Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

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Chapter 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary: “Race Against the Machine”

Fear of automation rendering the human worker obsolete is not new but is particularly relevant in the modern era, where robotics and other technological developments have been pushing down real wages for decades. In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors in computers would double every year, and his prediction was correct. Shipping containers have made land and sea transit vastly more efficient. Bregman notes that in this more computerized and globalized economy, the ratio of wealth flowing to labor relative to the owners of capital has declined because large and complex supply chains tend to favor a handful of large companies that have the resources to connect all the disparate parts. The result is a growth in inequality as those with power gain more power and, as they do, need fewer workers. Technological development has typically created and eliminated jobs at a comparable rate, but in recent years automation has eliminated far more jobs than it has created, and many of the jobs that remain pay low wages. Machines are developing the power to do more, better, and at increasingly faster rates. Seemingly, all that will be left are a handful of good jobs for the managers of the technocracy and an underclass of people performing the few menial tasks requiring humans. To understand this moment, Bregman looks to the example of the Luddites in early 19th-century Britain. Yorkshire county featured bloody contests between local industrialists and a masked group protesting unemployment due to automation, until its leaders were apprehended and executed. History depicts the Luddites as idealistic dreamers swept aside by modernity—but although automation has obvious benefits, the Luddites may have had a point that technology could be harmful to human existence.

Economists and other thought leaders tend to believe that more automation is inevitable, along with its undesirable social consequences. Preparing children for an increasingly complex future will only become more difficult. Just as the first great age of industrialization led to radical social changes, so too does the current age. Bregman holds that if society continues to commit to technological progress, then it must engage in major redistribution of wealth to protect those who cannot compete or prosper in an automated economy. Failure to do so will lead to another Gilded Age, where great technological progress benefits only a small elite while driving the multitude into degradation. The pure logic of capitalism is self-destructive and needs massive social intervention in order to work as intended.

Chapter 8 Analysis

In June 2023, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski died in prison at the age of 81 after serving 25 years of several life sentences. Publicly known as “the Unabomber,” he was responsible for a series of mail bombings from 1978 until 1995. Kaczynski has been a source of relentless public fascination: Since his arrest in 1998, he has been the subject of books, documentaries, a television miniseries, and several sketches of Saturday Night Live in which he was portrayed by comedic actor Will Ferrell. Much of his life appeared to have been tailor-made for public speculation. A mathematical genius, he attended Harvard at the age of 16, where he was among a group of students subjected to intense psychological tests as part of a CIA program to improve its interrogation tactics—some called it “mind control.” By his mid-20s, he was a tenure-track professor at Berkeley but gave it all up and withdrew into remote Montana, where he ultimately carried out his nearly 20-year terror campaign, his motivation being to fight industrialization and the destruction of the wilderness. Despite being known mainly for killing and severely injuring people, Kaczynski is lauded by some as a hero, particularly for the 1995 manifesto, “Industrial Society and its Future,” which he wrote to justify his actions. Published in the New York Times and Washington Post at his demand, it argues that modern technology is harmful to living an authentically human life, instead forcing people to live more like machines. His victims, including university professors and airline executives (hence his nickname—UNA for university and airline) were purportedly responsible for pulling human beings further away from a simpler, happier condition.

As Bregman points out, there are many good reasons to dread certain aspects of technological development, particularly with respect to their impact on employment. Someone reading Kaczynski’s words might find some sympathy with its clarion call to overthrow technological despotism and reassert human freedom—popular films like The Matrix (1999) and The Terminator (1984) have a similar message. However, for Bregman, someone like Kaczynski is wrong not only because his beliefs led him to commit despicable acts but because the beliefs themselves reduced humans to the roles of either passive sheep or avenging destroyers; in this view, people can do nothing to make technology safer for their social health. Bregman argues that if technology overwhelms humanity, it will result from humans failing to develop the right ideas and institutions to separate the obvious benefits of technology from its potential harms—not because its onslaught was inevitable. Kaczynski’s bombings were born of nihilism and despair, but society has power to subject machines to its will. In addition, Bregman points to the potential for technology to rapidly widen the divide between the elite and the poor, emphasizing the responsibility of citizens to demand governmental protections (like those Bregman proposes in this book) to prevent such increasing gaps; this again aligns with the book’s theme on The Dangers of Inequality.