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End State: 9 Ways Society is Broken – and how we can fix it
A GUARDIAN POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEAR
'End State is absolutely superb. If you're looking for a book that is honest about the problems of the future but leaves you hopeful about solutions, then this is it' Jon Richardson
'Insightful and revealing: a brilliant exploration of how ideas currently on the edge of politics could move into the mainstream' Danny Dorling, author of SLOWDOWN
Can we reverse the mental health crisis by getting rid of Mondays?
Is it time to stop poor people being poor by... giving them money?
Can we quell the fires of populism by giving young people a say in the future?
As the shockwaves of Covid 19 continue to spread, and as the smoke clears from a year of anger and unrest, many people feel forlorn about the future.
In End State, James Plunkett argues that this can be a moment not of despair, but of historic opportunity - a chance to rethink, renew, and reform some of the most fundamental ways we organise society. In much the same way as societies emerged stronger from crises in the past - building the state as we know it today - we too can build a happier future.
James Plunkett has spent his career thinking laterally about the complicated relationships between individuals and the state. First as an advisor to Gordon Brown, then a leading economic researcher and writer, and then in the charity sector, helping people struggling at the front-line of economic change. James combines a deep understanding of social issues with an appreciation of how change is playing out not in the ivory tower, but in the reality of people's lives.
Now, in his first book, he sets out an optimistic vision, exploring nine ways in which our social settlement can be upgraded to harness the power of the digital age. Covering a dizzying sweep of geography and history, from London's 18th Century sewage systems to the uneasy inequality of Silicon Valley, it's a thrilling and iconoclastic account of how society can not only survive, but thrive, in the digital age.
End State provides a much-needed map to help us navigate our way over the curious terrain of the twenty-first century.
'End State is absolutely superb. If you're looking for a book that is honest about the problems of the future but leaves you hopeful about solutions, then this is it' Jon Richardson
'Insightful and revealing: a brilliant exploration of how ideas currently on the edge of politics could move into the mainstream' Danny Dorling, author of SLOWDOWN
Can we reverse the mental health crisis by getting rid of Mondays?
Is it time to stop poor people being poor by... giving them money?
Can we quell the fires of populism by giving young people a say in the future?
As the shockwaves of Covid 19 continue to spread, and as the smoke clears from a year of anger and unrest, many people feel forlorn about the future.
In End State, James Plunkett argues that this can be a moment not of despair, but of historic opportunity - a chance to rethink, renew, and reform some of the most fundamental ways we organise society. In much the same way as societies emerged stronger from crises in the past - building the state as we know it today - we too can build a happier future.
James Plunkett has spent his career thinking laterally about the complicated relationships between individuals and the state. First as an advisor to Gordon Brown, then a leading economic researcher and writer, and then in the charity sector, helping people struggling at the front-line of economic change. James combines a deep understanding of social issues with an appreciation of how change is playing out not in the ivory tower, but in the reality of people's lives.
Now, in his first book, he sets out an optimistic vision, exploring nine ways in which our social settlement can be upgraded to harness the power of the digital age. Covering a dizzying sweep of geography and history, from London's 18th Century sewage systems to the uneasy inequality of Silicon Valley, it's a thrilling and iconoclastic account of how society can not only survive, but thrive, in the digital age.
End State provides a much-needed map to help us navigate our way over the curious terrain of the twenty-first century.
231 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 30, 2021
26 people are currently reading
452 people want to read
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James Plunkett
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 28, 2022
For far too long, conversations about reforming British public policy have been incredibly boring and played out. This book changes things.
Please read this book. If you do not have the patience or time, give me 10 minutes. I cannot overemphasise how vital, engaging and creative the subject matter is here. James Plunkett writes in plain English, keeps things lively and has some fantastic ideas. There are parts where things begin to feel a little heady, but for the most part, this is a clear eyed, practical manual on how to have better conversations about policy. I’m going to run through the books general structure, but I cannot stress that Plunkett puts it all in a far more digestible and understandable framework.
