Andy Hines, "Imagining After Capitalism" (Triarchy Press, 2025)
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Welcome to the new Books Network.

Welcome to the New Books Network, where ideas come alive and the future unfolds. I'm your host, Nathan Moore.

Today, we delve into the book Imagining After Capitalism with author Andy Hein, exploring bold visions for what comes next in our world. Hi, Andy. How are you? And can you give us a brief description of your book? Sure. I'm doing really well during the holiday season as it begins in the

What I wanted to do was to put into the idea sphere, I guess you'd say, some ideas about what might the future look like after capitalism.

So you described three guiding images for a post-capitalist future. How did you arrive at these specific visions and why are they essential now? Sure. So I am a professional futurist. I've been doing this work for 35 years now. So I wanted to create a work about the post-capitalist future using foresight methodology.

So at the University of Houston, we teach something called Framework Foresight, and I use that to develop the images. So these images are based on a, I should say, a proven research method. And it's interesting, in my role now as a professor at the University of Houston, I come across a lot of works about the longer-term future, and very often there's not really a method. It's very intelligent people speaking often very intelligently about the future, but they don't really have

you know, a clear set of steps for how they got from A to B. And what I wanted to do in this work is do just that, is create a very clear trail of how did we get from some very interesting ideas percolating here in the present

to that longer term future. And in terms of why now, boy, I'd say that, you know, the timing is interesting, right? My snarky answer is look out the window, right? Obviously things aren't going so well, but to be a little bit more helpful, perhaps I started looking into this topic around the year 2012, right? So when very few people were talking about the future after capitalism, right?

And I got interested in it, started looking into it. And then I noticed maybe about five years ago, kaboom, the interest in that. Now, maybe not among the general population, but in terms of the, I don't know, the idea, folks, you saw a great deal of interest in the future after Kaplan. So in the last three to five years, we've seen a lot of interest. And I think it kind of makes sense in the context of

Given that we're having some difficulties, I guess, you know, you start to look for different answers. Fear, denial and false hope. Are these societal reactions to capitalism's decline or...

or to change in general? How would you describe these social reactions? Oh, I think it's a great question. And it's a little bit of both. And I think they're interrelated. You know, for most of the 35 years that I've been looking at the future professionally, I would say most people were generally pretty optimistic about the future. And about five or 10 years ago, that started to change.

And people have been apprehensive, even fearful of the future. And that's been a major shift. Now, I think part of that is coming from the fact that capitalism, which has arguably served us well for quite a long time, has finally come to, if you will, to the end of its road. And that's not the only factor, but it is one of the factors that's created this climate that says, ooh, things aren't going right. And we're not as hopeful about the future as we used to be. And we're a little bit of afraid now.

And I hope, again, the purpose of this work is to say, but there are positive alternatives and we've got to kind of inject them into the into the conversation. Do you know who Gray Scott is and are you familiar with his strain of futurism? Can you give an example of other futurists that might interest the audience?

Well, I do know Gray a bit. He came through. We teach like a week long boot camp for people who want a quick a quick intro to how foresight works. And he came through our course. So he's a solid, you know, he has, if you will, uses a methodology and a very thoughtful guy. I followed his work a bit.

And his work, I think, would align with one of the images that I call tech-led abundance, which is kind of, if you will, simply put, the tech-driven future.

So I think I think there's a lot that goes under that, you know, technology obviously being a huge category. But I think there's a there's a lot of a lot of different ideas for how we might get to a future where technology, if you will. I mean, the vision of most of the proponents are that technology, if you will, solves our major economic and social problems.

So I think in that case, Gray and others, Ray Kurzweil would be another prominent one, Peter Diamandis. There's a whole host of folks, maybe Nick Bostrom, who's written about the superintelligence with AI, etc.

So there are a fairly well-developed set of images for how that might happen. Now, one might be skeptical, but those images are out there. And I felt like my job in looking for, if you will, positive guiding images of the future was to look across the whole landscape. And so that is a very well-developed set of ideas. I think, you know, again, Gray, I think, is a credible guy in that space. Yeah.

