EP 149: Andy Hines - After Capitalism

 
 

A reinterview with Andy Hines discussing his upcoming book - After Capitalism

Interviewed by: Peter Hayward

Peter Hayward: Most of us are born into a Capitalist world. We are like the famous fish in the fishbowl that asked the question, what is water exactly? Will our futures be Capitalist? Will they be a continuation of the Capitalism that we have been born into. Or could it be something different?

Andy Hines: The long term trend basically is away from work as the central factor in my identity as it has been historically. And I think we've moving away from that. And I think what the Great Resignation, more or less is, you know what? Screw that. I am, if you will. I'm more than my work. And I am not gonna, I don't want that to be the central feature of my life. And so it's it's raising questions that I'm like, Oh, good. Finally we're asking like, What the hell, What are we doing? What is, what are our priorities here? What is the meaning of this? And just saying it isn't this, You know what we've been doing, ain't it? Now because we live in this system, we have to keep playing the game to some degree to survive. But those questions are now out there and I think that's a really healthy development.

Peter Hayward: That's today's guest, Andy Hines, who we last spoke to over a hundred podcasts ago in podcast 37 called Playing the Long Game. Andy is an Associate Professor in and the Program Coordinator of the Foresight program at the University of Houston. Which is the world's longest running foresight program. And he is here today to talk about his upcoming book called After Capitalism.

Welcome back to Futurepod, Andy.

Andy Hines: Thanks for having me. I guess it's a hundred episodes later, .

Peter Hayward: Yes, Episode 37 Playing the Long Game. You've been playing the long game and you played the long game through Covid. So tell me, what was that like for Andy Hines and the Houston program?

Andy Hines: Disaster is great business for the Futures game. Unfortunately, right? Our whole reason for being is to avert these kinds of things or be better prepared for them. Nonetheless when they do happen it creates that question of what is going on? And we doubled our program almost trippled over the course of the pandemic . So good news for us, bad news for the world.

Peter Hayward: And was that just expanding the American intake or were you actually pulling in a more global audience?

Andy Hines: We've always been maybe 10 percent-ish International. And we didn't really see any significant change in that. Probably the best news for us, we were already virtual before the pandemic. About two years ago, we switched from hybrid to fully virtual so that when the pandemic hit, we essentially didn't have to change anything. And so you can imagine when students would ask us, Hey, can we do this? We're like, We're already doing it.

Peter Hayward: Very foresightful.

Andy Hines: Yeah, that's not why we did it, but sometimes, sometimes just, doing the right thing, and even if it doesn't necessarily have a specific end goal, this is a smart thing to do, and then you know, it's at some point down the road you go, Oh, that was a smart thing to do.

Peter Hayward: Yeah, I think Sohail says that you move towards the future and the future moves towards you.

Andy Hines: I love it. I love it.

Peter Hayward: So you've been busy. You were foreshadowing, I wont say you were foreshadowing a book, but when we talked last time there was something around this kind of, What's Next for Capitalism or After Capitalism? And you've continued to bubble away with that and it's now a something isn't it?

Andy Hines: Indeed. I would say, I'm just exstolling the benefits of pandemics here. This is gonna be odd interview because it gave me a chance to really buckle down and write. Less to do more time on your hands. So I really did put the nose to the grindstone, so to speak, and cranked it out now, cuz I've been working in this topic for about 10 years. Pretty loosely. But I finally had a chance to finish it, and I would say this, I wished I had finished it five years ago, it's too late for that. But the explosion of interest, and I think some of it is related to the pandemic, but not all of it, but some of it. It's just going crazy. Every day there's a dozen stories about the end of capitalism.

Peter Hayward: Again, once you start to have the idea, then suddenly you see it around you. It's the classic confirmation bias when the confirmation bias is removed. Suddenly you are aware of the future around you.

Andy Hines: So I'm like, hurry up, .

Peter Hayward: So for listeners, and for the purpose of our chat, do you wanna just give us a, five minute, high level of the book and the theory and all that sort of stuff behind it, and then we can drill into some of the things.