Part One focuses on economic regulation. It concerns opening up big tech, and regulation. Opening up big tech is all about interoperability. Plunkett advocates for a creation of a ‘Public Data Trust’ where all the big data, which turns enormous profits for giants like Google and Meta, is made public. There are a couple of good arguments for this, my favourite of which was that it would allow for public services and small tech start ups to make use of the kind of data which leads to staggering innovation. To be clear, this would not be personal, private information like addresses or birthdays, but large, macro level data. It would be search trends, travel patterns, purchase types.
Opening up big tech is also about harmonising technical standards. Effectively, this would mean that Meta, Google, Twitter and Amazon would be required to share their digital ecosystems so that anybody can play in their sandbox. Not only would this help to shave off the profits in big tech, it would stop the aggressive legal battles which prevent healthy competition in tech. This would require a new legal identity for these digital giants, which we are already seeing from the EU Commission. It’s the same thing Theodore Roosevelt did; break up monopolies and usher in a fairer, more competitive playing field.
In regards to regulation, instead of a rules-based market regulation, where companies cannot do this or that, Plunkett argues we should transition to an outcomes-based market. This would mean that it is the outcomes and principles which supervise corporations, rather than a checklist of dos and don’ts. These principles would be intuitive to the wider needs of a functioning digital market, without limiting companies to follow what seemingly arbitrary rules. Plunkett’s regulation has a few more exciting limbs to it, especially in regards to market design, but they really are better explained in the book.
Part Two focuses on pay. There are three chapters on this. Plunkett puts forward strong arguments in favour of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), a living wage, and larger adult education services. On UBI, a rough estimate lands the cost of implementing it at a maximum of £237 billion per year. More targeted studies have seen this cost reduced to around £117 billion, but the idea is that it would have to be rolled out gradually and alongside a scaling back of means tested benefits. It would also need to come alongside a reduction in tax allowance which costs the UK £400 billion, especially ones which are wasteful and environmentally harmful. But it can be done, and Plunkett very effectively demonstrates the appeal and hesitant push towards UBI.
Plunkett also advocates for a living wage in order to end the scourge of low pay at the advent of the digital economy. This is probably the book’s weakest chapters, as a lot of it felt like preparation for the next chapter. Suffice to say, even an across the board 20% increase of every junior or lower tier employees wage has only ever added, at a maximum, 1% to the companies total running costs.
Following this, and bringing Part Two to a close is a very exciting chapter about adult education. Whilst the UK spends a commendable £94 billion on young people’s education, the figure for adult learning is around £3.4 billion. The difference makes sense, but it is still too low. We do not exist in the world where traditional career trajectories run from the bottom to the top of a company. An Uber driver would never be trained to become an Uber programmer. The two jobs, although in the same company, are worlds apart.
Therefore, the government needs to act and provide simple, generous opportunities for adults to add to their skillset. This would focus on the approximately 4 million workers in the UK who lack the skills required by most employers, and would help put them on an even footing in the digital market. It was one of my favourite chapters, not least for Plunkett’s excellent use of historical and economic arguments.
Part Three focuses on wellbeing. The first part of this would be to introduce a 4-day working week, the second is an attempt to widen healthcare. A 4-day week has a long history, and Plunkett has obvious fun detailing the history of the weekend we all invented for ourselves. The best counter arguments are dealt with superbly by Plunkett here, and there are some fun anecdotes about how companies have tried, and failed, to self-regulate employee leisure time.
Onto healthcare, Plunkett covers a broad field, but focuses on the difference between sustaining health and sustaining life. The UK has reached a point where extending life is no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘how’, yet it still struggles with pain management and quality of patient care. There is a lovely model by Kate Lorig used here, which would run at a far cheaper cost than the NHS spends on a single person in A&E. It is about group diagnostic sessions, making relations between patients and GP’s wider, integrating technology to link people with chronic pain together and empowering patients to outline the best way they could be treated by a healthcare service. It is an excellent chapter, but one which could easily be an entire book in itself.
