It still exists, the moderately good future.

My father, who is now 70 years old, pointed me to an article the other day that he thought described the world of the “young” well – classified by him as the “problem” of the young: Premium Mediocre. Even if the term is presumably familiar to only a few, almost everyone has already had contact with it. Best translated as premium mediocrity, it describes a phenomenon that became visible, among other things, with the introduction of Premium Economy Class in aeroplanes: After Economy Class seats were made so cramped for efficiency reasons that you can hardly get through a flight without a calf cramp, the legroom that used to be taken for granted is sold as a premium product. At the same time, Premium Economy is a consolation prize for executive (or even normal) employees who are afraid of relegation: you are now Economy, but at least you are right up there.

The term functions like a code that can be used to decode entire sections of the current form production. Premium mediocrity is the A-class Mercedes, which is actually worse than a VW Golf, only more expensive, but which promises those who will never drive a big Benz a share in the realm of premium brands. Premium mediocrity is Easyjet’s speedboarding: you have to go to the low-cost terminal, but there you get to march past the waiting masses onto the plane first. Premium mediocre is the flower pot from Manufactum: you don’t have a country house, but a sinfully expensive pot that would fit perfectly in it. Rao – a blogger I don’t know – sums it up well: premium mediocre is anything that has just enough premium in it not to ruin the inherent mediocrity of the product.

Traditional cultural critics – known in Bavaria as grumblers for short – would now say that in a society that increasingly denies the great mass of its members real opportunities for advancement, distributes wealth ever more unequally and produces an ever greater precariat, premium mediocre “aesthetically” fulfils everything that can no longer be filled politically and economically. The price premium for a dose of premium buys the illusion of being able to have it better one day. Unfortunately, this contradicts the current facts: The Millenials, the children of the Baby Boomers, unlike the latter, cannot afford a fat car and certainly cannot afford to accumulate wealth by buying real estate because the long-term future and personal development perspectives are becoming increasingly difficult to plan. At least that is my perception of younger colleagues (even if I don’t like to be categorised as “old” :-)). Instead, they are sedated with fragments of these upward mobility promises: driving a fast car-sharing BMW when needed and living for a few days in an old palazzo rented via Airbnb. In this sense, sharing culture is premium mediocre at its purest. It is sold as unnecessary and undesirable, which is no longer economically viable. Young people – it is said – no longer need the car as a status symbol. Outside the conurbations, however, they do need it to get to their apprenticeship. This reality is being washed out of sight by the toxic ideological-aesthetic concoction of morality (no status symbol!), ecology and increased efficiency (too many cars standing around!). Why am I writing this? I have not become a Marxist, nor do I want to improve the world, but I find this angle worth looking at. Premium mediocre is, so to speak, a third group between essentialist-nostalgic hipsters looking for authenticity and the profiteers of the new gilded age.

Premium mediocre is therefore much more than an aesthetic immobilisation of people who would have to make political demands for participation. Those who consume premium mediocre are aware of the illusion they are buying. One reason to do it anyway is the desire of Generation Z to spare their parents disappointment, the baby boomer generation that worked hard to make things better for their children. That’s how Rao, a blogger I don’t know, sees it. I see a more successful description in premium mediocre pretending that things are not inexorably going downhill, but that the best of all tech worlds, the moment when everyone’s money multiplies and everyone drives a Tesla, is still conceivable. But beyond comforting bluffs for the parents, what is positive about the premium mediocre? For example, the aura of exclusivity without actually being exclusive, without excluding anyone. Of all things, the demand for a good life lives on in the dubiousness of premium mediocre with lifestyle floor vases. And so premium mediocre can be the last effective weapon against the division of society into a megaprecariat and an upper class profiting from automation and robotisation on an unprecedented scale, which now only knows two groups – those who tell the robots what to do and those to whom the robots tell them what to do. Even if a negative aftertaste remains, I see this as a conciliatory hope for the future of the young……