This Could Be Our Future summary

In 1776, economist Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism, argued that society functions best when everyone acts according to their own self-interest. If you go to the butcher, he wrote, you can trust the butcher to sell you meat because that’s what the butcher needs to do to feed his own family. 

But Smith didn’t equate self-interest with maximum profit. He didn’t write that the butcher should ramp up hog-slaughter rates, lower the quality of his meat to an acceptable minimum, and underpay his workers. 

In 2017, country singer Sam Hunt’s single “Body Like a Back Road” broke an incredible record. For eight months straight, the song was number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. 

How did this happen? Is “Body Like a Back Road” the greatest song of all time? 

A new kind of people took over the world when business and finance laws were loosened in the late 1970s. Let’s call them the “Maximizing Class.”

These were the bankers, brokers, consultants, and “strategists” who became experts in the art of extracting wealth and minimizing costs. They learned how to grow profits for big businesses and maximize shareholder returns through slashing budgets, cutting wages, and avoiding taxes. 

There’s no denying that money is important. Every year, the cost of health care, housing, and transportation climbs higher. Imagine telling one of the many Americans who can barely afford these basic necessities that money shouldn’t matter to them.

The importance of money becomes even clearer when we look at Abraham Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. Maslow, a psychologist, believed that people have five fundamental needs. The first and bottommost need is survival. Once our survival is ensured, we move to the next need: physically safe. There are other, higher-order needs that come after this – but let’s pause here a moment.

Are you familiar with the Japanese bento box? A bento box has many compartments, each containing a different item of food. It’s perfect for eating a little bit of everything that’s good, without overeating. But bento isn’t only perfect for organizing your lunch. It’s also perfect for organizing your life. 

Here’s the key message: Bentoism allows us to make rational decisions that aren’t guided by money alone.

Your favorite band is coming to town! Right after tickets go on sale, you get online and try to buy one. But, as if by black magic, they’ve already sold out. Desperate, you find a secondary source for the ticket – which now costs three times the original price.

Ticket scalping is all too common today. Unofficial ticketing websites and shrewd individuals buy up tickets in bulk as soon as they’re released, and then resell them to loyal fans at many times the original cost.

If you lived back in 1960 and decided to take a nice early-morning run in the park, you’d probably be arrested. Back then, the idea of outside exercise was so unusual that people regularly called the police on joggers.

Getting to the point where exercise is a normal pastime took a while. It began when John F. Kennedy made physical activity a national priority during his presidency. By the late 1960s, newspapers reported on the curious trend of “jogging,” and Gold’s Gym in California began to make weightlifting mainstream.