You provide three guiding images. One is the circular commons, and then the other is non-workers paradise. And then another one is tech-led abundance, which you mentioned before. So can you describe these three guiding images? Absolutely. So the circular commons is, as you probably have discerned, is the environmentally driven one.

And I should just kind of set the table a little bit for how do they get to these three? I did not come into the work with a predefined sense of, you know, we need one of these. Rather, I scanned for years. I did what teachers call horizon scanning, looking for signals of change. And I got my hands on as many books as I could find for people who had written about, if you will, some aspect of the post-capitalist future. And, you know, there's a

There's a fair bit of literature there, right? So by putting all that together over a period of years, they basically clustered into these three images, right? And one was the environmentally driven one is circular commons. I would say the socially, politically driven cluster of these ideas is I call the non-worker's paradise.

And the third cluster was, as I mentioned, was around the technology driven future. And so in a sense, those clusters emerge from the research. They're not sort of my predetermined sense of it. Although I feel like that's a pretty turns out to be a pretty wise way to think about it. Right.

I think most folks, if they do go through the book, will come to the end and they might say something like, boy, I think it's a little bit of all three of these. I think that's probably true. But what the way I wanted to present it is for those who are, we know that certain people are going to be very environmentally driven. And for them, that circular commons idea is,

And to give you just a sense of like the high level story there is, you know, we might be talking about a future of degrowth, right, to get the environment back in shape, so to speak. So that's obviously a bold and somewhat controversial idea. But after going through the research, that seems to be a pretty plausible path there. Yeah.

And the non-workers paradise, you know, we kind of actually it wasn't I did not come up with that that particular title. I was playing around with, you know, the post-work future and we were talking about the workers paradise. And someone said, well, that's actually the non-workers paradise. And I'm like, oh, brilliant. Right. It's actually true. Right. So it's this this. So that second cluster, that social political cluster is really general. What's a post-work future look?

Obviously there's a lot more around that, but that's the key idea there. So circular commons, what does it, maybe a degrowth future look like? And,

In the second one, the non-worker's paradise, what does the post-work look like? And then, of course, in the third one, tech-led abundance, what does a tech-driven future look like where we use AI, automation, and a whole suite of technologies to affect, if you will, to effectively do the work for us, create the wealth for us, and we are able to intelligently apply that and solve major problems plaguing us today. So that's kind of a nutshell of the three images and how I got

Which of them is the most realistic and what has the most aspirational value or what's more far off, do you think?

Ha ha. You're making me pick. So I'll just say one of the things that, you know, as a professional futurist, one of our kind of guiding principles is, you know, we try to put out the alternatives and not like sway our audience to our own predispositions, right? But, you know, to play along a little bit here, have a little fun in this interview, you know, I will play the game. But I would say that, you know,

Because we can't know. One of the things we know about, I certainly have learned from experience, I learned it in the classroom and I've seen it in experience, is we just can't predict which of these things or anything like that with any degree of certainty. We might get lucky and get things right once in a while, but that's not...

It's not a legitimate way to do it. So the idea of saying like it looks it looks like the future would be one of these, you know, would have one of these three these three ideas kind of is major features of the landscape. That's actually like the legitimate way to do it. Right. Because we don't know.

It'll probably be, you know, some combination of, you know, there'll be something in between there, but we'll have at least a map of the landscape of possibilities. Now, that said, to answer your question and play along, I would think the circular commons probably requires the greatest degree of change.

And I think the circular aspect, which, you know, is playing on this circular idea that I think is really wonderful. The commons part is really tricky because that says not only do we organize our resources on a commons basis, but we organize social and political life on a commons basis. You know, so it's more of a local, direct, participatory, you know, kind of direct democracy approach. And that, of course, would be a radical shift from where we are today.

There are small scale examples of this, you know, kind of even floating around today and historically, but it's a pretty big one. So I would say that one probably has the biggest hill to climb, so to speak.

