When Did Utopianism Become a Bad Thing?
/I recently read “The Hidden Wealth of Nations” which is an analysis of the economic impacts of corporate tax havens, much like Apple’s Irish tax haven which made headlines today. In the book, it’s author Gabriel Zucman offers not only analysis and critique of this topic, but offers solutions ranging from regulation to sweeping tax reform.
For each potential solution Zucman offers, he takes a moment to explain why the suggestion isn’t “utopian” because it may have worked in another country or be within the purview of a sovereign nation, etc. In part, I think Zucman spends this time pre-emptively defending against the charge of utopianism because his colleague and mentor Thomas Piketty's was also accused of utopianism for suggesting a global tax on wealth in his work “Capital in the Twenty First Century".
Rather than discuss either economist’s particular argument, I’d like to focus on the accusation of utopianism as a means of dismissing the argument outright. The detractors seem to use “utopian” to mean “impossible”. That is to say that since something isn’t possible, it’s not even worth trying to do.
That’s a nice healthy mindset, right? Wouldn’t want to trip and fall into a mildly better state by trying to do something difficult. If anything, it probably speaks more to the division amongst our politicians that compromise toward a better outcome on these types of issues is perceived as impossible.
You’ll note that the definition of “utopian” doesn’t include the word “impossible”. It speaks to aiming for perfection, which surely can’t be obtained, but why should that mean that it isn’t worth at least striving for the ideal and seeing if we end up somewhere better along the way?
I think Vince Lombardi (a sports guy as I understand) put it most succinctly, "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."
To accuse someone of utopianism is dismissive in the laziest, hand-waviest way and doesn’t actually make a counter-argument of any substance. Imagine if you told your child to always clean up their toys when they were done playing and they responded that you were a utopian. That wouldn’t excuse them from the chore and you wouldn’t accept the accusation as an argument. Nor should we accept it when offered by intellectually lazy pundits or politicians.