13. How We Begin

13.2 Implementation

The fourth step is the adaptation of the futurity. Now, and only now, is it time to think about how such a system could be established in the real world, or how the transition to it could be made. As soon as a group comes together online that wants to pursue the realization of one of these futurities in a specific country.

Now it is time to analyze the existing system in that country in detail: the laws and conditions it imposes, or that would have to be changed beforehand. The attitudes held by society, and whether modifying the futurity could significantly increase acceptance without making it noticeably worse (or if the modification could be easily reversed if and when society’s attitudes change).

The good thing is that there are now many more people who can help with such a project, since the shared goal is already clear. At this step, the point is no longer to agree on a goal, but to focus on finding the best path towards it and on which compromises should be made.

Nor does this step necessarily have to take place online.
In a democratic country, for example, it can also be achieved by convincing party members of the futurity, or by people joining a party in order to anchor the implementation of the futurity in that party’s platform. Achieving that will be easier the greater the awareness of the futurity is (Step 2) and the better it has already been developed (Steps 3 and 4).
Incidentally, it is by no means necessary for this party to have an outright governing majority for the futurity to be implemented. If enough voters care about it, other parties will begin to move closer to that position so as not to lose votes. Germany’s nuclear phaseout, originally demanded by the Greens, was ultimately implemented by the CDU, even though the Greens were not even part of that government!

The fifth step is the actual implementation of the adaptation developed in the fourth step. Whether through the implementation of a party platform (because of an absolute majority or a coalition agreement), or because an autocratic ruler has ordered it.

 

At this point, let us compare two different ways in which a social system can come into being and be changed. The classical way, and the one I have just described.

The way we see everywhere in the world is the following:

1. A social system is introduced for the first time (for example, social insurance)

2. Problems with it are identified

3. Changes are made to the system that are believed to correct those problems

4. Continue with point 2

 

This approach of incremental improvements seems like the most normal thing in the world.
The obvious advantage is that you can simply let the system keep running so long as no problems arise. You also usually have a very good idea what changes will do, since the system only gets changed in small steps. But the downside is that the system stays as it is if you can't find any change that would improve it. Or if you don't see any problems.

Why is that a disadvantage?

Let us look at the example of the healthcare system in Germany and see what changing a single parameter would achieve in each case if we simply wanted to improve the existing system step by step, without having a target structure in mind:

•  more medical school places: helps address the doctor shortage[70]

•  more money for doctors in rural areas: increases overall costs too much

•  more preventive checkups: doctors do not have the capacity for that

•  bundling preventive checkups: incompatible with system structure

•  paying doctors less: worsens the doctor shortage

•  polyclinics: not under state control, system costs do not fall

•  changing covered services: leads to huge disputes every time

 

Other changes made by my concept, such as the option to rate doctors and hospitals, the responsibility of the counties for hospitals, or the unification of health insurers, do not even appear as ideas in the first place, because they make no sense at all within the existing system.

The first change on this list that actually represents an improvement is more medical school places for doctors. Even this first step can fail because it significantly increases spending at first. If it is implemented, and more doctors are now practicing, we can increase the number of preventive checkups in order to ease the burden on the system as a whole in the long term.
These adjustments already take many years. But after that, no further change can be found that would make the healthcare system better for both sides. Everything that would further improve it for citizens makes it more expensive. Everything that would reduce costs for the state makes it worse for citizens. We have reached a local maximum: no single change improves the system. And so everyone remains permanently dissatisfied with how expensive and inefficient the healthcare system is. As the average age of the population continues to rise, the range of covered services has to be reduced more and more, which leads to huge disputes every time.

Better but completely different ways of structuring the system as a whole we will never discover in this way. At the very beginning, when the social system was originally conceived, the preconditions for making such solutions workable did not yet exist (see Chapter 4.3, “Digitalization”), and step-by-step changes that each have to constitute an improvement in their own right will not lead us to them.116 This applies to healthcare just as much as to any social system—whether education, urban structure, immigration and asylum, the tax system, the structure of the state, whatever.
In terms of finding solutions, we have, so to speak, remained with the methods of evolution, which keeps refining a given system in small steps. For locomotion, it found a well-optimized leg for many animal species. But it will never produce the wheel.

