During the pandemic, there have been attempts by some of the publications to which I subscribe to think outside of the box. The pandemic has acted as an accelerator and made it possible to envision a radically changed society and a fleeting opportunity to take actions to bring this about. Both Time and The Guardian Weekly sponsored a series of articles on the subject. I found them both highly disappointing.
The overriding approach of these articles was to take a current gripe and to wish it away. Corporations would suddenly be more socially conscious, and would take a longer-term approach. Everybody would have somewhere decent to live, especially the historically downtrodden such as people of colour and immigrants. Education would embrace technology and become more enlightened. A green revolution would miraculously solve climate change. Racism would no longer exist.
There were various recurring themes in the articles. One was the portrayal of a leftist utopia that signally failed to recognise the benefits that markets have reaped for humanity. Another was the assumption of unlimited government money for investment, without any consideration of where this money might come from or the unintended consequences of spending it. A third was a lack of any coherent pathway towards the utopia: often a tiny example project was quoted with the lazy assumption that it could be easily scaled.
Most of my takeaways from this were rather depressing. Many on the left appear to be terrible managers, and even their good ideas can be easily swatted away by conservative forces. But I also found it depressing how limited their ambitions were.
There were a couple of glorious exceptions. Rich territory included reimagining cities. I love the idea of the mayor of Paris of working towards the fifteen-minute city, in which all citizens should be able to find most of what they need within fifteen minutes on foot, bike or public transit. This has legs. The vision is clear and appealing. It starts with current reality, and incremental steps can easily be identified and ranked according to cost and benefit.
The idea has potential even in the home of the SUV, the USA, though probably only in the bigger cities for the time being. The pandemic has opened up some possibilities, and I think our leaders could be braver in their experiments. In New York we have an Open Streets initiative, but it mainly seems to take very easy wins such as quiet residential streets next door to a park.
Why not be bolder? Where I live in Forest Hills we have a rather traditional high street – it can have a European feel and was one of the attractions leading us to choose the area. But the street would be so much more pleasant if it was pedestrianized, and that is quite feasible. One bus route would have to be marginally rerouted but the street is not important for any commuter routes. Take away the cars and Austin Street could become a permanent home for outdoor dining, café culture, markets and small businesses and simply walking. There must be hundreds of such opportunities within New York City, yet the mayor’s office seems to lack the vision or courage to implement them, even now. Habit and lobbyists run deep in the USA.
Still, practicality is not my main gripe with most of the articles. The primary purpose of such pieces should be courageous re-envisioning, yet most were rather incremental. I would have preferred it if some had challenged more fundamental assumptions. Here are two that are ripe for a challenge: the nation state and work.
Imagine a world where the role of the nation state was radically reduced. My model is of a world where nations were a bit like US states. Some powers would remain at that level, but many would become regional or global and others devolved to cities. A passport would become more like a driving license.
Global free movement, with only bridgeable financial restrictions rather than ideological or racial ones, would unlock the ultimate human right and plenty of innovation. We could get rid of most of the military jingoism on the planet, and its destruction and waste too. Nasty populism would lose most of its oxygen. Global challenges such as climate change could be addressed globally. Trade could be global, with a single currency and a monetary policy designed for humanity not rich elites within rich nations.
Most of the crap in the world today can be laid at the door of the nation state. Watch the news for the next few nights and note when a story makes you angry, and then note how many of those stories involve calumnies in the name of one or more nation states.
I am not advocating big brother here. Much can be devolved to cities and other smaller units. The nation state stops that too. The nation state is the toxic level, the level that is broken and destructive. If somebody visited from another planet, the nation state would be the aspect of human governance that they would first be confused by, then deride, and then eliminate.
By wonderful happenstance, we have an example to build upon, called the European Union. It is not perfect, but it sure gets many things right. And it would be even better if nation states didn’t constrain it so much.
My second out of the box idea is to eliminate most paid work. I’ll start with an example from today’s news. The MTA is the body running the NYC subway, and, not surprisingly, it has current financial difficulties. It is bleating for taxpayer help and threatening self-destruction by massively curtailing service levels. But it has a simple fix available. Trains run with a driver and a conductor. With no technological investment, the conductor could vanish today. Within a year and for a minimal investment the driver could go too.
Does this thought make me an evil capitalist bastard? Of course the reason it does not happen is that the MTA is answerable to the city and the state and various trade unions, all with political agendas in which protecting jobs is central.
Now think of it this way. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers get up early every morning to sir in a lonely carriage and do something they hate and that has no human value, since it can be easily mechanised. Those people could be freed to do something productive, or simply enjoy some leisure, or care for old or young or infirm family members. If the last option was paid for then nobody need go poor and lots of societal good would be achieved.
So let us envisage a world where maximising jobs is no longer the goal. How did we get into a situation where we all strive to slog our guts out doing unpleasant stuff, and call that progress? Reimbursement for Care could change that attitude in an instant, as well as building communities, kindness, culture and gender equality. A generation would need to learn how to feel fulfilled without their MTA uniform and pointless pressing of buttons, but I don’t think that would take too long, if our education were overhauled.
I am not advocating a hippie society where everybody is always high and nothing gets done. Paid non-caring work is still an option, and most people will choose to take it up, for several years at least, in order to give life balance and earn a few luxuries and develop something for humanity. There would be plenty of progress; my guess is more than today. All such work would be gig work, much more flexible and adaptable and fitted to needs.
Now I have to concede that both of these ideas suffer from a dose of leftist utopianism. Implementation paths would be tricky. Global outlooks are hardly fashionable among voters just now, and those MTA drivers and conductors could garner plenty of sympathy too. But surely the purpose of these exercises is a radical reframing of what might be possible? For without that first step, nothing can ever happen.
I predict that in one hundred years time, our successors will consider our use of nationality and passports rather like we now consider slave owners. It is not so different when you think about it. They will also look at how we structured our economic model around everybody doing forty years of usually unproductive and unfulfilling slog, and laugh at how backward we used to be.
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