And, and related to that, I would say, you know, tech led abundance is probably the one that's closest to being, you know, the one we can, the one that's most like today. Right. I mean, I think we see a lot, we see all the, I don't want to say a lot of hype and hysteria about AI today and, you know, promises along with that. So I think we, you know, we can kind of see that future a little bit clearer than maybe, maybe the other two.

You've written extensively on futurism. What would you posit from your reading of science fiction as an influencer or something that shaped your views on post-capitalism?

Oh, that's a great question. I do like, cause I, I'm not completely on the geek end of the spectrum, but I've read a fair bit and I do enjoy it. And I think it's very helpful to give us some ideas about the future. I think of Kim Stanley Robinson's, I've read several of his books. I haven't got to the, his most recent one, but I really liked red Mars. I thought in terms of the political future, that really, that really had some useful thoughts there. Yeah.

I would say, though, you know, I thought about this a little bit in terms of the book itself, The After Capitalism. There are a couple of fairly recent books that I would say were really quite influential. And what I would note here is one of the things that I've seen happen in the field of future studies or foresight, however you want to refer to it.

is that science fiction and futures have come together a little bit. And we see that some science fiction writers actually kind of cross over into the future space and vice versa. We've seen some futurists cross over into the science fiction space. So we've kind of come together a little bit. A couple of them that I thought were really useful to my work, Cory Doctorow,

uh, wrote this wonderful book called walk away. And he just imagined how we get to a post capitalist future when people sort of, if you will, they opt out or they walked away from conventional society. And that was a very interesting scenario to play with. Uh, it's a well done book. Another one, um, by, uh, Carl Schroeder, who's actually a graduate of a foresight program. Uh, one of our, um, friendly programs up in Canada, the, uh, um,

Ontario College of Art and Design. So he's actually trained as a futurist. He had been a long time science fiction writer. And he wrote, his most recent book was called Stealing Worlds.

And he imagined a post kind of a post capitalist future emerging from the gamer community. Now, I won't give away the plot, but it's a very interesting and I think plausible story of how such a future could emerge. And the reason I think both of these, even though, you know, at first glance, you're like, wow, it's those both of those are pretty interesting.

pretty out there, right, from today's perspective. It's to imagine a change on the magnitude that we're talking about, a shift away from capitalism. For the last, you know, several hundred years has been kind of the dominant operating model. So that kind of a switch is not something that happens or the kind of a transformation does not happen easily. So it may take some combination of really bold ideas, along with probably mixed in with some more conventional ones.

So in order to imagine that kind of a future, you really have to stretch your thinking and look for some

a wide range of ideas. So I think in this case, those particular works really help stretch my thinking about how just, how might this come about? And I just, to make sure I'm clear on this is I don't think I've mentioned it yet. In the book, I say we're probably talking about a 20 to 30 year timeframe. So this is not, not next week, right? So it is something that is going to take a while because these just transformations are, as one might imagine, not easily done. Yeah.

Have you gotten any reviews on imagining after capitalism yet?

I have not. It is like literally in pre-release at this time. So you're actually the first person I've talked to since the pre-release, I guess we'd say. The paperback is out in Europe, but not across the world yet. And I have a few advanced copies and we have the publisher has some e-copies. So it's really not out yet. And so we're still doing some of that kind of work. So it'll be interesting to see. But I thank you for being first in line.

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Learn more at phrma.org slash IPWorksWonders. Well, that takes us to our next set of questions, which are focused on some of the challenges and critiques about your book. So critics might argue that envisioning a future after capitalism is inherently ideological. How do you respond to this?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that's true. I think that's a statement of fact. It feels like there's something in there that, like, is somehow a bad thing to have, uh,

to be called ideological, you know, being now in the academic space, I kind of understand that. And I guess my response would be I did not come into the work with a particular point that I was trying to make. I mean, I really came in with a blank slate. And I should mention that the way I, this is, you know, I'm near the end of my career than the beginning. And the way I got into futures, one of the, the second book I read about the future

It was called The Image of the Future by Fred Pollack. And he talked about the need for a positive guiding images of the future. And I read that. I'm like, oh, oh, my God, that's it. You know, 35 years later, a busy man making a living and such. You know, one of the things I want to do is come back to that original book and say, well, you know, what can I do to address that? Because it really, you know, it really motivated me. Now, I've done a lot of, you know, practical project work.

