When We Need Hope
Economy, Despair, and the Shape of Power
(A New Zealanders Perspective)
For decades we have been told that if the economy is strong, society will be well. Growth would lift all boats. Markets would reward effort. Prosperity would eventually spread outward. And if discomfort appeared along the way, it was framed as temporary, unfortunate, or necessary.
But something no longer fits.
Across much of the Western world, economic indicators often look healthy while people feel increasingly anxious, indebted, and exhausted. Housing has become out of reach for many. Two incomes are now required where one once sufficed. Younger generations struggle to imagine a future that feels secure, let alone hopeful. Beneath these material pressures lies something deeper and more dangerous: the quiet erosion of hope.
This reflection explores a question rarely named directly:
What happens to societies when hope collapses, and why does despair so often open the door to authoritarian power?
The economy as numbers, and the economy as life
When public figures speak of a “strong economy,” it is worth pausing to ask: strong for whom?
In elite and technocratic settings, the economy is usually measured through abstraction - GDP growth, share market performance, corporate profits, asset appreciation. By these measures, an economy can appear successful even as everyday life becomes more precarious.
Rising house prices may signal prosperity to asset holders while representing permanent exclusion to those locked out. Market volatility may be manageable for investors while instability becomes existential for households already stretched.
This helps explain why figures such as John Key (former Prime Minister of NZ) have at times spoken positively about the economic performance of Donald Trump. Within a market-first worldview, policies that stimulate capital returns and deregulate markets can look “successful,” particularly for those who already hold assets.
The problem is not that this view is entirely wrong. It is that it is profoundly incomplete.
An economy is not simply a market system.
It is a human system.
Hope as an economic force
Long before money moves, people decide whether the future is worth investing in.
Hope shapes fundamental questions:
Is effort worth it?
Will my children be better off than I am?
Can I imagine stability in this place?
Does participation lead anywhere meaningful?
These are not sentimental concerns. They are structural.
Even traditional economics recognized this intuitively. John Maynard Keynes spoke of “animal spirits” - the confidence, imagination, and courage that drive investment and innovation. Economies do not run on calculation alone. They run on belief in the future.
When hope is present, people plan long-term, invest in skills, form families, build institutions, and take creative risks.
When hope fades, behaviour shifts just as reliably. People withdraw, hoard, delay adulthood, disengage from civic life, or burn with resentment.
Markets tend to notice this late. By then, the damage is already deep.
Hope may not appear on balance sheets, but it is economic infrastructure.
Young people as the clearest signal
Young people are the most honest indicator of an economy’s health.
When the future feels open, they lean in.
When it feels rigged, they pull back.
Delayed home ownership, rising debt, declining birth rates, mental health distress, and deep scepticism toward institutions are not signs of laziness or moral failure. They are signs of rational despair.
An economy that requires lifelong debt to participate, permanent insecurity to survive, and constant anxiety as normal is not efficient.
It is extractive.
And extractive systems eventually produce backlash.
Despair and the appeal of authoritarian power
This is where economics quietly becomes political.
Despair does more than sadden people. It alters how the nervous system processes reality. When survival feels threatened, the psyche shifts from complexity to certainty, from dialogue to dominance. Nuance feels exhausting. Process feels indulgent. Democratic patience feels like weakness.
Democracy, at its best, rests on a fragile but vital assumption: that tomorrow can be better than today, and that participation matters even when outcomes are uncertain.
When hope collapses, those assumptions fracture.
Authoritarian politics thrives in that vacuum. It offers certainty instead of nuance, speed instead of deliberation, enemies instead of explanation, and strength instead of solidarity. This is not stupidity. It is trauma logic.
And yet, something important is worth noticing.
Despair only has power where people still care about what has been lost. The intensity of the longing tells us that the human appetite for dignity, belonging, and meaning has not disappeared. It has been frustrated.
Pain that cannot be healed will be weaponized.
Pain that is recognized can begin to loosen its grip.
Why authoritarianism can feel like hope
Figures such as Trump do not gain traction because of coherent policy or moral depth. They succeed because they are emotionally efficient in hopeless systems.
They name enemies.
They promise restoration.
They bypass complexity.
They project certainty.
To someone who feels ignored, humiliated, or dismissed by elites, this can feel like rescue - even when it is exploitation.
Authoritarian leaders do not create despair.
They harvest it.
But harvesting is not the same as generating life.
Authoritarian power feeds on isolation and fear. It struggles wherever people reconnect, speak honestly without hatred, and rediscover shared responsibility. Its strength depends on the belief that nothing else is possible.
The moment that belief weakens, even slightly, its grip loosens.
A different posture of leadership
This is where the contrast with Jacinda Ardern (former Prime Minister of NZ) becomes instructive.
Her leadership was not radical because of ideology, but because of orientation. She treated hope, dignity, and social trust as public goods, not sentimental extras to be indulged when times were easy.
She suggested that kindness belongs in power, that suffering should be named rather than managed away, that complexity is not weakness, and that leadership is relational before it is transactional.
That posture quietly disrupted a worldview that treats human cost as collateral damage. It also explains the intensity of the backlash against her. Hope interrupts the despair-to-authoritarian pipeline - and systems built on fear tend to resist that interruption.
Yet the significance of such leadership is not that it offers guarantees.
It offers orientation.
It reminds people that the future remains open.
A quieter ground for hope
There is a simple diagnostic that cuts through economic rhetoric:
Do most people believe their children will live better than they do?
If the answer is no, then the economy, however strong it appears on paper, is already under strain. Something essential has been neglected.
Markets may ignore this question.
History never does.
But history also shows that societies are not renewed by certainty alone. They are renewed when people begin, often quietly, to act as if the future still matters.
If this reflection feels heavy, it is because it tells the truth about where many people are standing. Naming despair is not surrender. It is often the first act of hope.
Hope does not begin when systems are fixed or outcomes are guaranteed. It begins when people remember that the future is not yet closed.
Across communities and ordinary lives, people are rediscovering what no market can manufacture and no strongman can command: the power of attention, the dignity of care, the courage of presence, and the strength of shared responsibility.
These movements rarely make headlines. But they are real.
Hope does not deny the cracks.
It invites honesty about them.
And in that honesty, something shifts. People listen more deeply. Leaders are held to account without hatred. Communities rediscover the strength of small faithfulness.
If hope feels fragile right now, it may be because it is becoming more honest.
And honest hope - grounded, patient, and shared - has always been enough to begin again.
Bruce & Sue Reflect
Bruce:
Yeah… I reckon what stood out for me is that line about the economy growing while people are shrinking inside themselves. You don’t need a spreadsheet to see that. You just need to listen to a few ordinary conversations.
Sue:
Exactly. You can feel it in the tiredness. In how careful people have become. It’s not that they’ve stopped caring - it’s that caring feels risky when the ground keeps shifting.
Bruce:
And when life feels like that for long enough, you start wanting someone to just take charge. Make it simple. Point the finger somewhere else.
Sue:
Which is why hope matters so much. Not the loud, promise-everything kind - but the quieter kind that says, “You still matter. The future isn’t closed. We can keep choosing how we live.”
Bruce:
Yeah. Hope as something practical. Like decent housing. Fair go stuff. Feeling like your effort isn’t a mug’s game.
Sue:
And dignity. Being seen. Being listened to without being shouted down or sorted into teams.