I can't bear to end the year on a negative note, so let's offset the pointlessness that was Radicals Chasing Utopia with Rutger Bregman's infinitely better Utopia For Realists.
This is everything I wanted it to be. Unlike RCU, UFR focuses on the goal, not the people seeking it. It's well-researched, comprehensive yet succinct, immensely readable, highly persuasive, and - perhaps most importantly - focuses on achievable, consistent visions of the future instead of a bunch of random nutters. And unlike the slightly deranged Stephen Pinker, Bregman understands that statistics shouldn't be cherry-picked to reveal whatever you want them to say, and, more importantly, that although progress has indeed been made, there's far more to life than the absolute standards of living conditions.
I don't have any major criticisms of this book. The worst I can say is that at times it feels a little bit like a confused, breathless mess, somewhat underdeveloped and contradictory - but only slightly. For the most part it stays on point, and seems (at least to me) carefully designed to appeal across the political spectrum. Bregman doesn't want to end capitalism or send us all back to living in the trees, but neither does he deny the real problems facing us. He explicitly views Utopian ideology as useful in shaping our behaviour, unlike Pinker who actually inhabits a Utopian fantasy-fallacy land. Overall, I give it a thoroughly excellent 8/10. Maybe 8.5.
Here's my selection of the main take-home messages. For the details, you should buy the book yourself.
Universal Basic Income
If there's a real downside to this book it's that there's nothing much new here, but the countering strength to this is that it's an excellent summary and bibliography. Bregman attacks all the classical arguments against (U)BI in force, especially the idea that free money makes people lazy. He cites study after study after study showing that they do not; the evidence on this point is overwhelming. My suspicion is that maybe extreme wealth can do this*, but at a very much higher threshold than basic subsistence. People fundamentally need more than mere resources to give their lives meaning, but they do need resources to have any prospect of a meaningful life. As he quotes an economist, "You can't pull yourself up by the bootstraps if you have no boots."
* But not necessarily. Whatever you think of Bezos or Musk, they do at least work hard.
The basic premise seems pretty watertight to me. People are generally good at making decisions that directly impact their own lives - it's only when those decisions affect others as well that they come unstuck. Bregman is not at all keen on what he calls the "surveillance state", here not meaning data harvesting but something more akin to the "nanny state" in the worse sense. That is, welfare programs have become highly centralised and bureaucratic. It's not that welfare is inherently bad - far from it, if anything funding needs to be increased - but it does matter how people access it. The left don't believe that money makes people lazy, but they do believe that they know what poor people need best - and which ones deserve it. This means enacting barriers between the deserving and undeserving poor, whereas in Bregman's view there should be no distinction at all : being poor is inherently a bad thing. Better by far to just give everyone money and let them make their own choices. This not only works but slashes masses of red tape and useless government bureaucracy in the process.
(In essence, both left and right have good points here, but the compromise they've reached is an unholy worst of both worlds. Bregman's view is that what's needed is more welfare, not less, but also far less government meddling : more welfare, less state.)
For my part I'm sold on the idea of replacing targeted welfare programs with simple cash handouts*. I'm less sold (meaning still very much open-minded) that we should give money to absolutely everyone, mainly due to how much this might cost. Bregman is far too hand-wavy when it comes to how much getting rid of all this red tape would really save.
* Not all, obviously. Giving people cash doesn't help them if there aren't any hospitals or schools to go to.
The need for greater wealth equality
Or rather, significantly less inequality - I fully agree that total equality is undesirable. Bregman makes a very solid case indeed here for the need to raise everyone out of poverty, and it's here he makes his greatest contribution against Pinkerism. He shows that sheer GDP per capita (that is, absolute standard of living) is a good proxy for the social health of a country but only up to a point. Beyond that, it's inequality that matters. And it's bad for everyone : this stratification of society causing problems for the rich as well as the poor. The root of it seems to be hyper-competitiveness, with everyone worrying more and more about where they are in the pecking order, resulting in more bullying, suspicion, depression, and loneliness. Yes, you need a certain basic standard, but this is a necessity, not a sufficiency : above the threshold very real problems still occur. You can't ignore these on the grounds that no-one is dying of hunger any more, unless you want to add your own pointless ceiling to the human condition.
One of the most interesting observations here is that poverty decreases mental bandwidth. The poor are very, very good at short-term thinking to make ends meet, but they aren't much use at long-term thinking. This is not a cause but a direct consequence of their lack of wealth, with there being measurable differences in IQ of the same people when they're wealthy and when they're less fortunate. Wealth, it seems, has a direct effect on the functioning of the brain.
There are two reasons, then, why targeted programs (like better education) often fail : (1) excessive barriers make them very difficult for struggling people to access them, with the conditions of poverty making this literally too mentally taxing; (2) they tackle the symptoms but not the cause. The solution is blindingly simple : just give everyone more money. They won't become lazy : they'll be far more willing and able to work for themselves.
“Look…how would you make sure everyone in the world was well fed?” she demanded.
“Me? Oh, well, I…” The oh god spluttered for a moment. “I suppose you’d have to think about the prevalent political systems, and the proper division and cultivation of arable land, and—”
“Yes, yes. But he’d just give everyone a good meal,” said Susan.
