Utopia For Realist by Rutger Bergman Social Sciences Essay

The main objective in this assignment is to explain and assess Rutger Bregman’s argument for a Universal Basic Income. Your secondary objective is to comment on his wider argument about how social change occurs. The essay should be 4-6 pages in length, with a 12-point font, double-spaced. All citations to Bregman’s text should include a page number. You do not need to include additional sources, though you may choose to do so (including videos or other materials from our classes). Make sure to include a “works cited” with any additional sources.

Chapter 1, The Return of Utopia

Multiple works of medieval literature discuss or reference the utopia of Cockaigne, the 'Land of Plenty' where food was abundant and work was unnecessary. We've made much progress in the past few centuries and specifically the past few decades to eradicate poverty. The amount of people suffering from starvation, disease, and violence has declined so much, our society would seem to have almost reached Cockaigne.

What are utopias? But it is in the nature of utopias that they should never be the end of the journey; upon reaching one utopia there should always be a new one on the horizon in which life is even better for everyone. The aim of this book is to point out elements that could fit such a new utopia.

There are two kinds of utopia. The blueprint consists of "immutable rules that tolerate no dissension" (p. 12) and which frequently dissolves into fascist dystopia. Then there is more abstract ideal, which criticises the status quo as much as it suggests ways forward. "Utopias offer no ready-made answers, let alone solutions. But they do ask the right questions" (p. 14).

Why utopias? But we seem to have stopped dreaming of a better world, while living in one where even teaching and healthcare resembles factory work more and more, and where societal problems are blamed on the individual. Our lives are objectively better than they used to be, but that doesn't meant they are as good as they can be.

"It is capitalism that opened the gates to the Land of Plenty, but capitalism alone cannot sustain it. Progress has become synonymous with economic prosperity, but the twenty-first century will challenge us to find other ways of boosting our quality of life. And while young people in the West have largely come of age in an apolitical technocracy, we will have to return to politics again to find a new utopia." (p. 19)

A lot of people are unhappy with the current sate of the world, and that's a positive sign. But we have to bring back utopian thinking so we can move our society forward. "True progress begins with something no knowledge economy can produce: wisdom about what it means to live well" (p. 19).

Chapter 2, Why We Should Give Free Money to Everyone

The prevailing sentiment in the 'Western World' is that poor people are poor because they are bad with money. This is why there are so many bureaucratic government organisations for 'assistance' to poor people. But it turns out that giving poor people cash works better. Researchers at the University of Manchester analysed studies on a multitude of cash transfer programs and concluded that "(1) households put the money to good use, (2) poverty declines, (3) there can be diverse long-term benefits for income, health, and tax revenues, and (4) the programs cost less than the alternatives" (p. 30).

Poor people know what they need far better than the people running the - often ineffective- programs, even when the recipients are alcoholics, addicts, or criminals (p. 32). There is no proof that handouts make people lazy, in fact, they tend to work harder.

Universal Basic Income This brings us to the Universal Basic Income, (UBI): stipend given to everyone, without terms or conditions. The idea is quite old, and is even in the Declaration of Human Rights (article 25).

The largest Basic Income experiment in the world was started in the town of Dauphin in Canada in 1973. All the inhabitants earning under the poverty line were given money. The new and conservative government ended the program without analysing the data, but recent analysis proves it was an all-round success, with fewer hospitalisations and mental health problems in particular.

The US had four Basic Income projects that yielded similar results, which led president Nixon to try and implement a Basic Income plan. While it was initially stalled by disagreements in the senate, it was eventually shelved entirely, because analysis of the final experiment had indicated a 50% increase in divorce. That later turned out to be an error, and the divorce rate had not changed at all. More on Nixon's plan and why it failed in chapter 4.

UBI as a utopia "Utopias are initially attacked on three arguments: Futility (it's not possible), danger (the risks are too great), and perversity (it will degenerate into dystopia)" (p. 42). People say UBI is futile: we cannot afford it. But UBI would reduce the need for a lot of bureaucracy, since the start of this chapter shows how money is the best investment in the poor.

People say UBI is dangerous: nobody will work at all. But there is no evidence to back this up, in fact all studies point to the opposite, that most people want to work. UBI would give them the freedom to find a job that is suited to their temperament, and not just be a wage-slave.

