141
" It takes talent, ambition, and brains. And the banking world is brimming with clever minds. “The genius of the great speculative investors is to see what others do not, or to see it earlier,” explains the economist Roger Bootle. “This is a skill. But so is the ability to stand on tiptoe, balancing on one leg, while holding a pot of tea above your head, without spillage.”12 In other words, the fact that something is difficult does not automatically make it valuable. In recent decades those clever minds have concocted all manner of complex financial products that don’t create wealth, but destroy it. These products are, essentially, like a tax on the rest of the population. Who do you think is paying for all those custom-tailored suits, sprawling mansions, and luxury yachts? If bankers aren’t generating the underlying value themselves, then it has to come from somewhere – or someone – else. The government isn’t the only one redistributing wealth. The financial sector does it, too, but without a democratic mandate. "
― Rutger Bregman , Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
143
" In 1933, the U.S. Senate approved legislation introducing a thirty-hour workweek. Although the bill languished in the House of Representatives under industry pressure, a shorter workweek remained the labor unions’ top priority. In 1938, legislation protecting the five-day workweek was finally passed. The following year, the folk song “Big Rock Candy Mountain” climbed to the top of the charts, describing a utopia in which “hens lay soft-boiled eggs,” cigarettes grow on trees, and “the jerk that invented work” is strung up from the tallest tree. After World War II, leisure time continued its steady rise. In 1956, Vice President Richard Nixon promised Americans that they would only have to work four days a week “in the not too distant future.” The country had reached a “plateau of prosperity,” and he believed a shorter workweek was inevitable.8 Before long, machines would be doing all the work. This would free up “abundant scope for recreation,” enthused an English professor, “by immersion in the imaginative life, in art, drama, dance, and a hundred other ways of transcending the constraints of daily life.”9 Keynes’ bold prediction had become a truism. In the mid-1960s, a Senate committee report projected that by 2000 the workweek would be down to just fourteen hours, with at least seven weeks off a year. The RAND Corporation, an influential think tank, foresaw a future in which just 2% of the population would be able to produce everything society needed.10 Working would soon be reserved for the elite. "
― Rutger Bregman , Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
144
" Our story begins in Israel, some time in the 7th century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has just conquered Jerusalem and orders his head eunuch to escort several Israelite nobles to his palace. Among them is Daniel, a man known for his piety. Upon his arrival, Daniel asks the head eunuch to let him abstain from eating “the king’s food and wine” since he and his men have their own religious diet. The eunuch is taken aback and objects. “I am afraid of my lord the king,” he says, “who has decided what you shall eat and drink. If the king sees you looking worse than the other young men your age, he would have my head because of you.” So Daniel devises a stratagem. “Test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and decide what to do with us based on how we look.” The Babylonian agrees. After ten days, Daniel and his friends look “healthier and better nourished” than the other courtiers, and from that moment on they are no longer served the royal delicacies and wine but a diet of pure vegetables. Quod erat demonstrandum. This is the first written record of a comparative experiment in which a hypothesis is tested and a control group is used. A few centuries later, these events would be immortalized in the biggest bestseller ever: the Bible (see Daniel 1:1–16). "
― Rutger Bregman , Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
147
" On December 1, 1930, as the Great Depression was raging, the cornflake magnate W. K. Kellogg decided to introduce a six-hour workday at his factory in Battle Creek, Michigan. It was an unmitigated success: Kellogg was able to hire an additional 300 employees and slashed the accident rate by 41%. Moreover, his employees became noticeably more productive. “This isn’t just a theory with us,” Kellogg proudly told a local newspaper. “The unit cost of production is so lowered that we can afford to pay as much for six hours as we formerly paid for eight.”30 For Kellogg, like Ford, a shorter workweek was simply a matter of good business.31 But for the residents of Battle Creek, it was much more than that. For the first time ever, a local paper reported, they had “real leisure.”32 Parents had time to spare for their children. They had more time to read, garden, and play sports. Suddenly, churches and community centers were bursting at the seams with citizens who now had time to spend on civic life.33 Nearly half a century later, British Prime Minister Edward Heath also discovered the benefits of cornflake capitalism, albeit inadvertently. It was late 1973 and he was at his wits’ end. Inflation was reaching record highs and government expenditures were skyrocketing, and labor unions were dead set against compromise of any kind. As if that weren’t enough, the miners decided to go on strike. With energy consequently in short supply, the Brits turned down their thermostats and donned their heaviest sweaters. December came, and even the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square remained unlit. Heath decided on a radical course of action. On January 1, 1974, he imposed a three-day workweek. Employers were not permitted to use more than three days’ electricity until energy reserves had recovered. Steel magnates predicted that industrial production would plunge 50%. Government ministers feared a catastrophe. When the five-day workweek was reinstated in March 1974, officials set about calculating the total extent of production losses. They had trouble believing their eyes: The grand total was 6%.34 "
― Rutger Bregman , Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
152
" Ethics, too, favors open borders. Say John from Texas is dying of hunger. He asks me for food, but I refuse. If John dies, is it my fault? Arguably, I merely allowed him to die, which while not exactly benevolent, isn’t exactly murder either. Now imagine that John doesn’t ask for food, but goes off to the market, where he’ll find plenty of people willing to exchange their goods for work that he can do in return. This time though, I hire a couple of heavily armed baddies to block his way. John dies of starvation a few days later. Can I still claim innocence? "
― Rutger Bregman , Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
155
" In a world that’s getting ever richer, where cows produce more milk and robots produce more stuff, there’s more room for friends, family, community service, science, art, sports, and all the other things that make life worthwhile. But there’s also more room for bullshit. As long as we continue to be obsessed with work, work, and more work (even as useful activities are further automated or outsourced), the number of superfluous jobs will only continue to grow. Much like the number of managers in the developed world, which has grown over the last thirty years without making us a dime richer. On the contrary, studies show that countries with more managers are actually less productive and innovative.15 In a survey of 12,000 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, half said they felt their job had no “meaning and significance,” and an equal number were unable to relate to their company’s mission.16 Another recent poll revealed that as many as 37% of British workers think they have a bullshit job.17 "
― Rutger Bregman , Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
