Utopia for Realists

Pick it up: If you're interested in the intersection of technology and the economy, if you'd like to read about a range of well thought out, if sometimes optimistic solutions to our current problems,  if you'd like a positive, but realistic vision of the future.

This is a book about the future, about the possibility of building a society that is just and fair, where hunger and scarcity are a thing of the past, where education, healthcare and a fair wage are fundamental rights, where work-life balance is not something anyone has to struggle to achieve...the author clearly means it when he calls it a utopia.

This is not a new ideal. The notion of a utopian society has been around for a long time. And it has always sounded a bit pie-in-the-sky and overly optimistic. What makes this book different is that Bregman brings facts and figures, existing technologies as well as developing ones together with ideas and  policy initiatives that  have been tried very successfully, even if only on a small scale, and he presents workable solutions.

He begins by laying out how far humanity has come over the centuries and argues that despite the seemingly intractable problems that we face today, there are reasons for hope.

He writes about the future, about the many ways in which automation will change the nature of work, the necessity and desirability of a shorter work week, and the need for some form of universal basic income. He writes about the transformation in green energy technologies with solar and wind becoming more and more affordable, while batteries get more and more efficient.

He  goes beyond the traditional left/right, liberal/conservative divide in economic policy and shows what needs to be done given all the changes that are coming in the next few decades. The realism part of the title comes from the fact that all of the solutions he presents are workable, they can all be implemented, maybe not everywhere, and maybe not all at once, but incremental progress is progress too.

This is an optimistic, thoughtful, well-researched and very well written book that will make you think and give you plenty of reasons to hope.