Abraham Ortelius' map of Utopia (ca. 1595). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
It is generally accepted that to label a political argument as utopian is in part to condemn it. And yet, a great many political arguments have some utopian refrain. There is something in the possibilities of utopian thinking that seems too rich, too exciting, too open-bordered to pass up. Even in an age in which we are told that politics has become more moderate, more technical, and obsessed with ‘evidence-based policy’, we find explorations of how we might live if we could do exactly that. And we come across utopian thinking even in the oddest places.
Imagine a beautiful island in uncharted emerald seas. On that island, everyone gets a wage that reflects their productivity, leaving just enough profit for the entrepreneur to invest in their company and remain competitive. This allows each and every firm to provide goods and services at the cheapest price to a nation of consumers who seek out the best value for money in all things. There is little waste. Everybody can know about the state of the markets for jobs and goods and services, and everybody is free to change their working and purchasing preferences. This makes everybody happy. Society is a great agglomeration of little acts of decision-making in the marketplace, which has its own positive overall effects in producing a near-perfect balance between wages, prices, and investment.
