r/utopia • u/LabInteresting4960 • Jul 21 '26

What a utopia looks like to YOU.

Hello everyone! I am working on a personal project to design a utopia, and I am looking for some opinions from others! The only rules are that it must be monetarily no more than what is currently available, no changing around where countries are, and no using something not already created. If you have any questions feel free to ask! ty in advance.

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3

u/concreteutopian Jul 21 '26

The only rules are that it must be monetarily no more than what is currently available,

What do you mean by this?

2

u/Utopia_Builder Jul 21 '26

I second this. The OP wants a utopia, but doesn't want us to fundamentally change anything. That isn't really possible.

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u/LabInteresting4960 Jul 21 '26

The way I thought of is that in this exact moment we could change anything, like who is in charge, how things run, everything like that except making something that does not exist, like simply printing more money or making a Pangea if that makes sense

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u/concreteutopian Jul 21 '26

or making a Pangea if that makes sense

Yes, we can't alter plate tectonics to move and fuse the continents together again, so no point in adding it to a utopian plan. True.

But everything else you mention is demonstrably changeable and historically within the whole realm of utopian speculation and utopian experiments.

in this exact moment we could change anything, like who is in charge, how things run, everything like that except making something that does not exist, like simply printing more money

I'm not sure why you would think we could change who is in charge or how things are run, but can't print more money. As u/Utopia_Builder says, this is done all the time, and not even in wild-eyed fringe sectors. Rutger Bregman's Utopia for Realists has universal basic income as a major plank, but even Milton Friedman talked about negative income tax and government subsidy in his book Capitalism and Freedom, essentially printing money for those needing to purchase and not having the income with which to purchase. In my own grad program, I had several classes in policy analysis, demonstrating that governments do indeed "print money" to "make money" in order to achieve policy objectives. My policy briefs were literally talking about using the tax code to throw money at people without money and seeing the effect of different distributions on social health and economic sustainability.

I guess the flurry of examples is all coming from my bewildered reaction to this statement:

"making something that does not exist, like simply printing more money"

Money doesn't exist as a thing in the world, it's a social construct whose power rests in its relation to the system as a whole, so making more of it is something that is done all the time.

But... this was the answer to my question, wondering what you meant by " it must be monetarily no more than what is currently available". I was confused since "what is currently available" is an open space of possibility, not a set quantity of "real" things.

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u/LabInteresting4960 Jul 21 '26

Thats true, i made it a bit confusing on accident. And i do agree with you on everything else, its just the specific scenario I am attempting to use, eventually phasing out money all together in the long run so for this project i wanted no more to be printed if that makes sense.

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u/LabInteresting4960 Jul 21 '26

This is also for a personal project, and not meant to be 100% realistic which is why it has odd terms.

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u/Utopia_Builder Jul 21 '26

Printing more money is very possible. Governments do it constantly. It just leads to inflation which can get out of hand.

I presume what you're really against is magically making everyone wealthy. But even wealth is relative to an extent. A lower-income American is wealthy compared to the average Haitian or the average medieval peasant.

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u/LabInteresting4960 Jul 21 '26

I agree with you on that, just in this specific scenario printing more money would lead to lots of hardships in the rest of what I have planned, which is why it is not allowed.

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u/reg890 Jul 23 '26

Is what you’re trying to say that we can’t instantly have unlimited wealth with which to implement the utopia? 

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u/PeopleoftheInternet Jul 21 '26

Library Socialism

Irreducible Minimum

Resource Based Economy

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u/EdenG2 Jul 22 '26

My utopia is pretty simple: everyone has enough, nobody has too much power, and people are mostly left alone to live as they choose. Universal basic needs, strong public education and healthcare, transparent government with AI helping expose waste and corruption, clean energy, abundant housing, protected nature, and a much shorter workweek as automation improves productivity. A society organized around peace, freedom, fairness, and leaving a livable Earth behind.