I read the op-ed everyone seems to be talking about, the one lamenting a generational collapse, calling out boomers, and declaring that Gen Z has tuned out, opted out, and seen through the system. The piece resonated widely, perhaps because it articulated a frustration many millennials carry: the sense of living in an economy that offers diminishing returns, shrinking mobility, and little reassurance about the future.
That frustration is real. But frustration, no matter how eloquently expressed, is not analysis.
The article insists that “we don’t have libraries.” We do. Public libraries, university libraries, and institutional archives exist across the country. They are underfunded and poorly maintained, yes! But they are also largely empty. The problem is not access; it is engagement. Political and economic understanding today is shaped less by books and more by social media platforms where every Dick, Tom, and Harry becomes an authority, nuance is penalised, and outrage is rewarded. In such an environment, certainty often travels faster than truth.
This matters because criticism without intellectual grounding becomes performance rather than reform.
The piece portrays Gen Z as uniquely perceptive, able to “see through the façade.” Yet it relies on the same reductionism it condemns. Firewalls are framed purely as authoritarian tools, ignoring that digital regulation exists even in mature democracies. Restrictions on freelancing are dismissed as generational hostility, without acknowledging legitimate policy concerns: undocumented income, tax evasion, and capital flight, issues that first-world economies regulate aggressively.
Which brings us to a striking omission in the original argument: taxation.
A state cannot function on outrage alone, just as a generation cannot inherit a future by opting out of every imperfect system.
States do not deliver public services because they are virtuous. They do so because citizens participate in the fiscal system and then demand accountability. Libraries, public transport, healthcare, and education are funded outcomes, not moral gestures. In Pakistan, the informal economy is often romanticised as resistance. Freelancers underreport, professionals evade, retail thrives on cash, yet expectations of state facilitation remain uncompromising.
A social contract cannot survive when participation is selective.
Yes, corruption corrodes trust. Yes, governance failures have hollowed out credibility. But declaring the entire system irredeemable is not resistance; it is retreat. Memes do not build institutions. Exit strategies do not reform states. Silence abroad has never pressured power at home.
The generational divide presented in the essay is too neat. Boomers are cast as villains; Gen Z as enlightened victims. Reality is less cinematic. Many in power today were once dissenters themselves, co-opted, compromised, or constrained by the system they now oversee. Others have worked diligently within it, chipping away at flaws rather than dismissing it wholesale. Similarly, many young people are not plotting exits or revolutions; they are navigating survival quietly, adapting within constraints rather than shouting at them. Critique is most effective when paired with recognition of complexity and of effort.
None of this dismisses the writer’s anger. The economy is unforgiving. The future feels deferred. Patriotism cannot be demanded when dignity is conditional.
But critique must evolve into coherence.
Firewalls, censorship, and economic controls deserve scrutiny. So do intellectual shortcuts, tax avoidance, and the belief that identifying failures absolves one from participating in repair. A state cannot function on outrage alone, just as a generation cannot inherit a future by opting out of every imperfect system.
Anger is a starting point.
Not a policy framework.
If the original piece has succeeded in anything, it has forced a conversation. The next step is to ensure that the conversation moves beyond volume, towards responsibility, literacy, and the difficult work of rebuilding what anger alone cannot replace.
The writer is a freelance columnist.