Towards a Better Future

It is usually considered compulsory to close a book of this kind with a note of optimism and positivity. Unfortunately, I cannot bring myself to do that. The gathering consensus seems to be that the road ahead takes us deeper into something resembling a new feudal era.1 The super-rich will separate themselves entirely from the social body and use their huge wealth to steer politics, culture and our economies in ways that favour their interests. Our economies will become increasingly monopolistic and oligopolistic, manipulated by algorithms and technological surveillance and managed by new AI systems. The working class will morph into a servant class reliant upon either the crumbs that fall from the super-elite's table or upon unstable and poorly remunerated gig work providing services to the trimmed down urban professional classes who administer our institutions in the interests of elite. As we have seen, democracy is already a shadow of its former self, an increasingly hollow ritual that changes nothing.