[mdp2021]

An elephant in the room is worth noting: democracies were built to avoid dystopias, yet there are growing trends of "it is better to leave" in long established democracies - "Contact your representative then" increasingly seems to no longer be an established, working idea.

Several factors may accompany this phenomenon: polarization; perceived failures in education¹; sometimes anti-centrism in the government; political (the purpose of the party) and societal (the affiliation of the citizen with peers) crisis of identity...

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¹and Canada is the Country which promotes the relevant OECD studies

[inglor_cz]

The path of least resistance in 2021 is different from that of 1951.

It is much cheaper now to move to another country and you can stay in frequent online contact with your kin. Back then, only serious oppression or poverty would force people to emigrate. If the problems were more tractable, people stayed and attempted to solve them in situ

[mdp2021]

Yes, but unfortunately, this "impotence option" means the relevant problems will get increasingly radicated.

Some of us are "on the run" in the hope for a better society like nomads looking for natural resources, while civilization was meant to be engineering a solution space in a collective plan, building, not staying someplace until it is spoilt.

It is a huge failure if the terms and conditions of the social contract have come to include «[practically] intractable problems».

[inglor_cz]

You are probably right.

For example, within the EU, there is free movement of people and workforce, which sucks out the best and the most talented people from the peripheries like Andalusia or Bulgaria and lands them in the very prosperous regions of the north-west where they can find good and well-paying jobs.

This is a major problem that cannot be solved by spending extra money on building infrastructure in the peripheries. Infrastructure is fine, but a new highway won't heal anyone's cancer. Lack of doctors and engineers cannot be easily countered with development projects that tend to be mired in corruption.

Not even immigration can help that, because highly qualified immigrants won't stay in the periphery, and unqualified immigrants cannot provide the necessary work.

[zo1]

Could also be the absolute futility that "contact your representative" represents now? I think more and more people are realizing that change can't happen that way anymore, particularly as you can't even organize grass roots movements without media and social-media approval these days. The only things that can get critical mass now to enact change from a citizen perspective are popular causes that are essentially "approved". Good to guard against bad movements like say commies or nazis, but absolutely horrible for popular but "not in the right direction" movements.