The Lottery of Utopia Economics: Why Culture Blocks a Better Future

Our cultures stand in the way of utopian economies. You can have the brightest analytic minds conjuring logical plans, but economic ideas are bound to fail without a holistic approach.

But what the hell do I know? I’m not an economist.

As Mike Sowden from Everything Is Amazing tells us, you don’t need to be an expert to write about a topic.

Furthermore, economics is not a science. It doesn’t take an expert economist to get things right. In fact, it usually takes an expert economist to get things wrong.

Economists Getting It Wrong: Famous Failures

History is full of expert predictions that collapsed under reality.

• Actively managed stock mutual funds: Managers of 2,862 funds studied by S&P performed even worse than a blindfolded monkey. Dow Jones Indices didn’t do as well as the hypothetical monkey (serial coin flipper), who beat them in several other tests, too. (CNBC)
• Belgium without a government: Belgium had no government for over 15 months. Yet, in the last quarter of 2011, its economy somehow managed to outperform those of the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Finland, and Switzerland. (Business Insider)
• 1929 Wall Street crash: Irving Fisher, an influential economist whose theories still underpin modern economics, claimed that “stock prices have reached ‘what looks like a permanently high plateau.’” Three days later, the entire US economy collapsed. (BlueSky)
• 2008 financial crisis: I don’t need to spill any ink on this one.

This list could go on forever, but the point is this: economists, bereft of human understanding and brimming with unwarranted self-confidence, often get things wrong.

That said, many economists are brilliant, benevolent beings willing to support my life’s project.

Why Economists Often Get It Wrong

Economic theories are bound to rational models. Unfortunately, humans are far from rational. Like everyone else, economists aren’t immune to cognitive biases and subconscious influences:

• Confirmation bias – People seek and interpret information in ways that confirm their existing beliefs. (Yes, this is exactly what I fell victim to with those four points you just read.)
• Anchoring – Economists often anchor their predictions to previous forecasts or models, even when they no longer reflect reality.
• Groupthink – Working in shared-belief environments reinforces narrow viewpoints.
• Subconscious decision-making – Even something as simple as handing out hand sanitizer can push people toward more conservative decisions. (Toronto Star)
• Loss aversion – Like all of us, economists feel losses more deeply than equivalent gains, skewing judgment.

When we understand how bias and irrationality shape economic decision-making, it becomes easier to see why expert models fail—and why utopian economics requires more than theory.

Degrowth vs. Green Growth

One popular idea is that we need to “degrow” the economy.

Elle Griffin’s argument essentially goes like this: since companies can now get more value from intangible assets (software, licenses, patents, trademarks) than from tangible assets (food, books, medicine, housing), the economy can continue to grow without harming the environment.

Sounds good—but reality isn’t so simple.

The ICT (Information Communication Technology) industry already accounts for 2–3% of global emissions, and analysts agree ICT emissions won’t shrink without massive political and industrial action. (Patterns, Elsevier)

Examples:

• Streaming music produces higher carbon emissions than buying CDs. (Euronews)
• Bitcoin mining may generate 65.4 megatonnes of CO₂ per year—similar to the emissions of Greece. (The Guardian)
• Big Tech & e-waste: Companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple commit to “net zero” while simultaneously fueling global e-waste. (Green Matters)

Proponents of endless growth argue that clean energy and better recycling will eventually fix these issues. But when profit is the top priority, even so-called green companies become destructive and corrupt.

Examples of corruption in the “green economy”:

• Wind energy fraud in Europe
• Wind-power bribery scandal in Japan
• UK recycling fraud
• California recycling scams
• Spain discouraging home solar to protect corporate solar farms

Even nuclear power is underused in many countries, written off as “too expensive.”

The Dark Side of Intangible Assets

To ordinary citizens, hedge funds feel shadowy and strange—because they control many intangible assets we can’t see or touch. These massive firms manage close to $2.2 trillion.

They have almost no restrictions beyond the law and thrive on advantages unavailable to the public:

“They do it by hiring the best and the brightest… They do it by trying to know everything about whatever they are trading. A country bans election polling before voting? No problem—hedge funds will hire their own private pollsters.”
— Chris Arnade, The Guardian

Many rely on high-frequency trading (HFTs):

• HFTs amplify volatility, sometimes causing flash crashes.
• They fragment markets, making true conditions harder to gauge.
• They enjoy unfair advantages with privileged access to real-time data.

In other words, hedge funds and HFTs destroyed what little integrity financial markets still had.

The Digital Commodification Trap

I believe we should spend more time on experiences and art. But when economies shift from tangible goods to intangible ones, even those experiences and art become digitized and commodified.

We retreat into our phones, which research suggests can make us:

• less social
• more forgetful
• prone to addiction
• sleepless
• and even depressed (The Lighthouse).

Of course, I make my living (or lack thereof) online, so I’m not advocating for a return to caves. Instead, I’m seeking ways to combine the online and physical worlds meaningfully.

We must choose:

• knowledge over raw information
• community over followers
• diversity over echo chambers