Andy Hines: Absolutely. So the idea is simple. It says that, one of the first books I read about the future was the, this idea of The Image of the Future that successful societies, civilizations historically had this image that they, or sense of the future where they wanted to get to. And in recent times we just haven't had that, or there's really no positive, compelling guiding images of the future out there that we're working towards we're just kinda lost. And so the book basically went through and tried to find most ideas about the primarily economic future, but a lot will bleed into that because of systems interconnections. But what have people said about the long term future after capitalism and I think to your earlier point. We've came across this idea that it's an easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. It's so baked into our, it seems almost into our dna. Now we know that's not true, but that's the feeling, but, the last three to five, maybe 10 years, we've starting to see the real questions being raised.

So I said all right. What's being said about the long term future? So really it's a work primarily of synthesis and just poured through dozens and dozens of books and set up a scanning library, all the sort of standard research of futurists . And pulled it together into three, what I think are three buckets, which I'm calling three images of the future. And, putting them out there for us to chew on, look at, kick the tires on and say, does this sound like a future that we want? And so just really starting to fill the void, and I hope others will do it too.

Peter Hayward: So again, the point is not to forecast what the future could be. Each of the scenarios are themselves normative, but they make sense around sets of values and logics and the way the world works and that kind of thing. And they're really there as conversation starters for us to develop a literacy around what are the pathways towards alternatives to capitalism as it currently stands?

Andy Hines: I love the idea of conversation starters. And I think there is something a little bit different about images than a typical, I guess you'd say, scenario project. And I was fortunate that Wendy Schultz is teaching with us and she's done a lot of work on images and I dug into that and developed this whole template idea of, if you will, what are the components of an image? Cause it is a little bit of a different beast than a the scenario. Without getting into all that sort of mechanics, it was fun to do that. And you're right cuz we're not trying to get to, here are three answers. It's basically saying here are three ideas. And there is some support for them, cuz again, I synthesized it from pieces that are already out there and again, have the conversation and say what is attractive or not attractive and, maybe version one is a little rough, but hopefully we get to a version five or six that, that looks compelling. Right now there's nothing.

Peter Hayward: There's only a model that's falling apart in front of us. And there are people that are doubling down on the model, and there are people that are simply saying there is no alternative. And there are others who are, if you're like, locked into, to the end of the world. Not surprisingly the Dator four archetypes was a useful broad frame. So does that help to do some rough orientation?

Andy Hines: It does indeed. So while I did get to the end point, so to speak, the the ultimate images and I really think this is a 20 or 30 year deal. So this is not like something that's around the corner, although it could be.

Peter Hayward: Could be. Like the pandemic it was always 30 years out until it was happening.

Andy Hines: Point taken. It could. But I would say, best guess would be, that it's gonna take a while to get there. And actually, I think that's the best case. One of the things that came up in the research was, I think moving too quickly to any one of these or any image of the future overnight. That would be semi disastrous as well. Cuz we're just not prepared. That moving to a whole new system and, capitalism is, it's really the global operating system for most of the world. It's not just the economic system it's because of its connections into technology and social trends and governance that you can't even, you can't even untangle it anymore.

Peter Hayward: Just before we launch off into After Capitalism, any historian would say that capitalism is not a thing. It's it has always been a work in progress. It has never been a finished product. It has already changed significantly depending on how we see the story arc of capitalism. So it's already a hybrid model that we have now, but maybe there's some fundamental assumptions in the baked in model that just are not consistent going forward?

Andy Hines: S o one of the fun parts, the whole thing was fun, but I put together a list of all the different varieties of capitalism, and I think the list was at 88 last time. A nd to your point, even though if we speak of it as a real thing, even though, it's a system, it morphs, right? It morphs, adapts, and it has done so many times. I guess the argument here is that we're at the end of the road and that said, however, when we talk about all that's been written about the end of capitalism, there is much, much more written about how to fix capitalism than there is on how to invent a new system. So there is still plenty of ideas about we can make this. The most current popular one and stakeholder capitalism is gonna save us. My sense of it is when you look at the data, you look at what's going on, that there isn't another fix in there. And that it's just, literally at the end of the road that there's no place else for it to really successfully go.

