Boomergeddon!
What happens when the boomers finally (ahem) move on to the (ahem) nice farm in the sky?
Sure they’ve made the place (and us, they made us), well, interesting, what with the debt, the money printing, the fossil fuels, the CFCs (remember those!), the leaded paint, the presidents (we’ve still got them), the sex, the drugs and the rock n roll - but there’s something we may miss when we finally pry the keys to global power / doom out of their once hippy hands… the last vestiges of unpaid care work, both in the sheets *and* in the streets.
Boomergeddon, according to Ed West, where I stole the phrase from “is the theory that society depends on a large voluntary army of pro-social, patriotic, community minded people with spare time and among my generation and their successors they just don't exist in large enough numbers. (A trend accelerated by lockdown)”.
What do you think? Are millennials going to show an interest in the body corporate? Running bake sales for the local library?
Or in popping over to see if Marge is ok - without being paid to do the job?
The unpaid volunteers were always a rare breed - but with our Hyper Commodisation of Care economy, where kids want to be paid salaries by their parents “for” staying home, and mothers demand money for mothering and young “gentlemen” want money back guarantees before they take young ladies on dates as “security” against not, well, getting laid… well…
Well. Well.
Implicit social contracts are definitely less in vogue than the explicit (puns intended) ones.
We’re going to miss kindness and personal charity when the last of it is replaced by industrial “social security” (and state sponsored euthanasia when it runs out - hi, Canada) aren’t we?
Or do we already?
Let me know your thoughts.
Is this a generational thing?
Do we blame the kids or the parents (or both)?
Can care be commodified - or is that an oxymoron?
Let’s think.
Read more
Boomergedon - an intro : https://x.com/edwest/status/1714228776517718143?s=46&t=4ZnlXYawVpFiG2SlapEWwg
Money back gaurentee dating : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/complete-shock-dating-trend-sees-103000157.html
The future of us! https://fluxtrends.com/the-future-of-us/
Boomergeddon!