So this for me was one of those things that I always wanted to get to. And so in the sense, again, my my quest was not to say, well, here's what Andy believes. It's more to say, what is out there? Like, what are people thinking? And to kind of pull that together and say, here are the stories that are brewing. They're emerging. They're not fully developed yet. But we have the kernel of story of three different stories here.

So I think that was my intent was to, you know, find what was out there, put it together, tell the story and if you will start the conversation. You know, if that's ideological, so be it. Right. I'm not going to get too worried about it. OK, so if capitalism is inherently adaptable, as some would argue, why won't it just evolve to address all of the crises that you outlined?

Oh, you're so right. Amazingly adaptable. Wonderfully adaptable.

There's been a lot of, I guess, twists and turns and accommodations. And that's why I say I think we're talking, even as you might say that there's some cracks in the edifice here in the present, I still think we're a good 20, 30 years away. And it wouldn't even shock me if it lasted longer than that. I think what, now, when I came into the research, I was not envious.

inherently anti-capitalist. Um, I didn't have anything, you know, any, any ax to grind against it. I looked at it and, um,

Would not have necessarily said it's inevitably done. But as you know, the more you dig into the research, you go, what do I think we have here? Let's just put the putting the cards on the table. The basic problem is capitalism is a system. And in as a futurist, one of the foundational courses, I guess you'd say, or theories is, you know, systems thinking and, you know, how systems operate.

And, you know, systems produce, the structure of a system produces a certain behavior. Capitalism is a system that produces certain behavior. And for, you know, the last few centuries, it's produced behavior that on, you know, I think on balance, people said, yeah, it's pretty good. Not everybody's happy about it, but in general, it's produced wealth for many. And, you know, we're more or less happy with it.

And I think what's happened is that system is now entering into a future context where it's producing results that don't fit. It just simply cannot produce the kinds of results that we want in the future that we're merging into. So it's just it's a misalignment.

You know, you could again, you could argue it's been fairly well aligned the last few centuries. The world has shifted. The context has shifted. And what it does just doesn't doesn't fit with where we want to go. So that's even though it is. And look, there will be lots of tweaks. There are lots of tweaks going on all the time. But ultimately, it's just that misalignment thing.

I think is just too great to overcome. And in what ways do you address the potential for backlash from entrenched interests

from agencies within the government or corporations or even the public. Look, I think we should expect that any system, not just capitalism, any system that undergoes change, the established interest, of course, they're going to fight to protect their interest. That's just, you know, human nature, right? So I don't think we should be surprised by that, first of all, right? We should expect it. And I pretty strongly advocate in the book, like, let's not get into demonizing that.

Let's not call the supporters of capitalism evil. Let's not even call capitalism self-evil. Capitalism is just a system that does what it does, right? It doesn't...

It's not it doesn't have an intention. It does what it does. It's the people that have that intention. And again, you could rather than rather than demonizing it, calling them evil, like because, you know, then we get nowhere. Right. We get into where we are today, where we have these kind of stalemate situations where opposing sides can't even talk to each other. No, because each side thinks they're right. The other one's wrong. And there's just there's no middle ground.

So, if you will, my strategy or my what I would advocate as we make this transformation to after capitalism is, you know, we, you know, if you will, honor might be a little strong, but we acknowledge that, look, it did its it did what it did its job.

And it's just, it's not inherently wrong or evil. The people are not inherently wrong or evil. What we need to do now is just, you know, have the conversation, open up, open up the conversation so that we can, you know, kind of make some progress towards something different. And if we can't even have the conversation,

You know, I guess to put that to put that really more bluntly, one of the things that I fear is that capitalism will collapse too soon where we don't have anything behind it. Right. You know, if the if you will, the global just imagine the global financial or economic system collapsing. Right. Very plausible. And there's nothing behind it. We don't know how to fix it.

