Utopia for Realists

By Rutger Bregman

 This is a serious work by a serious scholar (the back of the book is full of footnotes).

He recommends two shocking (to me) recommendations for the US:

(1) completely open borders

(2) universal basic income

I am completely in favor of (1): let me know when this is available and I will certainly sign up for it.

(2) I am fairly sure that the political blowback from Fox News and its broadcast ilk may sink the whole scheme without some changes to the “borders” piece:

(a) I would set up the checkpoints full of native plants, either Mexican or Canadian.

I would also recommend a five-mile radius with sensors embedded in the desert and Canada all along both borders.

As for the operators, this is likely to be a supremely boring job, interspersed with moments of terror.

I would therefore suggest a psychological study to see how long a human can be expected to concentrate on this task, which is very likely to intersperse long stretches of extreme boredom with moments here and there of abject terror.

I think six months will probably be enough to test and train the first batch of recruits.

They can be diverse: straight or gay, male, female, black, white, brown, or whatever; minimum age should probably be 25 or so and the training should be as realistic as is practical to set up.

I would have a sign in English and Spanish on the border along these lines:

Welcome to the US!

We are happy to have any honest person that is willing to work here and submit to our authentication scheme and to follow our laws.

However, if you are thinking you may be able to overwhelm us with force, don’t count on it.

We aren’t planning to specify the defenses we have in place, but if you try to kill any of our employees, expect to be going home in a body bag.

If we catch you trying to subvert anyone on our staff, that would involve 5 or 10-year ban from the program at which point you can be interviewed to try again.

Mark McWiggins
425-369-8286