Peter Hayward: So the big thing or the big forces that are breaking up the idea that we can sustain and even tweaking the existing model of capitalism to make it work in the future, what are the big things that are making that, as you say, make it the end of the road?

Andy Hines: Definitely the inequality problem. As you probably remember, we teach a whole class in systems thinking and what systems thinking says is, the structure of a system will produce what it produces. Capitalism will produce inequality. It's just what it does. It's doing exactly what it does and you can, you can try to mitigate it a little bit, but you can't stop it. You can't. That is a feature, and it's just, it's gotten to the point that I think the world looks at that and says, boy this is what it produces and we not we're, if you will, we just don't like what it's producing. So the inequality is just, and you can make it a little bit better, but that's, it's, that's just what it. You can't, can't blame it for that, right?

Peter Hayward: No. It's doing its job. It's doing its job, which is to give success to the successful.

Andy Hines: One of the points I make along that line is, let's not demonize it cuz capitalism to extent it did its job. Now I know that it could have been better. There's lots of things that would've been nicer about it, but in a sense it's if you say its job was to grow the economy and produce more wealth, it did that. Now it didn't do it equitably and all and so on. And it's brought us to the brink of environmental collapse. But in the sense the system, in terms of what it was intended to produce economic growth. It did. So what's changed? It's just the context in which it's operating. It doesn't fit anymore. So it's no longer a fit for the for our current and future context. So in a sense, that's why don't blame capitalism. It just does. It's doing what it does. Yep. It's it just doesn't fit anymore.

Peter Hayward: But people have also changed too, haven't they? What people expect from their nations, their lives have changed through that same time that capitalism was doing what capitalism does?

Andy Hines: Well, certainly, the existential threat of climate and carrying capacity, that's real, it's recognized, and certainly intolerable. But that's a pretty obvious one, right? That's just staring us right in the face. But alongside that are the value shifts that say these gross inequality rates not only within countries, but between, the Global North and the South it's no longer acceptable. Our value systems just don't accept it. In the heyday of capitalism, the heyday of modern values, competition and victory to the winner was okay. And the emerging values say no, that sort of winner take all stuff no, we're not going for that. This idea that we need to be more equal, participatory, as they become the new priorities. Again, the capitalist system just doesn't match. And it's not tolerant. We're not gonna take it anymore.

Peter Hayward: The assumptions of capitalism that, the best ideas win and success to the successful, but that was also on a presumption that most people that were on the winning team didn't know what it was like to be on the losing team. Whereas now most people can find out what the losing team looks like.

Andy Hines: And there's some pretty decent research that individuals will recognize this, but they always think they're gonna be the ones that win. And now the inequality rate has just gotten, even in the US which, we're among more affluent countries, we're middle of the pack, towards the back of the pack. But I've been using this idea of, it's the 0.1% super wealthy, the 9.9% people like myself, supporting that, to do working real hard. And then you've got 80, what, nine, sorry, 90% that are really in this sort of netherland and, there's the middle class idea, it's gone. Pretty much.

Peter Hayward: And population's amazing because so much of the world is so young now. And we think everybody's old. We think everybody's my age. And yet, there are some incredibly youthful countries out there with enormously young population bulges and when you have that and you have inequality, then you have got the raw material of significant social uprising.

Andy Hines: Right now the hope here is that we're smart enough to make that transition peacefully by choice, but we're gonna make it one way or another, and it may not be, the alternative is not pleasant. We know historically large bulges of youth with nothing to do and know where to go. We know how that's gonna turn out.

Peter Hayward: We don't need to be too good a futurist to work out where that one ends up.