So to me, in a sense, we this kind of the 20 to 30 year time frame is actually a pretty good thing. Right. Because it gives us some time to, you know, start to think because there's a lot that needs to be thought through. There's a lot that needs to be done, though. I think we've just got to get into the we've got to be able to put, you know, put this stuff on the table and discuss, talk about it like reasonable adults. Right.

Easier said than done today, but that's what I'm advocating. What are the academic interdisciplinary foci of your work? Like, are we at the University of Houston working with historians, literary scholars? Who do you look at in academia for help or for inspiration?

So it's one of the good, the pluses and minuses of being a futurist in academia is the plus is we fit everywhere. The minus is we fit everywhere, which means the flip side of that is we fit nowhere, right? We're not really, we're inherently interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, which, you know, is great in terms of, you know, building bridges, but it makes it tough to find a place. Where do you sit in the university, right? So that's always been,

which is why I think we're a relatively small program. The whole field in academia is relatively small. So I say we take our inspiration from anywhere, and that's part of our, I guess, creed. In this particular work, I did focus primarily, first and foremost, on the economic question. So I tried to look...

from what are the, if you will, the economists saying, or at least economically driven works, talking about the future after capitalism. Because one of the things that, just to manage the scope a bit, I didn't try to look at every single work that talked about the future because I'd be doing that for the next...

30 years. So I tried to look at the economically driven ones. So there, in this case, I did focus more on that. Now that's still brought in the ideas like tech led abundance, and it's still brought in a lot of the circular economy ideas. So, but it was definitely an economic, an economic focus to this work. Is there a post political philosophy in imagining after capitalism? I, I,

I think so, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily, it's certainly not radically new, but different. Right. I mean, I think the idea, so, and now I'm thinking of like most of the works that talked about, all right, so what does this look like? What does, and then, you know, in the day-to-day life, what might a post-capitalist future look like? And most of them talk about a, you know, kind of a low, let's say a locally driven, globally coordinated, but locally driven,

highly participatory, kind of like a direct democratic approach to kind of managing the daily life. So it's very much in that sort of sphere. Now, how do you coordinate on a global scale is still admittedly a little bit of

Fuzzy. But I mean, so that's different, right? It's radically different than today, but it's not, the idea itself is not really new at all, right? I mean, it's actually...

has been historically, it's been, you know, evidenced historically, not in the context of today's world, right? Obviously, that's much different. You know, in a world of, you know, unbelievably global instant communications and such that, you know, obviously the local media

the possibility for connecting is so much greater than it might've been in some of the past historical instances. But nonetheless, you know, that idea of local direct participatory, well, yeah. Okay. That's not exactly new, but actually doing it in today's context. Sure. That would be a pretty radical, pretty radical approach. What happens to the arts, the culture and the humor in a world that is so future focused?

And also, what about liberal democracy as a thought experiment in America? Yeah, well, I think, you know, so I had I did a blog post a while back, 10 things we could do if we didn't have to work. Right. Trying to imagine that.

It just gets one of the major criticism that comes up when I talk about some of these ideas, especially the non-workers paradise in post-work as well. People just, you know, sit around and do bad things. Right. And I'm like, I do grant that I think a certain percentage of the population will spend the time maybe in ways that some others would not approve of. But I think most of us would say this is great.

And, you know, I've always wanted to fill in the blank. And there's there's lots and lots of different things that I think we could productively fill our time with. Now, again, it would be an adjustment. But it's not one of the things that it's important to keep in mind. And this comes in to a lot of futures work is sometimes when we paint a picture of a long term future, that's much different than today.

It seems almost unachievable because it's so distant from where we are, but it doesn't acknowledge that we are going to get there gradually. Like between now and 2030 years, that transition is going to be underway so that, you know, each year it gets a little less, a little more clear, right? A little less fuzzy. And as you get closer, it's not such a big radical leap anymore.

