Four Futures

Clearly written, interesting synthesis

Weak points:
Quite US focussed, but world is mostly not US and most environmental change and Econ growth is not in US (or rich world)

Environmental focus is primarily climate change, less engagement with details than with robots.
Book was have benefited from a final chapter that reflects on what the scenarios/futures reveal and how different strategies could play out.

One day, Capitalism will end.
Read that sentence again, slowly.
One day, the global economic system we colloquially understand as “Capitalism” will be replaced by a different system. No one can say with certainty what will replace it, but it is utterly absurd to assert that it will NEVER end.
This begs the question: what will replace it?
The author postulates 4 possibilities along a 2X2 matrix: Equality vs Hierarchy and Abundance vs Scarcity.
It's interesting to see how the powers that be are pushing society toward one of these futures through the lenses of these 4 possibilities. My (least) favorite possibility was Rentism, which is pushed by ghouls like Bill Gates, trying to lock as much of the world's resources behind the “benevolence” of corporations and NGO's, so the commons own nothing and everything must be rented. Quite ominous.
The book is thought-provoking and short. I highly recomend

Before getting into de Conclusions, my punctuation was three stars, for the same reason Frase said in this last chapter: “But none of these model societies are meant to represent something that could be implemented overnight, in a complete transformation of current social relations. Indeed, probably none of them is possible at all in a pure form; history is simply too messy for that, and real societies exceed the parameters of any theoretical model”.
What I really enjoy, is the relation with movies and books that Frase does through the book, making the explanation easier and understanding his examples. What I do not like that much is how utopian his writing was. We really need a new/better future, for sure. But I think it is not going to be just one of them itself but a configuration of many of them.

“Things in our world may not play out with such literal deceptions, but we can already see how our political and economic elites manage to justify ever-higher levels of misery and death while remaining convinced that they are great humanitarians” Pos. 1616

A small but still good book tackling the upcoming changes in our societies. It gives us some paths to think about our common future(s) which might not all be bright. While I liked the presentation of those 4 possible futures, it lacked a bit of depth for me, and as the author say, while me might know where we're going to end in those four futures, the path to them is still unsure and might be quite difficult. I'll keep an eye out for the changes to come, and hope & work for the best.

“That is the other important point of this book. We can't go back to the past, and we can't even hold on to what we have now. Something new is coming—and indeed, in some way, all four futures are already here, “unevenly distributed,” in William Gibson's phrase. It's up to us to build the collective power to fight for the futures we want.”