Beyond the fact that the burden will disproportionately be borne by young people, a society built on an edifice in which debt is widely accepted and forced upon people is not only potentially unstable both financially and socially, it’s also ethically problematic.
Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd has come up with a plan for Labor that he calls the “Fourth Way.” But on closer inspection, Rudd’s would-be alternative is a rehash of the timid, conservative approach to politics that has kept Labor out of power for a decade.
Loneliness has become a feature of modernity, a hallmark of late capitalism, woven into the technologies and built environments that form the architecture of our lives.
Bosses give any number of reasons, often focused on some vaguely defined notion of productivity, why they do or don’t support remote working, but ultimately it comes down to a single, fundamental question: what is the ideal balance between reducing expenditure and surveilling workers?
The pandemic feels increasingly like a historic inflection point and ‘Coronation’ may, over time, come to be seen as the first film of a new era. Conveyed through the lens of a dissident, its sense of destiny about China’s rise – a common theme in state propaganda – is a vision that offers no triumphalism or comfort.