Book: Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

A good book that I will recommend to many people. I was between 4 and 5 stars for this one and decided to go with 4. If there was a 4.5, I would totally go for it.

I don’t agree with all the ideas presented here but I enjoyed thinking about them and seeing some different perspectives on them.

There’s one sentence in this book that I’m saying to some friends for a while: “If you don’t like the way the world is going, realize that there are many people out there thinking just like you. Turn down the TV, look around, and organize”. The current state of many people is to read the news and TV and complain about social media. For some unknown reason, this is how they think they are going to do some change. 🤷‍♂

I would recommend this book to everyone who wants to rethink how the world is going and what it may be. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to happen or not, but you will have a taste of different arguments about that.

Here are my raw notes about the book:

  • 6 billion of the world’s 7 billion population has a cellphone. Just 4.5 billion have a toilet — 💭 WAT
  • The advertisement makes us spend the money we don’t have, on junk we don’t need, to impress people we can’t stand
  • With the high cost of health care, the life expectancy for many is going down
  • The market provides us with food full of sugar and fat that our health tends to go down
  • The current generation grew listening to: “You can do whatever you want, you’re special.”
  • Money empowers people and gives them choices
  • The only reason why people are poor is that they don’t have enough money. Studies show that when you give money, no strings attached, they mostly prosper
  • When poor people receive money, no strings attached, they tend to work harder
  • The basic income experiment in Canada was shut down after four years, and the data for the experiment was not analyzed. The data was somehow realized many years ago, and the results show it may have been a success
  • Not long ago, democracy seemed to be a utopia
  • A policy for the poor (only) is a poor policy
  • It seems people are more open to solidarity if it benefits them personally — 💭 it reminds me of how the USA let you deduct donations from your taxes
  • If a basic income is proposed for everyone instead of just the poor, it would probably be more accepted
  • Of course, some people will want to work less, but there’s overwhelming Evidence suggesting the majority of people want to work, whether they need to or not. Not having a job makes us deeply unhappy
  • Artists may stop doing paid work altogether
  • Basic income will allow the poor to look for jobs where they can learn and grow since the basic will be covered — 💭 what is going to happen to mechanical jobs that (not only the poor) people do? Automation, maybe?
  • Psychology of scarcity. Why the poor make so many bad choices?
  • Investments in education will only help a lot of children when they leave the poverty line
  • Poverty annihilates the future. All that matters is here and now
  • It doesn’t matter if there are ten candidates for every job; the problem is always considered to be with the supply, not the demand. The candidate needs to be better
  • Social services expect people to show their shortcomings instead of their strengths, or they may have their benefits cut. It helps to keep people trapped in poverty
  • The GDP is blind to many things. One good example is technology advancement
  • GDP also benefits from wars, drug abuse, gambling, environmental pollution
  • As the writer, Kevin kelly says: Productivity is for robots. Humans excel at wasting time experimenting and creating
  • Found our political system based on productivity figures is to turn the good life into a spreadsheet
  • Boredom may be one of the biggest problems of the future when we start to have less and less work to do — 💭 I’m not sure about that. I expect to have much more creative things popping out as work
  • Our ancestors were not richer but certainly had more leisure
  • What once was categorized as leisure is work today (art, sport, care, etc.).
  • We are not against the workweek; the idea is that the poor (and others) will be able to do more meaningful work
  • When people with a reasonable salary are offered if they want to double the salary or have more time off, they opt for the time off
  • Work is the refuge of people that have nothing better to do — 💭 I’m not sure if I agree with that. Work is awesome; you just have to find the work you love
  • The richer we get, the expendable we become since we don’t contribute with tangible things to society
  • Banks need people much more than people need banks
  • Studies show that countries with more managers are less productive — 💭 what a surprise! LOL
  • Half of the managers interviewed in a research say their work is meaningless and many of them don’t feel connected with the company mission
  • Higher taxes will get more people to do useful work. Just tax people who have a lot of money and are not contributing with tangible things to the society (example: transaction fee for high-frequency trading). It would not give us all a big share of the pie; it would also make the whole pie to grow bigger as those people would go out to become teachers and engineers
  • Higher taxes will reallocate people to professions that bring something useful for the society (to do useful work) — 💭 how useful is HFT? I just realized it’s useless :(
  • Instead of thinking about what we need to make a living in a bullshit job in the future, we should think about what skill we WANT to have to make a living
  • If we start to shape our education to what we want the market will adapt — 💭 I do not buy that. There a (big IMO) chance that we will have a lot of people that will not be able to do something useful and places needing people to do useful work but not having qualified people
  • In the future, we will have two individuals per company: a man and a dog. The man to feed the dog and the dog to not let the man touch the equipment. — 💭 LOL
  • Progressive tax based on income would make more equity. We have to save capitalism from capitalists
  • The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed
  • Borders are discriminatory.
  • In the past, when the border with Mexico and the USA were not so closed, around 80% of Mexicans came back home after tome time. Now that the US spends a lot of money to guard the borders, not so many Mexicans that enter the country come back, as it’s hard to go through the border
  • We tend to seek information that confirms what we currently believe
  • People are most likely to change their ideas if y;u confront them with disagreeable points as direct as possible
  • We usually don’t vote for ourselves only, but for the group, we want to belong to — 💭 of course, we are not considering the fact where politicians pay people to vote for them…
  • What is the value of free speech when you don’t have anything valuable to say anymore?
  • Basic income, world without borders, 15 hours workweek. How much longer?
  • Ideas however outrageous have changed the world and it will again
  • One strategy to make things lets radical reasonable is to say things that are so radical that look insane (Donald Trump does that all the time)
  • As we speak, at least 1/3 of the workforce are stuck in bullshit jobs they find meaningless
  • Se people said after a talk that a high lucrative bullshit job gave them the financial freedom to pursue a meaningful activity — 💭 that’s very controversial. Would it worth it to work on a bullshit task just to have the money so you can work on something else?
  • It’s time for a new labor movement. One that not only fights for new jobs but for jobs that fulfill us. Work that has intrinsic value.
  • If you don’t like the way the world is going, realize that there are many people out there thinking just like you. Turn down the TV, look around, and organize