“Oh, I see. Very impractical. Hah, it’s as silly as saying you could clothe the naked by, well, giving them some clothes.”
—Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Work smarter, not harder
One thing that this book got me thinking about was what a true Utopia would feel like. Never mind the numbers for a moment, people ought to be aware of being in a demi-paradise. And clearly we're not, so we aren't. Happiness, Bregman points out in contrast to Pinker, is not really an accurate indicator of people living meaningful, satisfied lives, and anyway a society that was fully happy would be stagnant and apathetic.
Bregman's vision of a Utopia is one in which we work significantly less (though not never). Leisure, like a money, would be regarded as an essential human right, not something you have to earn. With a twenty-hour work week, people would only need to do meaningful jobs (as opposed to bullshit bureaucracy and the like) and, with a UBI providing most of their necessities, more people could be employed rather than less. This prevents any decrease in company-wide productivity (the total number of hours worked remaining at least constant) whilst ensuring that the wealth is far more evenly and fairly distributed. So long as their basic needs are provided for, says Bregman, it's not unemployment per se that causes social ills (alcoholism, depression, etc.), but the exact opposite : the stress of too much work, not too little. And individual productivity peaks at around six hours per day anyway, with real-world examples showing that exceeding this causes a gain that lasts only a few weeks before burnout starts kicking in.
I'm glossing over a lot of nuances that Bregman does at least acknowledge : that not every job is meaningless or unfulfilling (mine certainly isn't either !), that there is huge individual variation from person to person, and that not every job is better done by splitting tasks amongst more people. But there are a few points here that I'm a bit more skeptical of.
For one, he's rather anti-TV, without giving much of a hint as to what leisure activities he thinks are more appropriate. For another, I'm not sold on the idea that merely changing our educational priorities will guarantee that (say) the next generation will have a huge job market for historians or zoologists; it doesn't follow that the skills we give people will automatically shape market demand. I share the sentiment that we should focus on more on what we want tomorrows' society to be like instead of trying to guess its future needs, but I don't buy the argument that we have such strict control over the future. Nor am I sold on the unavoidability of technologically-induced unemployment; Bregman acknowledges the legion of similar flawed predictions of the past, but fails to draw the lesson that predicting future jobs is very, very hard. And a worrying indication of all these bullshit jobs we do today is that maybe this will continue into the future : unless we're careful, less employment will only lead to more pointless "Hunger Wall" make-work programs.
Conclusion : Politics
These caveats notwithstanding, overall the book is well-informed by philosophy and history. It also reaches across the political divides. While many of the policies will naturally appeal to the left, Bregman cites plenty of examples of how they've been endorsed by the right. Alaska has a UBI (if only a small one), while Utah has a similar program to tackle homelessness. Nixon's failed attempt at UBI can be traced to flawed information on a previous endeavour in 18th-century England rather than (entirely) ideological opposition, with the Democrats ultimately ending what looked like a guaranteed success.
Bregman does an excellent job of reminding us of the need for Utopian thinking, especially in a historical concept. It wasn't that long ago that shorter working weeks and basic income were widely seen not as merely inevitable, but desirable : that work is, essentially, a matter for machines, whereas living is for people. Bregman affords no small measure of blame to the left, not only for the "surveillance state", but also in giving in to certain hard-line factions among the right. Rather than fighting back with their own narrative, he sees the left as now restricting themselves to damage limitation at most. He cites a program of "chastity training" enacted by the Clinton government as being the epitome of the hollowing-out of the welfare state. Personally I found this appraisal of the left and right a much-needed eye-opener.
Bregman contends that one of the root problems is narcissism. The message "you're special" is damaging because everyone innately wants to believe that it's true - which is exactly why it's so dismally successful. The problem is that when things go wrong, this leads people to despair for themselves and to blaming others for problems not of their own making. An especially insidious difficulty is that the real progress that has been made makes it all the easier to fool people that a better life is theirs for the taking, and that it's their fault if they haven't achieved all their goals. And thus we get people saying that people asking for more holidays are "entitled", as though that were somehow a bad thing : you damn well should feel entitled to rest and relaxation, you shouldn't have to work yourself to the bone for a few measly days off each year.
It's time to fight back. Politics, Bregman says, is traditionally the province of progressive left, but the left has become unbearably dull. It doesn't have to be like this, and indeed, until very recently it wasn't. Taking lessons right out of Blair's playbook, he says that the left almost seem to prefer losing to winning over their demonised opponents. Instead of concessions and damage limitation, the left should be arguing more forcefully for their ideals, not less : since you'll usually get less than what you're after, aiming for something ahead of your true goal is just common sense.
Perhaps societies narcissistic tendencies can give us a clue about how to tackle all this. Widespread narcissism is itself, ironically, not the fault of the average man in the street making bad choices, but due to relentless consumerist marketing and political rhetoricians. Before we can conjure grand narratives of more collective responsibility, maybe we should start with this very same simpler, more appealing message : it's not your fault. Yes, you matter, and you're special, but you're not the Chosen One. You don't have magical powers and you can't be expected to win if the odds are so fully stacked against you. With further irony, the way to achieve a better world may be to stop setting unrealistic goals for ourselves - and start setting them for society at large instead.
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