There are few systems as perverse as the hoops and limitations of welfare. A UBI would be more egalitarian, more efficient, and more humane.

Chapter 3, The End of Poverty

The opening of a new casino owned by Cherokee Indians in North Carolina in 1997 provided a great research data of the effects of poverty reduction. The research showed staggering reductions in behavioural problems, crime, and the use of drugs and alcohol. School performance improved significantly, as did mental health. It was concluded that "the stress of poverty puts people genetically predisposed to develop and illness or disorder at an elevated risk. . . . Genes can't be undone. Poverty can" (p. 54).

Why poor people do dumb things The perception of scarcity, the feeling that some resource is limited, has a measurable effect on the mind. It leads to improved problem solving in the short-term, but neglect of long-term issues. Continual feelings of scarcity take up 'mental bandwidth' that can't be used to make bigger-picture decisions. For a poor person, even the thought of "a major financial setback impaired their cognitive ability" (p. 58.). Research among seasonal farmers showed that this holds true even when the rich and poor test subjects are literally the same people.

The cost of poverty The research with the previously mentioned casino found out that in the greater picture, "eliminating poverty actually generated more money than the total of all casino payments through reductions in crime, use of care facilities, and repetitions of school grades" (p.60). Other research reinforces the conclusion that eliminating poverty actually saves money.

Research also shows that 'education programmes' for the poor cost far more than they actually benefit their audience. And on top of that, navigating the bureaucracy of the welfare system takes so much mental bandwidth that many deserving people never even get helped.

The curse of inequality Scarcity has been proven to be a relative concept, which means that societies with greater inequality lead to a greater scarcity mindset. "Because it's all about relative poverty" (p. 65). GDP reflects the welfare of a nation only up to about $5000, above that inequality is a far more accurate marker for the rates of depression, drug abuse, obesity, etc. The "'psychosocial consequences' are such that people living in unequal societies spend more time worrying about how others see them" (p. 66). Even the rich are less happy in very unequal societies.

Fighting poverty is good for our wallets "Poverty in not a lack of character, it's a lack of cash" (p. 69). As the Cherokee casino showed, a influx of money to the poor actually saves money elsewhere. Similarly, when Utah solved homelessness by giving the homeless free housing it actually saved the state money compared to simply 'managing' homelessness like before. Similar projects in several cities in the Netherlands saw the same result, until the financial crash of 2008 caused the numbers of homeless to skyrocket. Yet even then every euro invested more than doubled itself in savings elsewhere.

"[I]n Europe, the number of vacant houses is double the number of homeless. In the U.S., there are five empty homes for each person without one". (p. 73). Homelessness should not be a partisan issue, because it can not only be solved, but it literally costs more money not to solve it.

Chapter 4, The Bizarre Tale of President Nixon and His Basic Income Bill

"The past teaches us a simple but crucial lesson: things could be different" (p. 78). While Richard Nixon was planning his version of a UBI, one of his advisors, who rather loved free-market economics and individualism, handed him a report on Speenhamland. This described the result of a form of guaranteed income implemented in England at the turn of the 19th century.

The report was incredibly negative, and led to Nixon describing unemployment as a personal failing and adapting his policy to that sentiment, even though he didn't seem to buy into it himself. "What Nixon failed to foresee was that his rhetoric of fighting laziness among the poor and unemployed would ultimately turn the country against basic income and the welfare state as a whole" (p. 82).

The Speenhamland report In 1795, magistrates from the district of Speenhamland decided to implement a programme of monetary relief to families living below the poverty line. While the initial results seemed hopeful, with revolt averted and hunger decreasing, several influential clergymen, including Thomas Malthus, spoke out against the system. They were convinced the financial aid would make the poor lazy and encourage population growth.

The system was shut down after a revolt in 1830 prompted a massive Royal Commission survey about the system, the report of which listed all the things that the clergy had feared would happen. Even Marx and Engels used it to discredit poor relief, as did many influential thinkers well into the 20th century.

The real Speenhamland But when historians re-examined the data in the 60s and 70s, they discovered that the report was made up of mostly interviews with members of the clergy, who as previously mentioned were rather biased. It has since been concluded that the population boom was due to the increasing demand for child labour in factories, and that the revolt happened because the prices of food kept increasing despite production actually going up. Without the welfare system, the revolt would undoubtedly have happened sooner.

"[B]asic income didn't cause poverty, but was adopted in precisely those districts where suffering was already the most acute" (p. 89). In short, the Speenhamland system had actually been a success. Unfortunately, the perceived failing of the system had led to the adoption of a new Poor Laws, which saw workhouses with family separation, hard physical pointless labour, and the tactical starving of inmates. "[I]t was this spectre of the workhouses that enabled employers to keep the wages so miserably low" (p. 90).

The lessons of history While we now see 'personal responsibility' touted as a resistance to welfare, Nixon's programme could have changed this. It could have put an end to this archaic distinction between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor that prevents us from eliminating poverty. After all, the need to distinguish between these categories is why in "recent decades, our welfare states have come to look increasingly like surveillance states" (p. 95).

"This isn't a war on poverty, it's a war on the poor" (p. 96).

Chapter 5, New Figures for a New Era

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) "is the sum of all goods and services that a country produces, corrected for seasonal fluctuation, inflation, and perhaps purchasing power" (p. 103). But while some countries expanded their GDP to include the less legal markets and products in their countries, vast amounts of labour and valuable commodities still go unappreciated in the GDP.

What you don't see Housework, for instance is unpaid, and there is no monetary value on air quality or volunteer work, despite these things unquestioningly improving life. "The GDP also does a poor job of calculating advances in knowledge" (p. 105), because it only calculates by the price of the produced item and not its capabilities. What's worse, the GDP does not discern between bad positive or negative influences on society. Even the cleaning up of environmental pollution adds to the GDP, after being caused by someone cutting corners and making bank in that way.

Inequality and debt are positive inputs for the GDP, and the proportion of UK banks was sky-high just before the crash of 2008. Since the 1970s, the productivity of banks in terms of their part of GDP was measured by their risk-taking behaviour. In effect, "the more vital your occupation (cleaning, nursing, teaching), the lower you rate in the GDP" (p. 107).

The invention of 'economy' and the GDP Considering how much journalists tend to report on the GDP, it's easy to forget that it is a recent invention. What constitutes a nation's wealth in entirely constructed, and has changed to suit each era, from the harvest yields to the amount of taxes that could be levied, and consequently how long they could wage war. The basis for the GDP was developed in the 1930s in the aftermath of the Great Depression. A few years later, it turned out to be "an excellent yardstick for the power of a nation in times of war" (p. 113).

After the war, the GDP was used "to anchor the consumer society" (p. 114) and economists, most of whom trained in the US, suddenly became very influential in politics the world over. The meaning of the word economy changed to refer to a financial reflection of society rather than society as a whole.

Measuring an idea Very few people actually know how the GDP is measured, since it is an amalgamation of a great many selected data points. But since these points are and, quite frankly, have to be selected from the nigh-infinite possible data points, the GDP is based on ideology. As are all the alternatives that have been proposed. "There is no such thing as a neutral metric. Behind ever statistic is a certain set of assumptions and prejudices" (p. 123). But it is important to chose a metric based on an ideology that accurately reflects the values of the era.

Why we need a new framework The GDP was unquestionably effective in measuring power and progress in war-time. But the focus on growth ignores certain important aspects of life that, "like music, resist all attempts at greater efficiency" (p. 119). Sectors like healthcare and art will never see the growth in efficiency that factories can, and sectors like this are often subsidized by governments of countries that score high on well-being.

Other countries mistakenly believe that it is too expensive or not worth the investment. "When you're obsessed with efficiency and productivity, it's difficult to see the real value of education and care" (p. 120). On the other hand, the prices for many products have dropped too low and in no way reflect the costs they have on society and the environment.

"The inventor of GDP cautioned against including in its calculation expenditure for the military, advertising, and the financial sector, but his advice fell on deaf ears" (p. 123). Now it's high time we figure out where growth actually has value, and what gives life meaning.

Chapter 6, A Fifteen-Hour Workweek

In the year 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that we would be working 15-hour weeks by 2030. Other notable thinkers who anticipated far more leisure were Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill, the latter directly opposing the 'gospel of work' that was common in his day.