Andy Hines: That's right. And another piece of that, I cuz it is one of the ideas that, sorry, you talked about After Capitalism. How do you get there? And I think it's a whole separate book to really dig into the pathway, but I'm pretty clear that, the idea of, uprising, revolt, revolution, it's time to pick up the guns. It's hard to see any way that doesn't turn out to be maybe even worse than the situation we're in now. It probably will be. So without a sense of where you want to go, and we've seen that historically, right? When there's no plan for what happens when you win. It doesn't usually work out too well.

Peter Hayward: The people with power, they have the guns already, and if they don't want to go, it doesn't matter how much civic uprising you create, it's very easy to create Syria out of a civil uprising.

Andy Hines: Exactly and that's what I say even though you might say 20 to 30 years, that's too long, it's really not. And even then, that really belies getting to work pretty damn soon. Now the good news alongside that is, when you dig deep and you look at what is happening at the local level around the world, there are some very, positive things that are happening. They're small and they're they're not to scale. So there are definitely positive developments, but they're dwarfed by the larger kind of headlines that we see today.

Peter Hayward: So baseline capitalism continues to tweak, continues to adjust the excesses of capitalism are the excesses of capitalism. We try to tweak. That's a possible future for Beyond Capitalism, which is just more of capitalism somehow tempered. But you found other possible pathways to alternatives didn't you?

Andy Hines: Yes. And so if we can use our three horizons model, which I love, right? So if you think of the first horizon as the continuation of capitalism, which may go longer than we think, the three images of the future are the horizon three new systems. There is this whole horizon two zone of interesting possibilities

Peter Hayward: The messy bit as I call it.

Andy Hines: Yes, it would be messy. And we see some of that already. We have one set of concepts they call like the collaborative sharing platforms. We put a lot of the ideas we're seeing around sharing economy, and this is the interesting thing, like as any horizon two, they have one foot in horizon three, one foot in the new, one foot in the old. And so there are there's a whole set of sustainability driven concepts that are basically how do we fix or reform capitalism? And again, they have a lot of really nice new ideas, but ultimately still tied to the existing way of doing things. So I stick those in horizon two. And so not quite there, even the horizon two would be a little better, right? A little, but it's messy, and maybe that's the transition. Maybe we have to go through that messy part to ultimately get to the horizon three images.

Peter Hayward: That's where are things are experimental. They fail, they succeed. Someone else tweaks them.

Andy Hines: Yeah, there's another bit of research we've been able to do at Houston. It wasn't related to the capitalism, but it was more around the Three Horizons idea. And we went back and looked at roughly 78 scenario sets. Historical scenario sets. We looked at more, but 78 more or less fit the pattern we were looking for and said how compared to how they were forecast to play out. So let's just say we had the future of food right in, 1980. And then it said 2000 was, so how did it actually play out? How close were they? What was the actual pace of change? And so looking at several dozen of those, what we're finding is that baseline horizon one future is lasting much longer than we think. Which I'm not sure we were very happy about, but it's oh my gosh, like this thing is still in the baseline 15 years later.

Peter Hayward: We found that with Limits to Growth. Limits to Growth, unfortunately, is tracking exactly what the model one said it would be if we didn't change. And guess what? We haven't changed. We're still trying to play the winner takes all game right? On a finite planet. And some people are gonna win for a long period of time and it would appear that more and more are gonna keep falling off the wagon.

Andy Hines: Interesting. So many, and especially the key noting Pop Futurists would be maybe a little bit more guilty of this than the quote average futurist. But I we hear so much the rapid pace of change, TINA. And there's all these acronyms for VUCA and oh my God, it's changing so fast. And then when you look, when you step back and look at systems, it's oh my God, it's not fast at all.

Peter Hayward: No, it's so fast enough.

Andy Hines: It's not fast enough. When you look at the actual changes, you can see, because we do scanning, right? If you do your scanning, you can see the early signs of change. And a lot of times it's 20 or 30 years ago. Just as a quick example, I saw a story yesterday that the neighborhood in California where Musk in the Boring Company had the prototype Hyperloop Tunnel. It's been sitting there for six years and they hasn't moved. They haven't done a damn thing to it. And the residents finally said, Will you take this piece of junk? And they did. Yeah. So think about 2016, all the hype and hoopla about the hyperloop, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Six years later, they haven't done a damn thing. And there was a little tweet from Musk himself saying someday we hope to start this up again. We will make it happen. So it's like nothing happened in six years after all that. And I think that's more common. That's not the exception. It's the rule.