Part Four is where the headiness mentioned earlier really begins to ramp up, as Plunkett tackles politics. To begin, Plunkett advocates for a radical expansion of democracy, and to close, he explores the technical difficulties in governing from Whitehall. It feels too much like a spoiler to say how Plunkett intends to revitalise our relationship to democracy, but it is both brilliant and simple. One of the huge issues Plunkett illuminates is that democracy skews far too readily towards elderly voters, meaning that if anyone attempts to reform a costly and excessive pension scheme or social care system, they are politically dead-on arrival. Plunkett’s solution is excellent, and as many readers will find, it is absurd to start and quickly became my favourite idea in the whole book.
In the final chapter, Plunkett tells the fantastic history of GDS (2011-2016) and they’re struggle to modernise Whitehall. They succeeded in parts, as anyone who has visited GOV.UK will agree, and failed in others. But Plunkett’s huge, heady idea here is to dismantle the Whitehall silo system. In its place would be an open digital platform, where ‘Food Standards’, ‘Betting Regulation’ or ‘Exams and Qualifications’ teams would be organised instead by real-world services, ‘choosing a school’, ‘applying for a driving licence’, or ‘starting a business’. It would have policy experts working alongside software developers and data scientists to solve problems and post results without the discretion and secrecy typical of the UK Government.
The conclusion is good too. Thanks if you have made it this far in a too long review, and again, please read this book if you are at all interested in public policy. It is modern and creative and exciting.
The UK must change. It has to be large leaps in some places, steady steps in others. But it has to change. All that remains is a question of how. Here’s how.
Please read this book. If you do not have the patience or time, give me 10 minutes. I cannot overemphasise how vital, engaging and creative the subject matter is here. James Plunkett writes in plain English, keeps things lively and has some fantastic ideas. There are parts where things begin to feel a little heady, but for the most part, this is a clear eyed, practical manual on how to have better conversations about policy. I’m going to run through the books general structure, but I cannot stress that Plunkett puts it all in a far more digestible and understandable framework.
Part One focuses on economic regulation. It concerns opening up big tech, and regulation. Opening up big tech is all about interoperability. Plunkett advocates for a creation of a ‘Public Data Trust’ where all the big data, which turns enormous profits for giants like Google and Meta, is made public. There are a couple of good arguments for this, my favourite of which was that it would allow for public services and small tech start ups to make use of the kind of data which leads to staggering innovation. To be clear, this would not be personal, private information like addresses or birthdays, but large, macro level data. It would be search trends, travel patterns, purchase types.
Opening up big tech is also about harmonising technical standards. Effectively, this would mean that Meta, Google, Twitter and Amazon would be required to share their digital ecosystems so that anybody can play in their sandbox. Not only would this help to shave off the profits in big tech, it would stop the aggressive legal battles which prevent healthy competition in tech. This would require a new legal identity for these digital giants, which we are already seeing from the EU Commission. It’s the same thing Theodore Roosevelt did; break up monopolies and usher in a fairer, more competitive playing field.
In regards to regulation, instead of a rules-based market regulation, where companies cannot do this or that, Plunkett argues we should transition to an outcomes-based market. This would mean that it is the outcomes and principles which supervise corporations, rather than a checklist of dos and don’ts. These principles would be intuitive to the wider needs of a functioning digital market, without limiting companies to follow what seemingly arbitrary rules. Plunkett’s regulation has a few more exciting limbs to it, especially in regards to market design, but they really are better explained in the book.
Part Two focuses on pay. There are three chapters on this. Plunkett puts forward strong arguments in favour of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), a living wage, and larger adult education services. On UBI, a rough estimate lands the cost of implementing it at a maximum of £237 billion per year. More targeted studies have seen this cost reduced to around £117 billion, but the idea is that it would have to be rolled out gradually and alongside a scaling back of means tested benefits. It would also need to come alongside a reduction in tax allowance which costs the UK £400 billion, especially ones which are wasteful and environmentally harmful. But it can be done, and Plunkett very effectively demonstrates the appeal and hesitant push towards UBI.
Plunkett also advocates for a living wage in order to end the scourge of low pay at the advent of the digital economy. This is probably the book’s weakest chapters, as a lot of it felt like preparation for the next chapter. Suffice to say, even an across the board 20% increase of every junior or lower tier employees wage has only ever added, at a maximum, 1% to the companies total running costs.
