Inventing the Future summary

So, folk politics’ reliance on local, individual actions and personal emotions severely limit its efficacy, but another problem is its focus on immediate, self-gratifying goals at the expense of lasting, long-term change. For instance, folk politics might celebrate a corporation delaying the construction of an oil pipeline, failing to recognize that the company is just waiting until people look away so that it can move forward with the project.

In this case, the issue isn’t that folk politics is local, but that it sees local actions as sufficient in and of themselves, rather than as necessary elements within a longer-term vision.

To better understand the limits of folk politics – and the contemporary left in general – just think about what the other side has been able to accomplish. While folk politics is failing to make lasting change, the political opposition has been able to transform society through neoliberalism.

This political ideology can be summed up by a steadfast belief in unimposed, free-market capitalism. However, since classic liberalism is about free markets and opposing government regulation, neoliberalism ironically relies heavily on state influence to defend property rights, impose antitrust laws and generally sustain the neoliberal world order.

While we can complain about neoliberalism being the dominant political and cultural idea of our time, it’s impossible to dispute how effectively it carried out its aims. In fact, the hegemonic position neoliberalism achieved is the result of a carefully considered, long-term, top-down strategy.

This strategy had neoliberals put together policy arguments that were then systematically pushed through think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institute, as well as universities. These institutions then trained the global elite, further spreading neoliberalism and cementing its ideological influence across the globe.

Now that we know what type of approach is called for on the left, what should we be fighting for? Well, to answer that question, we first need to begin with an examination of the current state of labor.

This is a key factor, since full automation and unemployment grow more likely by the day, even as people work more than ever. Take industry as an example: while the industrial sector employed just 1,000 robots in 1970, today it relies on over 1.6 million.

How can we deal with the impending reality of full automation?

By embracing it! After all, the loss of jobs prompted by automation will lead to the need for universal basic income or UBI, the idea of giving every citizen enough money to live on.