Peter Hayward: I'm a bit of a history nut when it comes to future thinking. And I look at, apocryphal social change. And one of the things that I've always paid attention to is the whole franchise and the voting process. And how changing the voting franchise from just males with property to general males. Then the addition of women has fundamentally changed capitalism. But I'm asking the question, when are we gonna continue to broaden the franchise? When are we gonna let younger people, even into the franchise? To me, I'm quite surprised that, we've really gone now for a significant period of time holding that somehow 18 or 21 is the magic voting age. Because the kids themselves are simply saying, we want a say.

Andy Hines: One, a very common feature of most of the images are the concepts. So if somebody wrote a book, I called that a concept, and then it fits into one of the three images. But so a very common theme that came out was, the After Capitalism world is much more local. It's much more participatory, it's much more direct. That theme it just hits you right between the eyes. And it's not saying that we ignore global things, but it's saying it's primarily a local world, right? And that ladders up to, global concerns. But that's how we enable, managing, if you will. How do we manage the commons? Right? How do we do that in common? That theme is huge, loud, and clear. So to your point, if successful, it will be quite a different change to I guess enfranchising people to have a say.

Peter Hayward: So do you wanna just maybe just sweep through just for the listeners, so what are the three class of images that you saw or cluster of images that you saw for horizon three?

Andy Hines: Absolutely. So the first cluster I started out calling it the Sustainable Commons, but I've settled on Circular Commons. And maybe it's a little controversial, but I just feel like the Sustainability concept, god bless it, but it's just too tied to capitalism now. It's another one it's done its job. But I really feel like the Circular Economy framework hopefully gets us into a different head space. And I really like the concept, I think it's a great concept. So that was the reason for that word change. And the commons is this, again, this idea. And there are examples again, small scale, about how do we manage our resources in common? And then you just extend the idea of what is a resource. And so it is the environmentally driven of the three and it's really confronting the growth imperative. And, I didn't start out this way, Peter, I swear to you that I really was agnostic on growth or maybe it's a steady state, but I'm now convinced that we at least for a time, need a de-growth trajectory. I just can't see any other way around it. And the Circular Commons gets to that, right? This idea of a how do we do a de-growth? How do we how do we institutionalize some version of a Circular Economy? And how do we manage not only resources, but ourselves in a more direct democratic approach? So I'll do the high level and then we'll go back in.

The non-workers Paradise. Hopefully you get the play on the Worker's Paradise . Cause this is really the Post-work future. And it's the same thing. It's you can see signs of this momentum heading us this towards this future. Still the end point I think scares people. But basically it says, look, it's not saying that we don't have to do what might be called work or we don't have to do activities with an intent. But you don't need a job as a way to get access to the wealth of society. And there really the key to this is the inevitable redistribution that needs to happen. And that's a scary thing. The third one is Tech Led Abundance. And I'll just be honest I have a little bit of skepticism about this. And it is a legit image. It is out there and, there are adherents and it is popular and there's a lot to speak to it, but it basically says that, technology creates such an immense abundance, such a a degree of wealth that it essentially solves problems for us. And, there are some interesting maybe they are either side effects or possibilities. Now whether that's a Super Intelligent AI or a new human species that's actually running this abundant world is I guess, open for discussion. But definitely I felt like it was a legit a legit set of ideas and an image.

So if that makes sense. It's really, you have your environmentally driven, which is the Circular Commons. You have your social and politically driven, which is your Non Worker's Paradise, and you have your technology driven, which is the Tech Led Abundance. And you're probably already thinking isn't it a bit of all three and Yeah, probably?

