Name: Doug Belshaw's review of This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler
Item: This Could Be Our Future
Rating: 4.5
Author: Doug Belshaw

Yancey Strickler

Break free from a wealth-obsessed world Western society is trapped by three assumptions: 1) the point of life is to maximize your self-interest and wealth, 2) we're individuals trapped in an adversarial world, and 3) that this path is inevitable. These ideas separate us, keep us powerless, and limit our imagination for the future. We see them as the truth, but they are just a point of view that previous generations accepted as inevitable. It's time we replace them with something new. In this bold, powerful book, Yancey Strickler – co-founder of Kickstarter – lays out an inspiring vision for a new world we have the power to create and how we can change course. While the pursuit of wealth has produced innovation and prosperity, it's also produced dire consequences: environmental collapse, corruption, exploitation, and unhappiness around the world. We don't have to get rid of money entirely, though: we can co-opt the tools we have used toward better measurement of what matters, technology, and specificity of goals--and refocus them to build a more generous, fair, and future-prepared society. By re-calibrating our definition of value, a world of scarcity can blossom into a world of abundance. Hopeful but firmly grounded, full of concrete examples and bursting with creativity, This Could Be Our Future brilliantly dissects the world we live in and shows us a road map to the world we are capable of making.

A Manifesto for a More Generous World

This Could Be Our Future

Piet Terheyden

I thought this book, by the former CEO of Kickstarter, was excellent. A perfect book to give someone to read who asks stupid questions such as "if you're anti-capitalist, are we going to go back to a barter system?" 🙄

Doug Belshaw

From the cofounder of Kickstarter comes a vision for building a society that looks beyond money and toward maximizing the values that make life worth living. Hopeful but firmly grounded, full of concrete solutions and bursting with creativity, this work brilliantly dissects the world we live in and shows us a road map to the world we are capable of making.

Kyle McCormick

Great ideas for rethinking how we view economic health and ideas for reshaping American politics

Luke Leighfield

This is one of my favourite books of 2019. Strickler lays out some ideas on how we can escape the current culture of ‘financial maximisation’ for one that’s more generous, fair and kind. I constantly had to stop reading to underline yet another passage. It’s excellent. 

‘Change creates compound interest: some people changing means more people will change. A growing movement can seem to tip overnight in favour of a new idea. On a long enough timeline, anything is possible.’

Piet Terheyden &
This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler

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Piet Terheyden &This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler

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Join the club

Piet Terheyden &
This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler