A key part of any Utopian project should be to discuss widely and think deeply about the human natures we want to have and the ones we do not want to have, and to devise the kinds of social arrangements that will support and reward those characteristics.
The frequent claim that inequality promotes accumulation and growth does not get much support from history. On the contrary, great economic inequality has always been correlated with extreme concentration of political power, and that power has always been used to widen the income gaps through rent-…
[...] 'Technology' often implicitly refers to something you are expected to turn over to 'the guys who understand it'.
All societies that become greatly unequal eventually fail to adapt technologically and become unsustainable. [...] When inequality rises, you pour more and more resources into your armies and into new technology for them--not into truly productive and co-operative purposes. Slaves and scribes are l…
Equality, not competition or hierarchy, is 'the mother of invention'. Progress slows or goes into reverse as soon as ideas are appropriated by hierarchical organizations. Inequality is sustained when a few people persuade the majority that there is no alternative. [...]
