Elle Griffin on Researching the Ideal Society, From Utopian Books to Real-World Examples

While dystopian fiction dominates our screens and bookshelves, Elle Griffin is busy researching how things might actually go right. She wanted to write a utopian novel and realized she needed a better understanding of what an ideal society could look like. In our conversation, we discuss how her favorite utopian literature influenced her views on a well-designed society. But we also explore practical ideas on how we could improve our systems:

• Tax autonomy: Why giving states and cities the power to collect their own taxes would allow them to fund the specific services their citizens actually want.
• A la carte federations: A model where cities and states choose to join specific agreements, like a “fishing EU” or a “healthcare EU,” instead of being forced into one large, centralized government that manages every aspect of life.
• The Mondragon model: What we can learn from a massive network of worker-owned cooperatives in Spain that provides its own unemployment insurance and university.
• Who should control AI: Why giving voting authority to the employees who write the code (rather than investors or nonprofit boards) might be the best way to prevent unethical shortcuts.
• Singapore’s land model: How the government acts as a landlord to fund public services, allowing for lower income taxes while still providing universal social support.
• Fixing the Internet: How to use personal data and AI to make us wiser, rather than letting algorithms push us toward fast fashion and political radicalization.