And as a good example of that, when Ray Kurzweil first popularized the singularity idea back in the early 2000s, you know, people were like, oh, my goodness, that's absolutely unimaginable. There could never be that. It's crazy. You know, it's just like...

You know, I think now when you, when you talk about the singularity, like most, even real, we'll say like normal people have heard about it. People can talk about it. It's, it's no longer such a crazy idea, right? It's, it's,

Because we've had 20 years to kind of see progress in that direction, it's now, it's the leap from, you know, 2007 or something, you know, to what he was talking about in 2045. That looked almost unimaginable. But from the viewpoint of 2024, you know, it's still a leap, but it's less than.

It's less, I guess, less unimaginable, so to speak. So I think there is that sort of to keep in mind, like we will gradually get there. We will learn our way towards it. Things will become more, if you will, more we'll get more comfortable with it over time.

Can we say that post-capitalism would be part of a new world order, or is that a reach? Well, one of the biggest and admittedly unresolved questions, and I cop to it in the book, it's like, you know, how we handle the global question is, you know, it's a huge dilemma, right? Can you have a post-capitalist society in the midst of non-capitalism?

no post-capitalist societies, right? Because you could imagine that if you're in the non-capitalist society, you'd want to come and join, right? You know, so...

uh, how would you manage that? Right. And we're seeing that today on a, you know, on a smaller scale in that we see, you know, one of the big, uh, I guess, challenges for, uh, now that Europe's going through that, uh, where you see, uh, you know, migrants coming in or immigrants coming in and all the way to this is, you know, this is a, uh, you know, upsetting the established way of doing things. So imagine, you know, multiplying that on the difference between a

you know, a post-capitalist where you have something like a, you know, something akin to a universal basic income. And how does that, can that exist in a context where not everybody is in the same boat, right? I mean, that's, again, I can't say I have the magic solution to that. I would say, however, what I do offer up as a potential, at least something we can start to work towards is,

Again, we go back to this question, what are people going to do with their time in a post-work world? If the robots and AI are doing most of the work or a lot of the work, what do the humans do, right? Well, how about as a piece of work to do, whether it's a job or whether it's just something in a set of activities we do, how about helping the lesser developed parts of the world develop? What a great thing to do. What a wonderful thing to do. And there's plenty of that work to do.

So maybe that's a way that we can address that question. But I do think it is a it's a big one. Right. And it's not an easy one. But again, I think there's at least some something we can do to work towards resolving that. What existing experiments in our world exist?

do you think have the capacity to lead to the images that you present as your guiding images? And as a futurist, for example, is artificial intelligence an ally or a disruptor for you in achieving your vision? We know you have a lot on your holiday to-do list.

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Oh, let's do the AI one because that's just so good. We're actually doing a project now for a client where we have one of our drivers of change. We're calling it AI friend or foe. Right. And you can make a very compelling case for both. Right. You can AI as a friend.

I mean, the tech-led abundance images, you know, the positive there is a great enabler, right? What's the variable? The variable is how we humans decide to use it, right? We could use it, I think, in a way that benefits us.

If you will, the mass of humanity, or we can use it in a way that's going to get a few people and a power elite very rich and even more powerful. Right. So you there is where and we're at that, you know, we're at that critical juncture. Right. We're really we're right at it.

Um, you know, so I, I, I think there's still time to, uh, to, um, to see how it plays out. But I mean, we're, we're living through this right now. The decisions we, that we're making today are really going to determine which way that plays out. So I think, I, you know, obviously we hope that it's going to play out, uh,

To me, it's the AI as tool approach. That's the winner, right? Like, how do we use AI to, you know, if you will, facilitate the things that we want to have happen and not have AI, if you will, facilitate the humans, right? So it's like, you know, basically, who's going to be in charge here? And I think we need to make that decision. And, you know, there's the...

