Dystopias are Unrealistic

Originally Published: June 12, 2019

An essay by S. Olin S.

When many people imagine our future, they imagine a world where political corruption runs rampant and the majority of people are at the complete whim of the 1% of richest people. That human rights will be largely overlooked in service of profits.

In short: Many people that I’ve heard from think that humanity is, largely, royally screwed.

And here’s why I disagree.

A quick note about this.

I’m not by any means saying that these problems aren’t currently, or in any near future will be non problems. I understand that the world, as it always has been, and always will be, has many problems that plague it. There are bad people. Always have been, always will be.

Nor is this an argument for a Utopia. I believe those to also be unrealistic. The core argument of this is pretty much The world as a whole is going to be better in the future. Perfect? No. But I also don’t think that it’s going to get any worse for very long at all.

So with that, let’s continue.

“Companies are getting far too large.”

So let’s tackle this first. It’s the first thing I imagine when I think ‘Dystopia.’ The current megacorporations have truly taken hold of the world and are now ruling with an iron fist.

I think I need only one story to really disprove this one.

The creation of U.S. Antitrust law.

Due to time constraints, I’ll be doing a more TL;DR version of the history of Antitrust. If you want to know the full story I’ll link resources here.

But in short: Rewind to the Late 19th century. The 1890s. We’ve got a major problem: Standard Oil was a near-absolute monopoly. Having over 90% of the overall oil market in the United States. And this was a problem because, if you have that much market share, you can charge… any amount you want. And it’s not like anyone could challenge them since once a company came up that could stand any chance against them, they would just lower their prices outrageously low. And they could afford to do this because they had made so much money beforehand that it’s negligible. And after the other company went out of business they could absorb them and raise the prices.

You can see why this is a problem. So, in 1890, John Sherman proposed the ‘Sherman Antitrust Act’ to the 51st United States Congress. It later passed 51-1. The reason that Standard didn’t just bribe them is elaborated in those other resources.

This was followed up in 1914 by the Clayton Act, as well as three others.

Though, Before this, the Sherman Act already paved the way for the, for lack of a better word, Destruction of Standard Oil in 1911.

In 1911, Standard Oil was split up into 34 successor companies.

So, not only are these 5+ bills still in use, but this means that, if a company becomes too large and disliked, then it could either be breaking pre-existing laws (Which happened in 1999 to Microsoft) or, like in 1890-1914, laws could simply be created for the purpose of dismantling them.

Sure, one of the things that this needs is a good president and Congress, but we’ve had plenty of those and will continue to in the future. The current president simply cannot be in office for very much longer.

“Political Corruption is rising.”

This is indeed true. Much like how the previous one is also true. Political corruption is indeed rising. (Probably mostly due to the current leadership of the US.) However, that does not mean that it will be sure to continue to rise.

What comes up must also come down after all.

In every instance of great political corruption, it’s either been that it was stopped before it caused irreversible problems, it was later stopped from an outside force, or the nation was in a state wherein the corruption was being supported by a larger state, and the citizens were in no position to fight back.

That last one most definitely does not apply to most of the western world. Especially in the United States. We revolted because we owed money to a nation that just fought for our protection, after all.

As for the first two, well in each of those cases the corruption was, in the end, eradicated. Whether via revolt, such as in France and the US, or by the war in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

So I think that, even if corruption is rising, which it indeed is, what comes up must also come down and in the end, we’ll most likely be fine.

“Inequality, like Sexism and Racism are still problems and may get worse.”

The first half, yes. They are definitely still problems in much of the world. The second half (Which, though less prevalent is still an argument I see made every so often) is simply wrong it seems.

In the case of sexism, in this case, in the US, Women went from not being able to vote like 50 years ago to now having (Legally, at least) Equal rights.

And in the case of Racism (Again, in the US here) Black people went from Literal slaves to a relatively better situation of being treated as, in general, lesser, to now having, (again, legally.) Equal rights as everyone else does.

So I’m not saying in any way that these aren’t problems. They absolutely are and they need to be worked on. However, looking at the big picture here all things have gotten much better. And will in the future. We have entire months dedicated to Black history, as well as Queer groups. Which is the same situation as before, used to not have rights, now has equal rights legally speaking.

Conclusion

I definitely could have gone into much more detail, but I think that this is a good starting point for this argument.

Overall, I don’t think that the outcome of the world is Dystopian nor Utopian. Both are equally unlikely. Possible? Maybe. But I simply don’t see either. All I’m saying is that the world has, and will get better for everyone. Nearly everywhere in the world, everyone’s situation is getting better. Of course, there are cases of the opposite, but those are expected. The world is going to have its ups and downs.

But I think that the idea of a Dystopia is simply, Unrealistic.

-Olin S.