Utopia for Realists
May. 30th, 2025 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacefemI heard an interview in NYT with Rutger Bregman that really got my attention so I wanted to read his books - I started with Utopia for Realists.
In the interview, he was talking about climate change and how we can make the world a better place. He said a lot of people focus on NOT doing things. Don't use plastic, don't buy from bad companies, don't have kids. But using that mentality, you can achieve "net zero at best". The best thing you could really do for the planet is not exist at all. He wants us to have loftier goals. Some of the brightest minds we have are going to top schools, then to technology companies where they figure out how to make people click ads. Is that really what they wanted? We should attract the brightest minds to the puzzle of improving the world. Moral Ambition, he called it. Don't just negate your own bad effects on the climate, subtract MORE. Pick up your trash, AND the litter somebody else left - now you are net positive.
Cool!
So I picked up this 2014 book, he's got more, but here's the gist: Technology and progress have simplified our lives. 70 years ago when we were first getting things like dishwashers, we were really worried that we'd have so much leisure time we'd go crazy! But that is not what happened.
We didn't use progress to shorten our work weeks and make life easier. We used it to over-consume. When jobs were replaced by robots, we got really competitive and divisive about the remaining ones, further dividing the world's wealth and access to opportunity. So let's say we get so good that eventually you only need, like, 30 people to run the robots and the other 8 billion could just hang out. Do we make the 8 billion people starve because they're not working?
We are really stuck in this idea that people who aren't working are flawed and lazy and bad. But he lists several studies where we just gave them money and they thrived. They didn't descend into addiction - in fact the former addicts overcame it with a little help. People in poor villages started businesses, educated their children, lived healthier lives. The poor are experts in what it takes to not be poor. But politically it's a real mess to suggest just giving people money.
He loves shorter work weeks. 40 hours wasn't always a given, at one time people definitely thought we should spend 12x7 in factories, won't kids get into trouble if they're just running around? But Henry Ford thought that if his employees had some spare time, they'd be more productive, more loyal, happier, and they'd buy cars for weekend trips. He was right. And that's why we have it. A big experiment, that worked.
So he's like, why not experiment with a 15 hour work week? And universal basic income, and open borders so you're not predestined to your class by birthright?
I AGREE but I imagined myself explaining this book to my conservative family members - who always told me about how socialists are evil and destroy everything because there's no practical way to make people equal by bringing the bottom up, you can only bring the top down. Lower classes are inevitable, because a lot of people are lazy and need motivation and the thread of death/starvation to do anything. Okay they're not THAT mean about it but - but they really love trickle down economics, despite all evidence.
Maybe the problem is that we've all known some spoiled kid who doesn't want to do the dishes, so we think that's what humans descend to?
We are so scared of people "mooching" we are letting billions of people starve, all the time, every year. He says don't give up on changing it. For our world to survive, we must figure out a distribution system. People do change and come around. Evidence does get shared, eventually, and believed in.
It's a tough year to remember that, isn't it? But I'm trying.
In the interview, he was talking about climate change and how we can make the world a better place. He said a lot of people focus on NOT doing things. Don't use plastic, don't buy from bad companies, don't have kids. But using that mentality, you can achieve "net zero at best". The best thing you could really do for the planet is not exist at all. He wants us to have loftier goals. Some of the brightest minds we have are going to top schools, then to technology companies where they figure out how to make people click ads. Is that really what they wanted? We should attract the brightest minds to the puzzle of improving the world. Moral Ambition, he called it. Don't just negate your own bad effects on the climate, subtract MORE. Pick up your trash, AND the litter somebody else left - now you are net positive.
Cool!
So I picked up this 2014 book, he's got more, but here's the gist: Technology and progress have simplified our lives. 70 years ago when we were first getting things like dishwashers, we were really worried that we'd have so much leisure time we'd go crazy! But that is not what happened.
We didn't use progress to shorten our work weeks and make life easier. We used it to over-consume. When jobs were replaced by robots, we got really competitive and divisive about the remaining ones, further dividing the world's wealth and access to opportunity. So let's say we get so good that eventually you only need, like, 30 people to run the robots and the other 8 billion could just hang out. Do we make the 8 billion people starve because they're not working?
We are really stuck in this idea that people who aren't working are flawed and lazy and bad. But he lists several studies where we just gave them money and they thrived. They didn't descend into addiction - in fact the former addicts overcame it with a little help. People in poor villages started businesses, educated their children, lived healthier lives. The poor are experts in what it takes to not be poor. But politically it's a real mess to suggest just giving people money.
He loves shorter work weeks. 40 hours wasn't always a given, at one time people definitely thought we should spend 12x7 in factories, won't kids get into trouble if they're just running around? But Henry Ford thought that if his employees had some spare time, they'd be more productive, more loyal, happier, and they'd buy cars for weekend trips. He was right. And that's why we have it. A big experiment, that worked.
So he's like, why not experiment with a 15 hour work week? And universal basic income, and open borders so you're not predestined to your class by birthright?
I AGREE but I imagined myself explaining this book to my conservative family members - who always told me about how socialists are evil and destroy everything because there's no practical way to make people equal by bringing the bottom up, you can only bring the top down. Lower classes are inevitable, because a lot of people are lazy and need motivation and the thread of death/starvation to do anything. Okay they're not THAT mean about it but - but they really love trickle down economics, despite all evidence.
Maybe the problem is that we've all known some spoiled kid who doesn't want to do the dishes, so we think that's what humans descend to?
We are so scared of people "mooching" we are letting billions of people starve, all the time, every year. He says don't give up on changing it. For our world to survive, we must figure out a distribution system. People do change and come around. Evidence does get shared, eventually, and believed in.
It's a tough year to remember that, isn't it? But I'm trying.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-30 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-30 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-30 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 02:17 pm (UTC)I also frequently think my aunt gig is better than my mother one. don't get me wrong I love my kids, but people who do not have kids are great.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-30 09:45 pm (UTC)This is environmental eugenics, and I am pretty sure it is frowned upon.
"We are so scared of people 'mooching' we are letting billions of people starve"
Yes, we have people mooching. They are called billionaires. There are people who were just born wealthy, but they are just assumed to have positive attributes like intelligence due to the wealth.
I don't know about open borders. There are some libertarians that say things like "I don't believe in borders." And I don't think that all the implications have been thought through. Like if you have universal basic income and have open borders, do the people who come in qualify? How?
no subject
Date: 2025-05-31 03:42 am (UTC)I feel like the main thing keeping the blue states from becoming more socialistic, is that if the benefits to poor people are very much, it will attract too many poor people from other states, which would seem to become unsustainable.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-31 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-31 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 02:07 pm (UTC)That reminds of me something Peter Shamshiri said in one of his podcasts (either 5-4 or books that kill) "Yes we agree that our country is full of mediocrity. but we think it's at the top."
no subject
Date: 2025-05-31 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 02:05 pm (UTC)But don't get discouraged, keep dreaming, etc. He actually does NOT criticize the desire for endless growth, except to say it should not be measured in GDP. We can have all kinds of growth but it has to be as a whole society, growing competition isn't going to get us utopia.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 09:49 pm (UTC)I don't think most people in our society are capable of thinking of growth in anything other than economic terms unfortunately.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-01 03:08 pm (UTC)