The path this book has taken, and that I want to explicitly lay out here one more time, is a different one:

1. A social system seems to have great potential to function better if it were different

2. A completely new structure for the system is devised, without regard for its previous implementation (starting from a blank slate)

3. The new design is improved step by step

4. Repeat from point 2 as long as there are new ideas, keeping the best result

5. Compare the best design with the previous system

6. Search for the simplest path to reach that goal

 

Points 1 to 4 are what I did by myself for many years, without having any idea what it might be good for.
Now that this book has come out of that, and if I did my job well, its chapters have (for each social system they address) illuminated a different point in the endless landscape of possibilities. Far away from the region in which the currently realized variants of the system are located.
Even if this book achieved nothing more than making many people aware that these other regions with better variants exist, that alone would already be a great gain.

Beyond that, this chapter tries to encourage all of you to go further: to look for step-by-step improvements to the variants I have presented, search other regions for even better variants (building consensus), and, once found, look for the simplest path to reach that place (adaptation).
To stay with this image, the second step, awareness, is there to motivate enough people to start searching, and to ensure that society can muster the necessary energy to pursue such changes. Even if it has to pass through worse territory before reaching the better destination discovered.

Above all, though, this chapter is meant to show that futurities are achievable if a society wants to achieve them. And that an incredible amount of potential is wasted when, out of learned pessimism, we limit ourselves to preventing the worst dystopias instead of striving for the best possible future.

Not all futurities in this book would have the same degree of influence on our lives and on how well a society functions overall. Some, such as a better healthcare system, certainly have the potential to improve our lives significantly, but would not fundamentally change them. A better system of government, by contrast, would massively change how we live and how our society functions. In many other cases, it is difficult to judge just how influential a better social system would be.

A universal basic income would certainly be better than the current bureaucratic monster of the German welfare system. But how much better? Would it simply make the state more efficient and fairer? Or would it lead to a great flourishing of volunteer work, creative art, and entrepreneurship?
Would culturepoints merely put an end to annoying advertising on the internet and improve the quality of news articles? Or would they lead to a changed self-perception of society? To more optimism, more selfless action, and a flourishing of digital art that is freely available to all?
Would a better education system merely lead to happier children who learn more in school that is of use to them in life? Or would it produce a generation of young adults who, thanks to their better education, ability to think, and emotional security, transform society from within?

This uncertainty stems from the fact that it is relatively possible to model how a new system would function internally. By comparing it with the current system, it becomes clear that the proposed design is obviously better. But it is very difficult to grasp how great its positive effects on the rest of society would be.

To make building consensus easier and convince as many people as possible that the new design really is better than the existing system, these hoped-for but hard-to-predict positive follow-on effects on the rest of society should therefore be ignored. Instead, the new design should be presented on its own terms and compared with the existing system.
That not only simplifies the argument and thus, hopefully, makes it more successful. It is also the more pessimistic and therefore safer assumption: Even if the hoped-for positive follow-on effects on the rest of society do not materialize, we will still have made a social system more efficient, fairer, and more pleasant. The greater efficiency in particular is valuable in any case: It means that society now has more resources left over to tackle other problems or implement other futurities.

With regard to affordability, it is obviously not irrelevant in what order the implementation of futurities is tackled. If we start with one that costs more money than before (education), we automatically have to answer the question of where that money is supposed to come from. No matter where we want to save money, we create opponents for ourselves.
If, on the other hand, we begin with a futurity that costs less money than before because it is a more efficient system (low UBI), we have to fight against the fears of those who worry that they will now receive less money than before.

I therefore consider the best approach to be bringing together futurities of both kinds in a single proposal (for example, as a party platform): at least one futurity that saves money (UBI, healthcare), combined with at least one futurity that costs more money (culturepoints, education, free public transportation). On the one hand, that answers the question of where the necessary money is supposed to come from. On the other hand, it provides a way to counter fears of loss by showing what now becomes possible with the money saved. Of course, there will still be resistance, as with all changes. But it should make the argument easier in both directions and, taken as a whole, probably create less resistance than each futurity on its own (provided they are all roughly equally convincing).