The rise of leisure Despite it's rapid increase in the production of goods and wealth, it took until years after the end of the industrial revolution to see improvements in the leisure time of workers. But here are there working days became shorter, workers gained days off, and working weeks became shorter as well. While employers were initially reluctant, multiple studies pointed out that shorter workweeks led to more productive workers. After Henry Ford gave his workers a 5-day work week without any loss of productivity, other companies quickly followed suit.

The decline of leisure In the 60s and 70s, it seemed inevitable that US and other societies would head towards a 14-hour workweek, or even no real workweek at all. But in the 1980s, that idea faded, as "[e]conomic growth was translating not into more leisure, but more consumption" (p. 134). The reduction of the workweek stopped in some countries, and actually reversed in the US. But even in other countries the amount of working hours for families has increased.

When women entered the work-force en masse, that should have lead to a reduction in working hours for men, and a more equitable balance of domestic work. Instead, the total hours of work within a family unit has increased, while the pressures of parenting have also increased. As a result, stress-related health issues are on the rise even in the country with the shortest workweek: The Netherlands. In addition, modern tech has made it harder to distinguish between leisure time and work time.

The bigger picture "Ironically, medieval people were probably closer to achieving the contented idleness of the Land of Plenty than we are today" (p. 138-139) due to the vast amount of feasting days on which nobody was expected to work. They added up to an astounding 4 - 6 months of the year, depending on location.

In more recent years, Kellogg implemented a 6-hour workday which improved productivity and reduced accidents. British Prime Minister Edward Heath implemented a forced 3-day workweek on steel production during a coal shortage, and the sector saw only minor losses, far less than what was predicted.

It just goes to show that "productivity and long workweeks do not go hand in hand" (p. 141).

What does working less actually solve?

• "Stress? Countless studies have shown that people who work less are more satisfied with their lives" (p. 142).

• "Climate Change? A worldwide shift to a shorter workweek could cut the CO2 emitted this century by half" (p. 142).

• "Accidents? . . . Long workdays lead to more errors" (p. 142).

• "Unemployment? . . . [W]ork sharing . . . Went a long way towards resolving the last crisis" (p. 143).

• "Emancipation of women? Countries with short workweeks consistently top gender-equality rankings" (p. 143), especially with regards to childcare. It turns out fathers who get paternity leave put more effort in around the house for the rest of their lives.

• "Aging Population? . . . [S]eniors struggle to get hired" (p. 143), so shorter workweeks can also divide jobs more equally over the age-range.

• "Inequality? The countries with the biggest disparities in wealth are precisely those with the longest workweeks" (p. 143).

A way forward "Even in conditions of slow economic growth, we inhabitants of the land of plenty could work fewer than 15 hours a week by 2050 and earn as much as in 2000" (p. 146). All over the world people long for a shorter workweek, but at the moment it is still cheaper to let one person work overtime due to costs such as health benefits. With the right changes in policy and the right incentives we can re-frame how we look at work and make fewer hours the norm.

As they have in the past, reactions to the proposal to reduce working hours leads some to moralise over a potential epidemic for laziness and boredom. But just as the most industrialised areas saw the steepest rise in alcoholism, the most overworked countries spend the most amount of time in front of the television. With true leisure time, we can do so much more.

Chapter 7, Why it Doesn't Pay to Be a Banker

In February of 1968, the garbagemen of New York went on strike. After 9 days of filth, disparaging portrayals in the media, and the declaration of a state of emergency, the sanitation workers got their way. In May of 1970, the bank workers in all of Ireland went on strike. After 6 months in which not much happened, they went back to work. The Irish had kept a self-made financial system going by the power of local pubs, and the economy had actually grown.

The makers and the movers There are jobs, like garbage collectors, nurses, and teachers, that society simply can't do without. And then there are jobs, like lobbyists, corporate lawyers, and PR managers, that could go disappear with only a limited harmful effect on society, if any. There are jobs that create wealth, and others that "mostly just shift it around" (p. 155).

These can overlap though, as with the banking mentioned earlier. Since the Irish made their own financial system, it's clear that part of banking is actually necessary, but also not that much of since the economy grew without all the professional bankers. Lawyers can be useful, but "the U.S has seventeen times the number of lawyers per capita as Japan" (p. 156), and some of those are exclusively engaged in patent trolling. Unfortunately, many of the best paying jobs are of the moving sort, not the making sort.