Peter Hayward: If I can dial back to the first one about the Circular Commons is an interesting notion because we're seeing it play out in a very early form now with the conversation around carbon emissions. And not every country starts from the same place that we need to come up with a circular commons. You talk about there has to be a de-growth period. Maybe there are parts of the world that need to grow fast. And there are parts of the world that need to de-growth. That this question of equality. That not everyone's starting from the same place on the race track. And are we trying to set what the finish line looks like and are we trying to finish up with a situation where everybody gets to the finish line at roughly the same time?

Andy Hines: I'm gonna use that. I like that idea. Yeah. Cause so the emphasis is certainly on the affluent countries, right? There's no question because they're, the culprits to some extent. And certainly when you talk about the growth thing, right? And I think it's part of actually the Non-workers Paradise and the Post Work future. So what's the work, right? So we don't need to work anymore in the affluent countries. Granted we have not historically done a very good job of helping our neighbors, but that doesn't mean we can't. But what better work to do than to help the rest of the world develop? Again, I recognize that hasn't gone so well all the time. That to me seems like a noble thing to do if you don't have to go to a job. So to your point, it's not de-growth for everybody. It's de-growth for the growers.

Peter Hayward: And even as you framed that one, Andy, you've actually gone outside the notion of the nation state or you've placed national sovereignty within a more, almost a global sovereignty.

Andy Hines: We can see this happening to us, right? As an idea is on its way out is when it screams the loudest. So we're having all this sort of semi-fascist nation state stuff, screeching. We're screeching about it now, because we recognize that it's on its way out to some degree. And really it is, It's that global concern but the action really is happening at the local and that's happening everywhere anyway. National governments are more increasingly stalemated and not getting anything done. More and more of the actual decision making work and authority is already diffusing down to the local level out of necessity. And I think that is also the long term trend.

Peter Hayward: So when you talk about those three images I would imagine as you collect data on them what you would find is countries as they currently are now are on the path to some of them or further down the track. Is there examples in the world that you'd point to that show some of the pathways towards those happening?

Andy Hines: Excellent point. So I would say that the emphasis is primarily on the affluent countries, but it's actually primarily the US and the US, I think for better or worse, has been the standard barer, the vanguard of pure capitalism. So in a sense, what happens here is certainly a primary interest. I gave the same talk you saw the one in Finland and I did it in Germany last month. And the German's we're already there". I'm like, "you're not", But I mean there's, Are they further along? Oh, absolutely. Are they further along? Is Finland further along? Absolutely. Yeah. So yes, there are countries or regions or even cities, right? Neighborhoods. The US is as usual, we're a little bit behind the eight ball.

Peter Hayward: And when you talk about about how capitalism has to evolve, and one of the governors I would've thought on holding capitalism as it currently is, are governance structures, political governance structures that operate around the. Representative democracy. But you've gotta ask the question, how representative of democracy is representative democracy?

Andy Hines: My sense of this and it, maybe it's not gonna be as much featured in the book, but I hope it's a living kind of project that goes on as long as I'm kicking around. To me the, a lot of the right wing kind of the conservative, how we wanna put that movement against it's really against this, I think this progressive tech future. Its saying, we wanna keep things, we wanna go back to that simpler life. I actually, I'm very sympathetic to that. As part of the research for the book, I went deep into some of the right, the, the crazy right, if you will, just as there's a crazy left and, while there's a lot of questionable ideas in there, some of the basic ideas actually makes some sense. And you can imagine on the other side on the left, not that it's necessarily a left thing, but it's associated with the left, that this using technology for progress could lead us into this kind of matrix dystopia. I am very sympathetic to that the sort of feeling that, we wanna slow things down because unchecked tech progress is not something that we're has its own problems or maybe even has worse problems.

Peter Hayward: I'll have a podcast coming out shortly with Roger Spitz who's involved in a thing called the Disruptive Futures Institute, and he's got a guidebook coming out. And one of the topics that Roger talks about is as we have the rise of super intelligence, we also have the rise of super stupidity. That it doesn't happen that we necessarily all become educated. We actually can become deliberately uneducated. Is there an assumption as you look at the future, that people in fact are prepared to learn and be open to changing? Or are people potentially wanting to just simply almost not do it?

