Cyber meltdown highlights the breakdown of the social contract

Like many, I have been trying to understand the recent tectonic shifting of political alignments.

How did hitherto business-supporting conservative political parties become not only champions of the working class but that the working class is increasingly supporting them? Donald Trump's realigned Republican Party in the US and the Coalition in Australia are good examples.

More of the cyber meltdown anon.

But first, forget the traditional splits of capital vs. labour, conservative vs. progressive, right vs. left and the parties that for decades have been identified with each side. We need to take a longer historical view. Much longer.

After the horrors of World War I, governments pledged it would be "the war to end all wars" and they would make it a "world fit for heroes".

A decade and a bit later, the Great Depression hit. The heroes became destitute, and the masses fell for populism and fascism in the defeated nations, leading to World War II. As it ended the victorious allies learned the lesson. They helped the defeated nations rebuild and set up the welfare state or versions of it. The role of governments was to ensure people could lead decent lives and not be victims of the heartless and unbridled capitalism that caused the Depression.

It worked well for more than 30 years. In the developed world, governments ensured people were housed, employed in good conditions, fed, clothed, educated and given health and aged care. It made people feel secure.

Even externally, mutually assured destruction (MAD) and various nuclear treaties gave rise to some sort of stability and security.

Then from the late 1970s, the welfare contract began to break down. In the name of economic efficiency and prosperity, bloated public sectors were dismantled with the weapons of economic rationalism: deregulation of capital and labour, privatisation, tax-slashing, government-spending cuts, and tariff removal.

These things were worth doing. They made economies more efficient and increased total wealth. But the wealth was not fairly spread.

Many people and classes of people, particularly youth, went backwards, not just economically. They lost access to many things which all added up to one thing - loss of security. The loss of security got worse and worse. In Australia this was especially true after the mid-1990s.

The erosion of affordable quality health care, housing and education and the loss of job security has alienated many people from society.

As conservative governments privatised, deregulated and cut taxes, so-called progressive governments did precious little to protect those elements of the welfare state that enhanced security while retaining the benefits of economic rationalism.

From 1990, after a brief period of peace dividend a completely unanticipated cascade of security eroding events occurred: the rise of terror, the global financial crisis, COVID, inflation, the rise of Chinese and Russian aggression, supply-chain shortages, inflation, energy costs, climate change and immigration.

Last Friday's cyber outages just added one more element to the sense of insecurity and loss of control many voters have.

In the new cyber world, corporations have taken outsourcing to the extreme. They have replaced human customer service. Customers now have to do their own customer care through a maze of clicks that frequently lead nowhere. People are worried about the impermanence of data. Many are falling for scams. Social media engenders a further array of fears.

So, the onslaught of security-threatening trends and events mean the old political divides have been replaced with a new political divide: the secure and the insecure.

Wealth and income, of course, define a lot of that fault line. If you have money or are getting regular money, security follows. If you have little money and little or none coming in, insecurity follows unless there is a government safety net. But the safety net is in tatters.

Education is also significant in defining the secure-insecure fault line. Higher levels of education, literacy and numeracy help people better negotiate change and to understand simple solutions do not help in a complex world. Gender, too, helps define the divide.

In Australia, housing has widened the insecure-secure divide. While the wealth of many has shot up with price rises caused mainly by bad policy and the withdrawal of government housing, the position of many others has led to hopelessness and despair.

MORE CRISPIN HULL:

In 1994-95 only 18 per cent of households were privately rented (and they had good prospects of later ownership). Now it is 28 per cent with ownership out of reach for most of them. Social housing has plummeted from more than 10 per cent to about 3 per cent.

Nearly all the Australian rental market is made up of investors with only one or two dwellings and a high turnover rate resulting in evictions. Long-term rental security does not exist in Australia. With little prospect of owning, it adds to alienation.

It may well be a voter's sense of security will be a better guide to voting intention (major, minor or independent) than the hitherto usual markers of parental vote; wage earner or self-employed; age; gender; and so on.

You cannot blame insecure people for turning to charlatans and opportunists whose slogans offer hope and a return to the security of some better earlier time, however obviously delusional they are.

The people to blame are those who could have done more to retain, or return to, a greater role for government in providing the things that add to security and genuine belonging so the artificial sense of belonging and identity offered by cults and charlatans lose their appeal.

While progressive governments fail to provide more of what delivers security, the votes of the insecure will be ripe for the picking.