Following this, and bringing Part Two to a close is a very exciting chapter about adult education. Whilst the UK spends a commendable £94 billion on young people’s education, the figure for adult learning is around £3.4 billion. The difference makes sense, but it is still too low. We do not exist in the world where traditional career trajectories run from the bottom to the top of a company. An Uber driver would never be trained to become an Uber programmer. The two jobs, although in the same company, are worlds apart.
Therefore, the government needs to act and provide simple, generous opportunities for adults to add to their skillset. This would focus on the approximately 4 million workers in the UK who lack the skills required by most employers, and would help put them on an even footing in the digital market. It was one of my favourite chapters, not least for Plunkett’s excellent use of historical and economic arguments.
Part Three focuses on wellbeing. The first part of this would be to introduce a 4-day working week, the second is an attempt to widen healthcare. A 4-day week has a long history, and Plunkett has obvious fun detailing the history of the weekend we all invented for ourselves. The best counter arguments are dealt with superbly by Plunkett here, and there are some fun anecdotes about how companies have tried, and failed, to self-regulate employee leisure time.
Onto healthcare, Plunkett covers a broad field, but focuses on the difference between sustaining health and sustaining life. The UK has reached a point where extending life is no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘how’, yet it still struggles with pain management and quality of patient care. There is a lovely model by Kate Lorig used here, which would run at a far cheaper cost than the NHS spends on a single person in A&E. It is about group diagnostic sessions, making relations between patients and GP’s wider, integrating technology to link people with chronic pain together and empowering patients to outline the best way they could be treated by a healthcare service. It is an excellent chapter, but one which could easily be an entire book in itself.
Part Four is where the headiness mentioned earlier really begins to ramp up, as Plunkett tackles politics. To begin, Plunkett advocates for a radical expansion of democracy, and to close, he explores the technical difficulties in governing from Whitehall. It feels too much like a spoiler to say how Plunkett intends to revitalise our relationship to democracy, but it is both brilliant and simple. One of the huge issues Plunkett illuminates is that democracy skews far too readily towards elderly voters, meaning that if anyone attempts to reform a costly and excessive pension scheme or social care system, they are politically dead-on arrival. Plunkett’s solution is excellent, and as many readers will find, it is absurd to start and quickly became my favourite idea in the whole book.
In the final chapter, Plunkett tells the fantastic history of GDS (2011-2016) and they’re struggle to modernise Whitehall. They succeeded in parts, as anyone who has visited GOV.UK will agree, and failed in others. But Plunkett’s huge, heady idea here is to dismantle the Whitehall silo system. In its place would be an open digital platform, where ‘Food Standards’, ‘Betting Regulation’ or ‘Exams and Qualifications’ teams would be organised instead by real-world services, ‘choosing a school’, ‘applying for a driving licence’, or ‘starting a business’. It would have policy experts working alongside software developers and data scientists to solve problems and post results without the discretion and secrecy typical of the UK Government.
The conclusion is good too. Thanks if you have made it this far in a too long review, and again, please read this book if you are at all interested in public policy. It is modern and creative and exciting.
The UK must change. It has to be large leaps in some places, steady steps in others. But it has to change. All that remains is a question of how. Here’s how.
March 26, 2025
As a left-wing person, sometimes it's good to step outside your bubble and see what liberals/centrists are thinking. Plunkett (a former New Labour era political advisor and head of a think tank for 10 years), whilst sometimes successfully observing some of the symptoms of inequality and an economic system based on exploitation, can't identify the problems besieging people and potential solutions because he's so dogmatically blinded by the fantasy that the post-war capitalist golden era is the end-goal of a successful developed economy and that we can achieve it through tinkering by the parliamentary political elites that somehow aren’t to blame for the current situation we find ourselves in[?]. Socialists are often beset by allegations of being idealogues, naïve and uncompromising but the real freaks are these charlatans, like Plunkett, that believe that the current system should never be radically altered and are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands (or millions if thinking globally) to the altar of neoliberalism. This guy was head of an ostensibly left or centre left think tank and yet the two most common sources of quotes in this book are from Adam Smith and Winston Churchill[!]