Andy Hines: I guess the one of the ways that I've looked at this idea that the right is just saying we don't wanna go into what they see as a high tech dystopic future is there is actually an opening. There is some place where we can talk about, how do we manage the pace of what's might be called progress or, manage the pace of technology? So I think there is some common ground. And in a commons based approach, in a Non-workers Paradise approach I could see how that could actually be negotiated. Now it might be difficult to actually get the groups to talk but I could see it. Whereas right now it's hard to see any basis for how the two sides are just so dug in the ground. But I think there is an opening, and I think a lot of it is just around this sort of sense that we are just flying into this tech led future without really asking, is that where we really want to go? And I think that's a conversation we want to have. Even though I have tech led abundance in there and I put it as a quote positive image but it could just as easily veer off in the other direction and be a very negative image.

Peter Hayward: You could argue that some of the other scenarios too, even the notion of a circular economy, doesn't necessarily mean a great place to live. I'm thinking of the Hunger Games model, that there's a model that says we're gonna get to a circular economy by simply very few people having anything.

Andy Hines: Yeah, de-growth could also spiral I suppose. And that's funny when, so one of the things you do in the archetype approach is you also have a collapse future, right? That is one of the things, and the way I handled it in the book is I just looked at each of the three futures. It said there is definitely in contrast to the circular commons, there is an environmental collapse. Very plausible. And Non-workers Paradise, that could end up in a Civil War, Tribal War, Secession if w e can't solve those social political problems. And the Tech Led Abundance, if you believe the super intelligence, maybe the super intelligence isn't so happy with the human race. But that may not be the the future that we want.

Peter Hayward: Obviously you aren't doing a forecast but what's the timeframe? You've said possibly not too fast because we've got a lot of things we need to redesign and relearn about, but what's your time horizon for these images?

Andy Hines: Yes definitely. Thought a lot about that and narrowed it down to 20 to 30 years. And again that seems plausible looking back at the historical record. I think that even though, again, you could say that we're in the verge of climate tipping, some people would say we're really close to that. We're really close to civil war at least. So it's close but the hope is that we can muddle through that period. So right now the problem is if we were to come to that moment, the only idea out there is Socialism and Communism, which, I have nothing against. I think they were, noble ideas in their own way, but at least in the US those are complete loser concepts. Unfair or not. , And it's the easiest way to sort of block change and say it's Socialism. It's actually Sohail's used futures right? We're dragging out the only thing we know to use futures from the past that have some pretty substantial baggage. So we better get something in there quick. Or that's, that's the kind of question, and we see it now we're having like the Socialism versus Capitalism. It's oh no, that's not the debate we want to have.

Peter Hayward: The socialism capitalism of is of course a political conversation. It just struck me that by yours is an economic social image of the future rather than necessarily a political one. You've almost given politics as the lag factor rather than the lead factor in it. You are saying economically and socially, we will demand a political system that allows this form of activity and living to operate. And what I was gonna remind you was that's exactly what Mont Fleur did in South Africa when they wanted to talk about the end of apartheid. And the Monte Fleur scenarios that we know were terribly influential in changing the whole dialogue around post-apartheid South Africa were economically based. They weren't actually based on politics, they were based on economics.

Andy Hines: The reason I settled on the economics was just because that's where it seemed like most of the juice was. But yeah, I mean the political landscape. That's just such a minefield. And to your point, it's also, it is terribly behind, right? My gosh. So to think that, it's very plausible that could happen, right? That you could have a , you could have a politically driven future, but yeah. It would, it, that would be a shock to the system. Yeah.

Peter Hayward: Yeah. Now you've said a generation, effectively have said within a generation, this will happen. And that of course triggers for me that we're talking about kids born, almost the kind of, early, early 21st century becoming the politically dominant group on the planet in a place like America, for example. So you are talking about generational change, carrying this world. You're talking about the old generation that's hung onto the old capitalism, effectively dying off at enough of a rate that the new ideas and the new generation get in. To what extent is, are your images tied in with generational change?

