Future loss

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Generation Alpha followed Generation Z, and they are naming the generation now being born Generation Beta. This sounds like textbook late-capitalism dark humour. In online subcultures, "beta male" means men who lack masculinity. Why would anybody choose such a loaded word for an entire generation if it were not dark humour? Not fair.

Youth and late capitalism have been debated for a long time, especially since the market crash of 2008. That fateful crisis turned countless lives upside down. Suddenly, families with great expectations for the future saw all their dreams evaporating before their eyes. America's middle class still has not fully recovered from its aftershocks.

Whether it is a health crisis like Covid or the hyperinflation of recent years, those with diminished savings find themselves struggling like fish out of water. Yet, the consequences of these and other crises have been toughest on the young. They are the ones for whom the changes have been most drastic. After initially being brought up in relative comfort, they saw their parents and guardians struggling to make ends meet. The creature comforts they could count on vanished, and an uncertain future stared them in the face.

As their educational careers progressed, many could not get into good schools and consequently had to prematurely join the workforce or were saddled with bone-crushing student loans. If you think prominent Americans are free of this problem, look no further than Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, who are still in the process of paying off their debts.

I think I have mentioned it more than once in my columns, but perhaps repetition may help the message sink in. I have not read a better encapsulation of the tragedy faced by youth than the late Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014). A chapter titled 'Slow cancellation of the future' describes a cultural and social condition in late capitalism where the ability to imagine, create, or move toward genuinely new futures has been eroded.

Instead of progress, marked by radical shifts in art, music, technology, or politics, society is trapped in a state of inertia, endlessly recycling the past. Fisher argues this is not a sudden collapse but a gradual, almost imperceptible process, where the expectation of novelty and transformation has been replaced by nostalgia, repetition, and a haunting sense of "what could have been".

Fisher borrows 'Hauntology' from Jacques Derrida, using it to describe a cultural mood where the present is haunted by 'lost futures' - visions of progress (for example, space travel, utopian societies) once promised but never materialised. These ghosts linger in art and media, evoking a melancholic sense of absence.

Building on Fredric Jameson's ideas of late capitalism, Fisher sees this stagnation as a symptom of neoliberalism's triumph in the 1980s and 1990s. The system prioritises profit and stability over innovation, flattening time into an eternal 'now' where radical change feels impossible.

This is where we may need the help of another author. Kurt Andersen's Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History is custom-built to explain this stagnation. Published in 2020, it is a cultural, economic and political chronicle of how America transitioned from a relatively equitable society in the mid-20th century to one marked by extreme inequality and stagnation by the early 21st century.

Andersen argues that this shift was not accidental but the result of a deliberate, decades-long campaign by a coalition of wealthy elites, big business leaders, and right-wing ideologues. Beginning in the 1970s, this group, whom he dubs 'evil geniuses', systematically dismantled the New Deal's progressive framework, reengineering the economy to favour the rich while leaving the middle and working classes with diminishing prospects.

The book blends historical analysis, personal memoir, and sharp critique, tracing how policies like deregulation, tax cuts, and union-busting reversed a century of economic fairness.

If you want to see the consequences of economic stagnation, there is no better example than Japan. After growing by leaps for decades, the country's economy started to stagnate in the 1990s. Until then, it had been at the centre of most innovations. Matt Alt, in his book Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World, does an incredible job of tracing Japan's major contributions to innovation and technology. But then it all stopped.

A number of political economists believe it was America, the country's chief benefactor after the Second World War, which deliberately slowed Japan's growth out of fear of a pre-war political relapse. Whatever the reasons, it is clear the society suffered and showed us the consequences of such stagnation.

One heartbreaking example is 'enjo k?sai', a practice where young women, often teenage girls, engage in compensated relationships with older men in exchange for money or luxury goods, emerging prominently during Japan's post-bubble economic slump of the 1990s.

Alt presents it as a transactional arrangement facilitated by telephone clubs or early internet platforms, ranging from platonic companionship to implied sexual encounters. It is tied to the materialistic desires of youth (for example, designer bags) in a society where traditional economic security had eroded. He situates 'enjo k?sai' within the 'lost decades', linking it to economic distress and gender inequality. He notes its association with the kogal (gyaru) subculture and its perception as a moral failing, sparking public outrage and debates about exploitation versus agency. He views it as a darker reflection of Japan's inventive spirit - a subcultural response to economic hardship that contrasts with the escapist creativity of otaku or Pokémon. Alt does not romanticise it but uses it to illustrate how societal pressures birthed complex, controversial coping mechanisms.

All opinions given above are personal views of the authors, and you can disagree with them. But think about this moment in time. The global population keeps exploding. In his Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty has already exposed the true scale of global inequality. The rise of the populist and libertarian right has resulted in more deregulation and the dismantling of the administrative state.

On top of all this, competition in the field of AI development accelerates the pace of technological displacement and the erosion of job opportunities. Yet, there is no global consensus on the matter. While Elon Musk encourages people to have more babies, the question remains how safe the future is for those already brought into this world. It looks like the recipe for future loss is now complete.