The current balance is probably a little bit tilted towards, you know, we're just going to blinding kind of apply AI blindly and, you know, for typical capitalist kinds of economic pursuits that will benefit a few at the top. So that's the momentum. There is a lot of, you know, counter to that, but I would be, I am a little bit concerned about that because I do think that's a big, a big factor. Well,

What you do see in terms of other, you know, some of the other things we mentioned earlier, the universal basic income. And there's been lots of trials around the world, all small scale, right? All very small scale, hundreds across the globe. And the returns on those are generally very positive, right? They work, you know.

Enough such that you say, all right, let's keep going. Let's ramp up the scale. Let's keep trying it. So I think the early returns definitely say keep doing it, right? Now, I don't know in 20 years from now if UBI is going to be the thing. To me, it's just an example, right? It's something that people are familiar with. They've heard of it.

Even if they don't like it, which a lot of people don't, it at least gives us some kind of anchoring to imagine what does the world look like if you don't have a job? How do you get money? How do you get access to resources without a job?

So in that sense, it gives us at least some indications that these kind of post-work ideas could work. Now, we have a lot of work to do, a lot of improvements to make, but there is some positive evidence, but still relatively small scale. Was Moore's Law an attractive ideology for you or model for

Because the accelerating pace of technology might affect some of your guiding principles. Would you agree or disagree? Oh, I mean, look, to me, growing technological capability is inherently a good thing. I mean, this is great. Like, I mean, technologies that can do more things. That's wonderful.

Now, the whole enchilada here is how do you use that, right? I mean, you can use that capability for, you know, if you will, good or evil, right? And that's always, that's the rub. The technology itself, I mean, heck yeah. More computing power. If we use that computing power in a smart way, we can address, you know,

climate, environmental, and all these other kinds of issues, right? How to distribute income, you know, all these kinds of things. And so the technology can absolutely help deal with social, political, economic concerns. But again, it's how, you know, how do we use that? And how do we make wise decisions on how we use that capability? So yes, having that is wonderful.

I certainly don't want to, you know, go back to the dark ages and turn off the, turn off the internet. Although, I mean, there may be times I feel that way, but no, in all seriousness, right? It, those are tools, right? And how do we use the tools? And I think, you know, if I can kind of come back and just, if you don't mind, before we, before I forget this, one of the big ideas of the book is really what I think one of the things that capitalism has been so successful, it's just been so ubiquitous. It's, it's, it just so, so good at what it's supposed to do, right? Yeah.

that in a sense, our daily life has become, you know, if you will, we're living in an economy rather than living in a society. And it's been a subtle shift, but I think now it's like our primary purpose is to produce economic growth rather, or what I would prefer to see, or what I hope the flip is in the after-capitalist world, is seeing that capitalism is a tool to provide the good life, the good society, right?

And I think it's kind of, you know, it's kind of flipped around, right? That now we have society serving the economy instead of economy serving the society. And, you know, to me, it's just backwards, right? So I think that's one of the great opportunities. And again, I think technology is something that can help that. How do we use the technical tools, the economic tools,

to provide a better life. And I think that's the focus that I would like the after capitalism world to think about. What is the good life that we want to achieve with all these wonderful tools we have at our disposal? In a futurist context, space is probably a big contributor to a lot of people's

about like high-tech worlds. And I was thinking about the expanse and like space mining. How would you integrate some of those visions into your book, Imagining After Capitalism? Yeah.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's particularly prominent given the 20 or 30 year timeframe. I did come across some of the works that I looked at, engaged that more than others, relatively small number, but there were some that talked about the potential for space to bring like, you know, if,

If you will, if we get there faster than we might seem to be the current trajectory. That is, if we get to sort of viable commercial space mining and somehow avoid conflict on that pursuit. So that's another whole caveat. But if we can get there, right, you know, the amount of, if you will, mineral wealth is just staggering. And so to me, that would be an accelerator, right? If that...

If the, you know, long-term, certainly that we're going to see more influence of space. In the 20 to 30-year future, you know, could it bring back the practical? Yeah, it could, but it's probably not front and center. But if you will, if it happens faster, then I think it could definitely accelerate. Same thing about, it could be, if you will, an enabler of that abundance that would enable the post-work.

How important is climate change for your argument?

