No future for hopeless Europeans
Writing for Social Europe in an article titled No Europe for young men, professor Jan Zielonka comments on the shortcomings of democratic regimes in planning for the interests of the youth. Referring to policies that benefit future generations, the professor remarks:
Unfortunately, most of these promises and pledges have been broken repeatedly, even by seemingly responsible democratic leaders. This is because politicians cannot ignore the electoral arithmetic. When faced with difficult choices, those who have votes prevail. This is how democracy works; it gives the majority of the day what they want – and those are likely not-so-young people.
The salient point is that in an increasingly ageing population, there are fewer young people to stand up for their own interests. Combined with the workings of democratic decision-making, the argument goes, young people are basically marginalised and end up being exploited by the older folk.
I think such framing is problematic because it assumes that these vaunted new generations are somehow not related to the older ones. To me, it is a bizarre premise. I have never met a parent or grandparent who votes to ruin the future of their descendants. Those seemingly age-based interests must be more nuanced than what they seem.
Furthermore, we have to entertain the inverse scenario of a predominantly young population. Would those people not be interested in the wellness of their parents and grandparents? Again, I find it hard to believe they would not.
The notion that democracy is ill suited to cope with challenges that require longer-term commitments is also suspect. A totalitarian system would still have to consider the costs and benefits of every decision on the time axis because failure could spell the end of its reign. There are economic crises, natural disasters, and foreign countries eager to exploit any obvious weakness in an attempt to create a fait accompli on the international stage. Without tending to immediate issues, the authorities will no longer enjoy the support or acquiescence of the people and will ultimately be ousted. Hence the age-old mode of governance for “bread and circuses”, which is necessarily done for those present.
Intergenerational justice is a laudable end. Though it is hard to express in terms of tangible policy proposals and even harder to assess the effectiveness thereof. How can we know that any given programme will guarantee a decent life for the people who will be born in 2050, for example? And what does a “decent life” even entail? Most Europeans nowadays would find it extremely difficult to live without a smartphone and the occasional flight/vacation abroad. But are those necessary components of a decent life? I doubt it.
The more I think about this, I can only conclude that politicians who bring up the ageist problématique are either naive or are actively distracting people from more fundamental issues that plague our countries. Let us talk about how democracy is rapidly degenerating into plutocracy. When environmental protection laws are weakened, for example, we have to wonder how much of that is due to an ageing population and how much is because of vested corporate interests lobbying policy-makers to do their bidding. In this light, media ownership has to be brought under scrutiny, both the traditional outlets (TV, newspapers, radio, …) and social media. When a handful of economic elites or deranged billionaires exerts control over most communication channels, we cannot pretend that citizens are voting freely and that their age group is the predominant factor in their putative short-term thinking.
Those granted, I know from personal experience that there is a path to sustainability and it can happen now without revolutionary reforms. It requires personal courage to live with less and to endure some discomfort. If the people of today and tomorrow care so much about their future, then maybe they should stop waiting for a magical grand bargain to come out of government bureaus or be formulated in the ivory towers of academia. Instead, individuals or small groups of like-minded people can abandon the megacities, move to the countryside, and work with what is available there, pooling resources and expertise as the needs arise.
This is not a turn to the Stone Age, as one can still benefit from technological advances, such as the Internet for remote work. It is a new power impulse of decisiveness; a turn to a lifestyle of initiative and localised solidarity. The youth, or anyone else for that matter, are not hopeless: they have developed tunnel vision and are thus conditioned to expect everything from their rulers. We can theorise about the evils of global capitalism, the constraints in the existing legal-institutional arrangements of the world, or whatnot, but the gist of the matter is that we can act virtuously despite those magnitudes.