The market economy While the agricultural sector has shrunk enormously as a percentage of the overall economy, that does not make food any less necessary. But in a market economy, the increased abundance of food does make it less valuable. Therefore workers in this vital sector are paid less.

The sectors in which wealth is reshuffled are not nearly as approachable as the creating sectors, requiring quite an education. "Making money without creating anything of value is anything but easy," however, "the fact that something is difficult does not automatically make it valuable" (p. 161). The financial sector distributes wealth just as much as the government does, but without accountability. And just because wealth is concentrated somewhere doesn't necessarily mean it is created there.

The wrong mindset "[O]n the one hand, governments cut back on useful jobs in sectors like healthcare, education, and infrastructure - resulting in unemployment - while on the other investing millions in the unemployment industry of training and surveillance whose effectiveness has long been disproven" (p. 166). At the same time, the market is focused only on profit, thereby stifling innovation. Some of the worlds best minds are employed inventing slightly different versions of pharmaceuticals so it can be patented and sold for high prices, instead of inventing actual new medicines.

Teaching the right mindset "Our economy, our taxes, and our universities can all be reinvented to make real innovation and creativity pay off" (p. 168). The easiest place to start would be a small tax on financial transactions, which would curb high frequency trading and would raise funds to be invested in actual welfare.

The next step would be to change the way we approach education. We should stop predicting which jobs we think will be in vogue in a decade, but actually think of and teach values that match the world we want to live in. "If we restructure education along our new ideals, the job market will happily tag along" (p. 172).

After all, "it's not the market that decides what has real value, but society" (p. 172.)

Chapter 8, Race Against the Machine

Wage growth has stagnated in most developed nations, and in the US wages have actually declined. Due to robotization, labour has become less scarce, and it's no longer just physical labour that is being automated.

Progress and declining wages The invention of shipping containers vastly improved our ability to send goods all over the world, and the incredible improvements to the computer chip have done the same for data. But there was an unforeseen consequence to this progress. Until just a few decades ago, economists had seen a constant in the way national income was divided: "two-thirds of a country's income go into the paychecks of laborers, and one-third goes into the pockets of the owners of capital" (p. 182). But the portion for labourers is shrinking.

With technological advancements came globalisation, and suddenly big companies were poised to take over smaller local markets, concentrating the profits in far fewer hands than before. At the same time, the companies also need fewer employees to be successful, "meaning that when a business succeeds, few and fewer people benefit" (p. 185).

The second machine age "Scholars at Oxford University estimate that no less than 47% of all American jobs, and 54% of all those in Europe, are at a high risk of being usurped my machines. And not in a hundred years or so, but in the next twenty" (p. 186). In the first machine age, that started with the use of steam engines, only physical labour was being replaced, and by improving the levels of education for the working classes, we were able to create enough different jobs to not suffer from the takeover.

But this time, machines are also taking over from our mental strength. Starting with basic computation, and reaching the realm of driverless cars by today, whole new sectors of work are set to be dominated by machines, if they aren't already. "Though the share of highly skilled and unskilled jobs has remained fairly stable, work for the average-skilled is on a decline" (p. 191).

"The British economist Guy Standing has predicted the emergence of a new, dangerous 'precariat' - a surging social class of people in low-wage, temporary jobs and with no political voice" (p. 192).

Luddites and the first machine age This type of social group has emerged before, in the first machine age. The Luddites were workers whose jobs were being replaced by machines, and who were facing decreasing wages and increasing unemployment. "Because labor unions were outlawed, the Luddites opted for . . . 'negotiation by riot'" (p. 190). Their rebellion was crushed. And while the job market was able to recover from the first machine takeover, it won't be as easy with the second.

Alternatives While combating unemployment with education was highly effective when large parts of the population were still illiterate, the drive for more college and university education will not be enough this time. We need to find a better way to redistribute wealth, and the market is not going to create it. We will have to disconnect work from survival, and soon.

"[T]he inability to imagine a world in which things are different is evidence only of a poor imagination, not of the impossibility of change" (p. 199).

