[vaillant]

Surprised nobody is mentioning climate change. Young people are supposed to be contributing and centering their lives around a kind of societal structure which is increasingly seen as doomed. The constant acceleration of capital is bumping up against the material finitude of an increasingly depleted Earth.

Conservatives have a vision of the doomed future, built around walls and hoarding resources against impending scarcity. But liberals don't really have a good answer outside of "bring the super-rich to heel and use their resources to invest in mitigations," a view which is anathema to politicians who depend on the super-rich to continue holding power.

People are depressed because there doesn't seem to be a future.

[giraffe_lady]

Yeah I think this is a big part of the core thing. The author is trying to explain it away because a bunch of quantitative metrics are better or improving. But regardless, it feels more hopeless now. It feels like the world is going to end and we're powerless to affect it, it feels like our lives are grist for engine of wealth accumulation.

Surprise, people's feelings are based on how things feel and regardless of what numbers say the world feels worse than it used to. We've optimized the hopefulness out of our changes.