Well, I think it's important to all of us, right? I mean, you know, the big three, you know, inequality, climate change, and I think the role of AI. I mean, those are probably the big three drivers of the future. And, of course, they appear in each of the visions. I think where climate may also provide that accelerator role,

and I'm not necessarily in a good sense, but if you try to imagine, you know, what, what might get us to kind of pay attention, so to speak, right. To say like, let's, we need to make this transition or transformation, right.

happen faster than it's currently going. And I think environmental, unfortunately, our climate crisis could be one of those, I don't know if I'll use a U.S. colloquialism, like a kind of a global Manhattan project, right? That maybe that finally raises that awareness, like we have to do something dramatic and we have to do it now. And so I think climate could be that

kind of trigger that would kind of bring us together and say, you know, we need to, we need to change this current system to something, something different. So that's probably where I would see it as, again, that sort of trigger could make it go faster, but obviously front and center, the, the, you know, the,

The circular commons aims front and center at not only climate, but also resource scarcity concerns. So it's a pretty fundamental part of that after capitalism future. After a decade of you studying this, what does the next decade or so or more, even more, have in store for you and other futurists?

It's been so fascinating to see the pandemic really spiked interest in the future. I mean, our graduate program doubled and then tripled. It came back down a little bit once the, you know, once the pandemic kind of subsided.

But and then in the, you know, in the government space, the NGO space, philanthropic space, interest in the future has come up. It's been slow and steady in the corporate sector as well. So I think interest in the future, you know, is probably at an all time high.

So I think that's, you know, that's really good news for futurists and for the work that I do. Right. So I think there'll be plenty, plenty for us to be thinking about. I think in particular, what I'm interested in is to see the reception to these images and, you know, see what, you know, what conversations that generates, if anything. And because I've already on to the next book project.

And what we're, what that's going to be about is called, it's the basic idea is activating the future. Like how do you implement all this futures work? Great. You've created this great long-term vision. How do you get there? How do you make it happen? And of course, you know, that's a big challenge that, you know, not only futures have, but every visionary has, right? So that is the next project that I'm kind of, you know, is kind of a, one of those wraps to a career and a career in this space. And I, you know, if the,

hopefully the, as these after capital images get out there, you know, could part of that, you know, if we will call it this activating or implementing the future, part of that focus could be around how do we, you know, if you will, how do we build the movements, the programs, the campaigns, the activities, the pilots, the experiments to bring about after capitalism. So I definitely want to get more into that application space with my,

futures work in general. And I'm hoping that that will include some work towards the post-capitalist future as well. And if you could offer any piece of advice for those who are interested in your discipline, what would it be? Stay positive, stay hopeful, and just believe in the power of the work that we do. I am just a thousand percent convinced now that I've been doing this work for 35 years and I've actually lived through so many projects and seen them

Excuse me. I've seen them start from fragments of ideas and then, you know, been around long enough to actually see them come to fruition. So this work works. Exploring the future, the set of tools we have, the methods we have, they absolutely work. Now, getting people, if you will, getting our clients to do, to act on the work is hard, right? This change is very difficult. Most people would say, let's just keep things the way they are, right? So we have that challenge of how do we implement this stuff?

And so my advice is, you know, to absolutely believe that this stuff does work. I've seen the proof's in the pudding, but then how do we become more effective at it? Just how do we become more effective at that implementation work? How do we bring people along better? How do we help people understand it? You know, and we're in this kind of co-creating thing, not that we're lecturing people about what to do, but...

Figuring out how to, you know, again, how do we enable, bring about that change more effectively? And so I would just say, you know, just to believe it and keep at it. And it's been nice to watch again over this long period of time to see some of the stuff that, you know,

Started out as a, you know, a gleam in the eye. And here we are many years later and, you know, it's here. So that would be my advice. Thank you for joining us on the New Books Network. I'm Nathan Moore, and it's been a pleasure discussing Imagining After Capitalism with Andy Hines. Until next time, keep reading, keep questioning, and keep imagining new possibilities. Well, thanks so much for having me.