Chapter 9, Beyond the Gates of the Land of Plenty

When tallied together, developed nations spend over $130 million per year on developmental aid. "Over the past fifty years, that brings us to a grand total of almost $5 trillion. . . the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost about the same" (p. 203). It's still a lot of money, but we actually don't know if that money has been useful. Not only did the World Bank find out that "85 % of all Western aid in the twentieth century was used differently than intended," (p. 204), but until recently there was no research into which types of aid were actually effective.

Control groups and RCTs MIT professor Esther Duflo is one of the first to actually do research into the efficacy of aid programs. The gold standard for testing efficacy, in this field as well as in medicine, is the Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). In an RCT, researchers look at a group receiving the type of aid in question and compare that to a group receiving no aid. "[T]he first RCT of foreign development aid didn't happen until 1998" (p. 207), and it has since turned out many of our intuitions about aid are wrong.

The researchers in this field, nicknamed 'randomistas,' want to take the intuitive thinking out of developmental aid and replace it with actual data. While economists like to work with models of humans that are perfectly rational actors, the randomistas prefer to find out what humans actually do. Of course, not all factors can be measured or tested in an RCT, sometimes due to ethical concerns about withholding aid/treatment. However, since developmental aid is limited, there will always be unfunded areas to compare with.

The bigger picture Of course, there is only so much that developmental aid can do. "Major dilemmas such as how to structure a democracy or what a country needs to prosper can't be answered by an RCT" (p. 213), and we shouldn't lose track of where the biggest gains can be made. "The OECD estimates that poor countries lose three times as much to tax evasion as they receive in foreign aid" (p. 214). But there is an even bigger picture, and an even better way to both tackle poverty and grow the economy of wealthy nations: Open Borders.

Until World War 1, borders were rarely enforced and passports rarely issued. But with the advent of war it became very important to know where someone 'belonged.' "Oddly though, the world is wide open to everything but people" (p. 216), from goods to stocks to information. Multiple studies estimate free travel of labour would lead to a doubling of the worldwide economy.

Inequality "Billions of people are forced to sell their labour at a fraction of the price that they would get for it in the Land of Plenty, all because of borders" (p. 217). On the global scale, inequality is no longer tied to class, but to location. Pay for the exact same work tends to be far lower in developing nations than in developed ones, even when adjusted for purchasing power.

The Fallacies The arguments against increased immigration are rather repetitive, so here's a list with evaluations.

1. They're all terrorists: "Immigration is actually associated with a decline in terrorist acts" (p. 222). 


2. They're all criminals: "If you adjust for sex, age, and income, ethnicity and criminality prove to be unconnected" (p. 223)


3. They will undermine social cohesion: The only study with that result had a massive flaw in its analysis , and when corrected the 'proof' disappeared. Social cohesion is actually undermined by "poverty, unemployment, and discrimination" (p. 225).


4. They'll take our jobs: It wasn't true when they said it about women, and it's not true now. "In fact, [immigrants] create more employment opportunities" (p. 225).


5. Cheap immigrant labour will force our wages down: Research indicates immigration actually leads to a rise in wages. Companies outsourcing labour abroad lowers wages domestically.


6. They're too lazy to work: Immigrants make less use of social services, and countries with better welfare do not attract more immigrants. 


7. They'll never go back: Actually, far more immigrants return when border crossings are easier. In the 1960s, 85% of Mexicans returned, at time of writing it was 7%. 

A better solution to poverty Of course, the United States was built on waves of immigration from countries in turmoil, particularly The Netherlands, Ireland, and Italy, and has grown to be the wealthiest nation. "However disruptive, migration has time and again proven to be one of the most powerful drivers of progress" (p. 229).

Even small steps make a big difference. "If all the developed countries would let in just 3% more immigrants, the world's poor would have $305 billion more to spend, say scientists at the World Bank" (p. 230). That's over double the entire developmental aid budget.

Chapter 10, How Ideas Change the World

Psychologist Leon Festinger had long wondered what would happen "when people experience a severe crisis in their convictions" (p. 234). In 1954, he had the opportunity to observe from the inside how a doomsday cult reacted to their apocalyptic prophecy not coming true. He discovered that "[w]hen reality clashes with our deepest convictions, we'd rather recalibrate reality than amend our worldview. Not only that, we become even more rigid in our beliefs than before" (p. 236). He called this phenomenon 'Cognitive Dissonance.'