Andy Hines: Yeah, I'm not a big generations fan. I think it's a secondary influence rather than a primary, and I really do think the values change is the primary, but certainly values change, skews younger and really the vanguard of After Capitalism is the, teens, early twenties. And that's a group that I think right now is probably just a bit stunned. It's just gone through this apocalyptic preview. And I do think that, they'll regain their footing and I think that's a, that's a group's that's gonna say this is bullshit. The way that things are playing out. This is not what we want. And it's going to take them some time to integrate into the power structure, so to speak. And and probably then tear it down. But yeah, so that's where I'm, I guess I'm putting my.

Peter Hayward: Pre pandemic, they were the ones working in the gig economy. They were the ones who, who could not buy into the housing because they've been locked outta that. We've seen all around the world. You've had had your debt forgiveness process with some of the student loans. Even in developed countries like yours and mine, there are, we know there are significant, groups of 18, 20 to 30yo who really feel the future, that is the default future has got nothing to do with them.

Andy Hines: Exactly. And I think, the Great Resignation, so to speak. I do think that at some point, that at least a good portion of those folks are gonna have to scurry back to work at some point. But it's really, it's capturing a long term trend. The long term trend basically is away from work as the central factor in my identity as it has been historically. And I think we've been slowly moving away from that. And I think what the Great Resignation, more or less is, you know what? Screw that. I'm, I am, if you will. I'm more than my work. And I am not gonna, I don't want that to be the central feature of my life. And so it's it's raising questions that I'm like, Oh, good. Finally we're asking like, What the hell, What are we doing? They like those. What is, what are our priorities here? What is the meaning of this? And just saying it isn't this, You know what we've been doing, ain't it? Now because we live in this system, we have to keep playing the game to some degree to survive. But those questions are now out there and I think that's a really healthy development.

Peter Hayward: So you have said this is not to have the last word. This is really to encourage the conversation. So what have you got planned for how the conversation happens? Are there particular things you want to do or promote amongst, the community or people to have the conversations?

Andy Hines: Yeah. I do as a futurist, you do so much. We do our day job, which is as important teaching and working with clients and the regular stuff that we need to do to help people think better about and act better about the with the future. But I like to have like at least one side project that's just my little pet. And for years it was Values , and now it's the After Capitalism. Have some ongoing scanning, developing a Delphi, have a book page and so hopefully just try to if indeed it does stimulate some conversation to just keep that going and then watch. I think it's, I think it's gonna be really exciting. Even now, just to keep up with all the examples of things that are happening. I can't keep up. There's so many things happening, but again, it's all, it's too small and disconnected. But, over time I just think we'll start to see, some, larger scale, more exciting things. And that's, so I just, I. Think of that as one of my pet projects, as I get nearer, narrower to the end in the beginning.

Peter Hayward: I'm gonna ask you to make a forecast. If people are interested you have got videos up on your website of talks you are giving around it, which actually lays a lot of the stuff out. So people should go and hunt those down and look and have a look at them, but when might they get their hands on the book?

Andy Hines: I'm hoping it's spring of 23. So first draft pretty, a pretty good first draft in hands of the publisher and back to our Great Resignation point short staff and just working through a backlog. It's everywhere, right? Yep. Even though it's making my daily life a little bit hectic. I really, I find it very positive that we're asking ourselves why we're doing this, and to me that's a step on the road. Yeah, I agree.

Peter Hayward: Look, Andy it's always great to have a chat. We don't have enough, but it's always great to catch up again. Thanks again for coming back to the Future Pod and continue the conversation.

Andy Hines: If all goes well, I'll see you in another a hundred, 200 episodes maybe

Peter Hayward: Thanks, Andy.

 My guest today was Andy Hines. You'll find more details about the things that Andy spoke about in the show notes on the website. Andy is always a great researcher, thinker and communicator in our community and it's great to feature his craft again on the Pod. Futurepod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to support the Pod then please check out our Patreon which you'll find a link to on our website. I am Peter Hayward saying goodbye for now.