Democracy is dying. Not with a bang, but with a committee meeting. And the professions meant to serve us — law, journalism, economics, the civil service — have quietly stopped serving us as they focus on serving themselves.
Progress has a hidden cost. Every scientific advance demands more specialisation to manage it. Every specialisation makes us stranger to each other. The heart surgeon cannot audit the software engineer. The voter cannot audit the central banker. Adam Smith thought the division of labour would make us richer. It did. He didn’t mention it would also make us mutually unintelligible — a people that share a passport but no longer a picture of reality.
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