The Caves of Steel, which present population growth as a recipe for disaster. Yglesias says that the grim futures depicted in these stories are not based in reality.
“The whole theme of the robot novels is that there are these incredibly low living standards on Earth, which [Asimov] describes, if I’m remembering it correctly, as having a population of 8 billion people,” he says. “And they’re all for some reason living in underground cities and eating algae at almost the population that we have today.”
Dystopian scenarios may make for exciting stories, but often their predictions are so dire that they inspire hopelessness rather than resolve. “I think that there is a view that if something is bad, if it’s a real problem, that the best thing to do is state the problem in the bleakest possible terms, because that will motivate people to go take action,” Yglesias says. “I don’t think that that’s right as a theory of human motivation. People take action to avoid
20 Under 40: Young Shapers of the Future (Academia and Ideas)
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The American Myths of Bigger and Better
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Matthew Yglesias, a cofounder of Vox and frequent writer for it, has some useful insights in this book. But he perfectly exemplifies a type of mind that is capable of doing great damage. I hesitate to say this, as he seems engaging and intelligent, but the evidence is unmistakable. He is a statist and planner, who sees his goal for America as obviously true. He fully recognizes the controversial nature of some of the measures he favors to achieve his goal, and he will be glad to debate you about their merits; but practically all Americans, he thinks, accept this goal.