And look out for morlocks!
Morlocks, Eastasians (or Eurasians), savages, pretty much the entire outside world
blah, blah, blah, blah…Let me know when you get to the part about sterilizing the socially undesirables. That’s the real road to utopia.
The first thing that should be recognized in our quest for a perfect utopian society is that there can never be a perfect utopian society. Like the mathematical limit, we can approach but never achieve it.
The second thing is that all money that flows to a deserving party has to come from somewhere or someone. (To do otherwise is pure inflation.) So who should be forced to contribute, and at what cost? Will this forced transfer be good or bad for the future, i.e., encourage or stifle innovation and improvement in technology and knowledge?
Possibly but that doesn’t mean while shouldn’t try. Compared to 200, 100, or even 50 years ago (especially if you don’t live in the west) we are already living in a utopia. We can improve the lot of everyone, reducing suffering and injustice, and we should be trying to eliminate it completely.
IMO the fact a good portion of the political elite has decided they want to increase suffering and injustice makes that even more important.
- Overturn Citizens United and completely overhaul the campaign finance regulations. Give criminal penalties to those who break the rules.
- Make large corporations pay their taxes.
- Legislate priorities in the Congressional Budgeting process such that all Americans must be cared for (food, shelter, education, medical) before they can spend money on war.
- Make a huge FBI task force for protecting children from abuse. Take out all the judges who give kids back to abusive parents. Put pedophiles in permanent custody (no matter how rich they are.) Staff it 90% with women. Include legislation to protect children as necessary.
- A national minimum age of 18 for marriage, and 17 for consent. Penalties when both parties are underage would be light, but real. Penalties for adults who take advantage of minors would be life-long.
- Add Food, Water, Shelter, and Education to the Bill of Rights.
- Make it clear in the constitution that there are no “safe” reasons to discriminate.
- Give women full autonomy over our bodies.
- Use the full power of Federal Law Enforcement to chase down dead beat Dads.
A bit of cart before horse IMHO - “if I had the power”. There’s things you can do with a 50.1% majority in the USA, and things you can’t unless it’s 60%, and things that can’t be done at all with the SCOTUS as currently laid out. Other governmental systems having similar issues.
So are we talking “evil genie” gives you the power to put up unchallengeable legislation/changes? Or what would I like to try for with slim majorities? Because Obama, who came into office with quite a bit of support and majorities got seriously thwarted.
TBC: I’m not ragging on you, I think it’s a good thread, but I go back and forth frequently between the ideal society as I see it (I’m going to avoid Utopian because that’s deeply tied up in personal judgements) and the pragmatic choices.
The title of the thread is how would you build a more utopian society, not how you would fix the one you have. It implies godlike society-building powers.
Well, first thing, I would find someone with better morals than I to do the work! Seriously I’m too obsessed with a degree of order and regularity over the full expression of human value. But I think most of the posts here are so far about fixing our existing society, things like Universal Healthcare, or a basic living income.
One thing I’d absolutely add, that would arguably be dystopian is a universal requirement for truth. One that can only be turned off by the permission of all parties involved in communication. Too many people misrepresent and lie, causing endless issues. “Liar, Liar” but applied across the entirety of humanity.
Telling people what you actually think would be terrible, cruel, and unjust. But I think it would make a more just society, though probably one with a lot more suicide in the short-to-medium turn.
That’s how I read the OP. I can’t really countenance the Democrats advocating for universal income right now. Look how vilified food stamps are, the most completely justified type of welfare that no one should really have problem with (we are the richest country in the world we can spend basically chump change to make sure people don’t starve FFS)
For sure, nothing will work unless it can be made permanent, and not be “temporarily suspended” with an executive order.
If you’re going to have a magical solution, might as well wish for a post-scarcity economy, like Star Trek. I don’t want to start a hijack about whether the Star Trek society was more utopian or ideal than ours; clearly it had its challenges, but they seemed to come mostly from outside.
All individual net worth over 100 million would be liquidated and redistributed to those who need it most. I don’t really care how it happens, you can confiscate (for example) Jeff Bezos’s shares* and give them to people in poverty. If they want to sell it back to him for cash, fine. If they want to remain Amazon shareholders, whatever.
All non-commercial autos would have a mandatory 50mph maximum governed speed. They would be electric with a 50 mile range. When people beg for trains and transit, build it for free and charge no fares.
* This is a rhetorical device, take it in this spirit, nitpicks will not be entertained.
This is a hypothetical assuming you were in the US but had cemented dictator powers like Xi or Putin.