While we're pretty comfortable changing our views on practical matters, we are far more attached to "political, ideological, or religious ideas," which affect "our sense of identity and position is social groups" (p. 236). It's important to not, however, that this is not caused by a lack of intelligence. In fact, intelligent people are adept at finding facts that support their beliefs, even in the face of large amounts of evidence.

How ideas change Psychologist Solomon Ashe made two very important discoveries about how we make decisions. Firstly, "group pressure can even cause us to ignore what we can plainly see with our own eyes" (p. 240). This would spell disaster for our hopes of causing meaningful political change, if it weren't for his second discovery: "A single opposing voice can make all the difference" (p. 241). So even if it feels like we are yelling into a void, we need to keep yelling anyway.

The shock doctrine We're used to thinking about change as something that happens gradually over time, but actually "[r]esearch suggests that sudden shocks can work wonders" (p. 239). Change happens in leaps and bounds, not in smooth transitions. Milton Friedman, one of the founding fathers of neoliberal thought, understood this. After WWII, when many developed nations were implementing socialist policies, Friedman and his group of neoliberal economists started planning and widely spreading free-market strategies to implement when the time was right. That occurred with the oil crisis of 1973, and led to the massive repeals of welfare systems under Reagan and Thatcher.

The seeds of change But why didn't great change occur after the banking crisis of 2008? When it seemed that the flaws of the neoliberal system were wide open for all to see, there was only the short occupy movement calling for change. It seems that in the decades in between, people had neglected to make and spread plans beyond the capitalist system. So with no new route to take, economists simply doubled down on the old convictions.

It's about time we start dreaming up and spreading those new ideas, so we can move forward to new horizons. "Ideas, however outrageous, have changed the world, and they will again" (p. 250)

Epilogue

There is a difference between the day-to-day 'politics' of doing what is possible and the revolutionary 'Politics' that makes the impossible real and achieves social change. "Where politics acts to reaffirm the status quo, Politics breaks free" (p. 253).

*The Overton Window * The lawyer Joseph Overton figured out that for political viewpoints to be taken seriously, they have to stay "within the margins of what's acceptable" (p. 254), in the so-called Overton Window. This window is not fixed however, and in recent decades has been moving steadily to the right. "A classic strategy for achieving this is to proclaim ideas so shocking and subversive that anything less radical suddenly sounds sensible" (p. 255).

The current political Left seems to practice 'underdog socialism,' only trying to pull the right from the shocking to the now 'sensible,' and it capitulates to right-wing talking points instead of challenging them. Above all, the underdog socialists are dull. Instead we need to shift the Overton Window to the left, "to make the radical seem reasonable" (p. 257), by clearly stating what the Left is for, not just what it's against.

The language of change "What we need is a narrative that speaks to millions of people. It all starts with reclaiming the language of progress" (p. 258):

• REFORM the financial sector so the costs of a crisis don't fall to the tax-payer, and abolish Tax Havens.

• Install an actual MERITOCRACY in which people are paid in accordance with their value to society (i.e. more for nurses, cleaners, teachers, less for lobbyists, bankers).

• INNOVATE by encouraging work and studies in sectors like science, climate, healthcare, instead of lucrative advertisement work and other exploitative jobs.

• Increase EFFICIENCY by investing in the eradication of poverty, see the triple returns on investments into homeless people.

• Remove the NANNY STATE by reducing all the bureaucracy surrounding welfare assessments and counterproductive job-seeker training.

• And give people FREEDOM by axing bullshit jobs and unproductive work hours, so one of the biggest regrets of the dying is no longer "I wish I didn't work so hard" (p. 258-261).

Don't be silenced The start will be difficult, because the ideas will still seem radical to people: "[M]y so called lack of realism had little to do with actual flaws in my reasoning. Calling my ideas "unrealistic" was simply a shorthand was of saying they didn't fit the status quo. And the best way to shut people up is to make them feel silly" (p. 262).

Final advice: Organise, and build a thick skin. "If we want to change the world, we need to be unrealistic, unreasonable, and impossible" (263-264).