The book gets bonus points for, as I said, successfully identifying some of the outcomes of our economic and political system. For example, stating that it takes an average of 27 weeks to get an outcome for a PIP assessment and that the 16 billion in unclaimed benefits would be enough to give every person in poverty in the UK an extra 1900 pounds a year. But my heart weeps that these liberal zealots are the ones we’ve entrusted with coming up with the milquetoast solutions, within the confines of our current setup, to very real problems.
If you live in a nice house, never interact with people who earn less than you and love The Rest is Politics podcast you’ll probably enjoy this but don’t be surprised when inequality deepens, child poverty increases and the environment deteriorates over the coming decades whilst a cast of people in shit grey suits cycle through the House of Commons.
The book gets bonus points for, as I said, successfully identifying some of the outcomes of our economic and political system. For example, stating that it takes an average of 27 weeks to get an outcome for a PIP assessment and that the 16 billion in unclaimed benefits would be enough to give every person in poverty in the UK an extra 1900 pounds a year. But my heart weeps that these liberal zealots are the ones we’ve entrusted with coming up with the milquetoast solutions, within the confines of our current setup, to very real problems.
If you live in a nice house, never interact with people who earn less than you and love The Rest is Politics podcast you’ll probably enjoy this but don’t be surprised when inequality deepens, child poverty increases and the environment deteriorates over the coming decades whilst a cast of people in shit grey suits cycle through the House of Commons.
August 4, 2024
Really enjoyed this book. Just remembered it. Full of real ideas for change.
May 11, 2022
Nice to read some optimism for a change, but his decision to ignore climate change seemed a little strange. Like YES let's get Universal Basic Income, YES let's rebuild government to be user focused instead of a bureaucratic nightmare of legacy systems, YES let's bring in a 4 day week. But none of this will matter if we can't get a grip on the accelerating collapse of ecosystems due to global warming.
May 13, 2023
This book is written in an optimistic manner and its main premise is essentially looking at some of the most pressing challenges of today’s Britain (and to a lesser degree the US), analysing them through a few human-interest stories, providing a history lesson from reforms in the Victorian era and then giving a rather predictable solution for the problem area.
I must say I was hoping for a bit more from the book (the title makes little sense and the issues it approaches are not “ways society is broken”, but more in the realm of bureaucracy or political formations) and especially its last part that concerns the revamping of the state, with the author having a background working in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office. At many points, it feels repetitive and a bit shallow, especially as approaches both the problems and particularly the solutions extremely simplistically and without truly questioning the status quo and its structures of power (with one exception of intergenerational tensions in democratic societies). Plunkett states in the introduction that
“Society didn't survive the shift to industrialism by tweaking medieval policy instruments. We didn't expand the guilds, freeze the charges for turnpikes and increase funding for the knights of the garter. We did something more radical than that: we replaced the old system with a new one. So in this book we'll focus on similar, generation-defining ideas; our equivalents to the grand social reforms of the past, from the ban on child labour to the creation of the welfare state - candidates for the components of how we'll govern in 2050.”
Yet almost none of the ideas he presents truly confront the power structures limiting progress in societies today and yes, well, author completely ignores the climate change (but at least admits to that openly).
The problems and solutions are rather straightforward:
Monopolies? Revival of antitrust and mandatory open data of digital monopolies (basically Tim Wu mixed with Margarete Versteger).
Price manipulation? Principles-based regulation
Social policy? Universal basic income.
Low-wage economy? Raising the minimum wage to the living wage levels (that argument is actually really well structured and I found it inspiring).
Lack of adult skills development? “new G.I. Bill”
Work-life balance? Three-day weekend, Saturday to Monday.
Chronic health conditions? A new agency, like the NHS, set up specifically for them.
Loss of support for democracy? Expanding the right to vote for younger people and/or proxy voting rights for parents.
