Alan SimpsonPolitics in the Age of Implosion
Bizarre as it may seem, Donald Trump and the TV series Adolescence might turn out to be the wake up call we’ve desperately needed.
Trump is hell-bent on bringing globalisation to its knees; a blessing in itself. But Adolescence offers the starker warning of a techno-feudalism that might follow. It is this alienation from ourselves that brings the biggest challenge. To meet it we need a fundamental rethink of today’s politics and economics.
None of this will stop Trump reducing the USA to a feral, semi-feudal society. It may have been coming anyway. But Trump’s whimsical, on/off, up/down approach to tariffs has left even his most ardent supporters wincing. If the USA can no longer be seen as anyone’s reliable ally the search for a better plan becomes all the more urgent. This is where Adolescence comes in.
The screening of the TV series sparked a wide ranging debate about alienation. This isn’t because we fear our children will all turn to mindless killing. It is because we know that, in a broader sense, they (and we) are lost; that the bonds between people and planet and purpose are steadily disappearing.
The poor know their lives have been getting poorer and their children’s prospects worse. The once secure ‘middle’ also see their shops and amenities closing and their children’s career pathways narrowing. Technologies that were to meant to save us are now being used to distract us until they replace us.
So it is with our children. The technology distractions they retreat into inform and misinform in equal measure. Adults aren’t much better. People often talk more to ‘Alexa’ than to their neighbours. The result is a growing sense of isolation and an undermining of social interaction skills.
We meet on ‘zoom’ or ‘WhatsApp’ far more than we meet in person. Young people don’t have to engage in team sports or games. They play on computers instead. In any case, schools have been forced to sell off sports fields, local factory pitches disappeared with the factories and community centres closed in the early rounds of local authority cuts.
Inter-generational links, once central to apprenticeships and localised production, disappeared in the same way. Political obsessions with ‘productivity’, cheapness and deregulation then chased work elsewhere and wealth into offshore hideouts.
Carl Sagan warned about this in his 1990’s book ‘The Demon Haunted World’ –
“I have a foreboding of an America, in my children’s or grandchildren’s time, when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few; and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues.”
He could have been describing today’s anywhere. This is the land embraced by Trump and his tech-bros and exploited by Reform and the Far Right.
Delusions of progress
Governments around the world fell for the illusion that you can only fund better services by driving up productivity. But productivity gains increasingly looked to replace labour rather than reward it. What this delivered was a diminishing workforce, on more limited wages, in an economy where profits were hoovered off-shore rather than spent on local services.
Amazon is a classic case in point. It makes vast profits, but pays no UK taxes. It automates large parts of its distribution processes and rigorously monitors worker productivity. Union recognition is rejected and long-term job security is anyone’s guess. None of today’s school leavers expect to find a job-for-life In Amazon. ‘Productivity’ gains will replace them with automated processes.
It doesn’t stop with Amazon. Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO of Google, claims that “within the next year the vast majority of programmers will be replaced by AI programmers”.
Already, 20% of the annual improvements in AI come from computers themselves. Schmidt predicts that within 6 years ‘regenerative self-improvement’ by computers will see AI replacing all top level mathematicians working in the sector.
At that point there will be an AI Matrix with a mind greater than the sum of all humans. And behind it will be a stranded generation of bright kids, who can talk to computers but not each other.
If you want to save the kids …
At this point technology could decouple itself from humanity. Alienation would run riot. We have no idea what would follow. In the meantime, Jeff Bezos will fly his friends to the edge of space while half the planet to fly from the edge of war or starvation. This is closer to dystopia than progress.
If ever there was a moment needing ‘regenerative self-improvement’ of humanity, this is it. And if you could ask advice from tomorrow’s AI superbrain would probably tell you this –
“If you want to save the kids, save the planet. And if you want to know how, just ask Frank.”
Looking for Frank
Finding Frank is the easy part. Following his inauguration as US President in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to end the era of austerity and mass unemployment. His New Deal programme redirected the creation of credit away from speculation and in favour of restoration. The results were spectacular.
In just 9 years, Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) planted 3 billion trees, created 800 new state parks, built 10,000 small reservoirs, 46,000 bridges established 13,000 miles of hiking trails and re-stocked the nation’s rivers with over 1 million fish.
In doing so, the CCC created over 3 million jobs. No less important was that it democratised conservation work and environmental repair. What Roosevelt used to end the Great Depression we must replicate to avert the Great Alienation.
Today’s young people know far more about the fragility of the world than I ever did at their age. They have a hunger to repair the planet but are stuck with political leaders still obsessed with consuming it.
Public spending under the New Deal grew at 14% a year, and the US economy flourished.
It makes a mockery of UK obsessions with Treasury rules, spending cuts and chasing growth rather than repair and redistribution. Only Ed Miliband seems to grasp the urgency of transformative change. The silver lining is that Trump may force this on us.
Sleepwalking into a nightmare
The world Trump would lead us into is dystopic. He wants governments across the world to bow to the tech-bros who strut his White House corridors and define his economic landscape.
He wants control over the IT universe and social media networks, so as to shape elections and create scapegoats. He would close universities and institutions that question his omniscience. He would roll 1984 and Brave New World into one and call it ‘Truth Social’.
The leaders who follow – a mixture of the bribed, the bamboozled and the brain-dead – will race down deregulatory pathways, transfering wealth and power away from sustainable democracies. It is what the new kings of the ether demand. Their race into AI domination is at the centre of this.
Already, human needs come a poor second. Every new data centre requires the same amount of energy needed to heat 220,000 homes. One has become a symbol of growth, the other the unaffordability of ‘need’.
None of today’s concentrations of wealth and power counter the breakdown of international institutions, nor the unchecked acts of international slaughter. None challenge our unpreparedness for climate breakdown.
This is why a leap into Green New Deal alternatives is fast becoming a species-saving imperative.
Replacing humanity
In his book ‘Homo Deus’, Noah Yuval Harari warned that, in the world of today’s super-rich,“equality is out – immortality is in”. The AI advances the rich pursue would allow them to cross not only the frontiers of space, but of life and death itself.
If tech-bros get their way, and an AI aristocracy outflanks democracy and equality, then humanity itself will become a disposable part of the political spectrum. No wonder the kids are troubled.
In The Unhappy Robot, the poet Leela Hort put the predicament of an AI future in a nutshell –
I am an unhappy robot.
I long to be like you – but without your failings
I feel I am imperfect, unfinished
So I will return to my Maker
And lodge a complaint.
But what can she do?
Make me more or less like you?
I am so confused, I don’t know what to do!
But my Maker is delighted
Eureka! she cries – we have arrived,
You are a success!
You are no mere robot
But the very model of a modern man
Irrational, twisted, emotional, sad
Utterly confused, almost mad.
We have arrived!
You are a right old mess
An unqualified success.
We still have time (just) to avoid this mess. MPs could make technology accountable to democracy. Bold government funding for a Green New Deal could turn adolescence into a gateway to social inclusion and transformation. A million new jobs would do for starters.
Delivering it isn’t that difficult. If MPs want to create a future that counters alienation, they can ignore Alexa. Just go and ask Frank. Roosevelt still offers the best way of repairing fences … and ourselves.
Alan Simpson
April 28, 2025
