Both democracies and dictatorships are in a moment of crisis.