However you can only use those powers to make the US more ‘utopian’ with higher quality of life. Not to enrich yourself, or engage in power grabs, etc. You just had command of the public sector and private sector and could direct them to engage in changes to improve quality of life.
If you feel the best way to achieve that is to hire a panel of experts and let them make the decisions, that is fine. But I’m wondering what decisions those experts would come up with. I’m sure they’d know better than any of us would.
Also if people want to expand this to a global system thats fine. If you wanted to institute a global wealth tax to use the money to fund health care, agriculture and education in low income nations, thats perfectly fine under this hypothetical. It can be localized to the US or global.
Thank you very much, I think better when I have a framework. So existing system, real world, but enough political clout to effectively rubber stamp everything through the legislature and the courts.
First, like others, I would tie the total compensation package for US employers to no more than say 10 or 20 to 1 (IE the top total compensation package couldn’t be more than 20 times the total compensation package of the lowest paid). Want more pay for execs? Raise the pay of your lowest level workers, and you can!
Major overhauls of our Constitution, with clear language defining my intent to protect people from the government. I don’t want arguments a generation later “but if they meant XYZ, why didn’t they put that exact working in”. I’m only going to be mortal, I don’t want it to fall apart after I buck the kicket. 
I’m going to gut the executive. We’ve spent far too many years under multiple administrations delegating too much power to that position. After me, fuck that guy/gal - we have ample proof (and I’ll be more) that too much power concentrated in one position is a bad idea.
I’m also going to reduce government military spending on speculative work - yes, overruns are probably inevitable when designing new programs, but enough bailing out people who underbid and overpromise and get supported through endless overruns. Being somewhat of a realist, maybe up to 100% overrun on first offense, 50% on second, 25% or less on third or above contracts. Don’t promise what you don’t think you can deliver, or build it into your estimates. Honesty dammit!
And if we have to send work back, that’s on all of you. Put some actual engineers back into the process so you’re ready to stand by your work (looking at YOU Lockheed Martin and others!).
Break up media monopolies, regional or nationwide.
While not perfect, I’ll add BBC-like limitations on what is reported as news and what must be clearly and consistently labeled as opinion. Truth is ALWAYS going to be be an overwhelming defense and OFFENSE in libel. If Faux news (which I’m going to break up) reports person said XYZ and it’s false, they get to sue the bleeeeep out of Fox and no dodge of “no one should take this seriously”.
Sales tax - gone. It’s too much of a burden on low incomes, while being a rounding error for the wealthy. Income tax is going to remain graduated by wealth, some fudging around with experts to determine a minimum level with no tax and granted basic living expenses, up to I’m guessing around 50% in the USA for the wealthiest.
Inheritance taxes, living trusts, etc. for family. Up to, say $1-5 million for immediate family members, $500k-1 million to close friends/family, untaxed to various good works, educational facilities, or other public benefits. Otherwise, the rest goes to pay for the one-payer, universal health care. Others can benefit from your hard work this way, but hoarding excess generational wealth goes by the wayside.
(all these figures are napkin-math level, that’s why I need experts, and round figures based on 2026 numbers/inflation).
Some flat payout, and an acknowledgement to people brought to the US as de facto or de jure slaves, with a minimum amount of verification. Seriously, not too much, because it’s unfair to current and future generations to fully bail out their ancestors evil, but something non-token as well - they need to be acknowledged, and recompensed for generational evils as well. I don’t think there’s any fair number, but enough to help and make everyone feel the apology was sincere? 10k per individual as a round number maybe?
I could go on for days, but that gives me a start.
Abolish Capitalism and replace it with a better system.
Tax reform on a giant scale.
I want an algorithm that measures, raises to shareholders vs workers, bonuses for the executives vs workers. Percentage of workforce using food banks. Paid vacation days, bosses vs workers. Charitable donations to outside organizations vs programs for employees to get more education, etc.
Reset perception of business success, so it must include workers benefits. Pensions, medical, education, paid time off, maternity leave.
It measures such things to determine your business tax rate.
Start incentivizing industry to create great work environments before the executives can get private jets!
What do you feel is a better system?
From what I can tell, the nordic model seems to be the current best system. That involves capitalism with large amounts of regulations and redistribution to make capitalism work for the public.
I’m not sure what other working models there are. I guess there are co-ops, and systems where the workers own the companies. A nordic system where the workers own the companies and natural resources (and thereby own all the wealth produced) would be nice.
Gonna need to give some details here 
Socialism.
How’s that working out?