Outdated structure of the state? ‘Design-centred reshaping of the state’
As the author has worked for some time in Citizen’s Advice, an amazing charity helping people navigate the complex web of the state, it is natural that the book contains some amazing personal and individual stories. But it also distorts the perspective of the book from a look at more structural problems that make Westminster dysfunctional. It does not look at ways of paying for so much of what it wants to pursue and so much of what the book recommends is not though-out well enough to actually change people’s minds. It calls for a revolution, but when one considers for instance the design-centred approach to policymaking, it completely ignores the power aspects of human societal structures. It was not the fact that economists and the Treasury were somewhat morally better that they became dominant, but that the argument for controlling public spending in some transparent and (at least seemingly) egalitarian manner was the key component of the bargain for a modern structure of taxation with the newly taxed populations. Yes, the Government Digital Service was likely right and everyone else was not listening enough to their approach that is closer to better-functioning services. But that has to be won through a democratic argument, not just wished for by technocratic intellectuals.
That is not to say that I did not like the premise of the book. I really do believe that we need to reshape the functioning of a modern state and its bureaucracy, as it was done in the 19th century - but that will not be achieved by shortcuts and superficial solutions.
So not that I recommend this book, I do, I just hope that people will be more critical towards it.
I must say I was hoping for a bit more from the book (the title makes little sense and the issues it approaches are not “ways society is broken”, but more in the realm of bureaucracy or political formations) and especially its last part that concerns the revamping of the state, with the author having a background working in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office. At many points, it feels repetitive and a bit shallow, especially as approaches both the problems and particularly the solutions extremely simplistically and without truly questioning the status quo and its structures of power (with one exception of intergenerational tensions in democratic societies). Plunkett states in the introduction that
“Society didn't survive the shift to industrialism by tweaking medieval policy instruments. We didn't expand the guilds, freeze the charges for turnpikes and increase funding for the knights of the garter. We did something more radical than that: we replaced the old system with a new one. So in this book we'll focus on similar, generation-defining ideas; our equivalents to the grand social reforms of the past, from the ban on child labour to the creation of the welfare state - candidates for the components of how we'll govern in 2050.”
Yet almost none of the ideas he presents truly confront the power structures limiting progress in societies today and yes, well, author completely ignores the climate change (but at least admits to that openly).
The problems and solutions are rather straightforward:
Monopolies? Revival of antitrust and mandatory open data of digital monopolies (basically Tim Wu mixed with Margarete Versteger).
Price manipulation? Principles-based regulation
Social policy? Universal basic income.
Low-wage economy? Raising the minimum wage to the living wage levels (that argument is actually really well structured and I found it inspiring).
Lack of adult skills development? “new G.I. Bill”
Work-life balance? Three-day weekend, Saturday to Monday.
Chronic health conditions? A new agency, like the NHS, set up specifically for them.
Loss of support for democracy? Expanding the right to vote for younger people and/or proxy voting rights for parents.
Outdated structure of the state? ‘Design-centred reshaping of the state’
As the author has worked for some time in Citizen’s Advice, an amazing charity helping people navigate the complex web of the state, it is natural that the book contains some amazing personal and individual stories. But it also distorts the perspective of the book from a look at more structural problems that make Westminster dysfunctional. It does not look at ways of paying for so much of what it wants to pursue and so much of what the book recommends is not though-out well enough to actually change people’s minds. It calls for a revolution, but when one considers for instance the design-centred approach to policymaking, it completely ignores the power aspects of human societal structures. It was not the fact that economists and the Treasury were somewhat morally better that they became dominant, but that the argument for controlling public spending in some transparent and (at least seemingly) egalitarian manner was the key component of the bargain for a modern structure of taxation with the newly taxed populations. Yes, the Government Digital Service was likely right and everyone else was not listening enough to their approach that is closer to better-functioning services. But that has to be won through a democratic argument, not just wished for by technocratic intellectuals.
That is not to say that I did not like the premise of the book. I really do believe that we need to reshape the functioning of a modern state and its bureaucracy, as it was done in the 19th century - but that will not be achieved by shortcuts and superficial solutions.
So not that I recommend this book, I do, I just hope that people will be more critical towards it.
November 9, 2022
There is a lot more under the bonnet of this book than the title suggests. The nine ways society is broken according to Plunkett include modern monopolies, economic regulation, benefits system, living wage / universal basic income, adult education, working week, public health/end of life care, reviving democracy and government, all held up against the light of today’s modern world. It’s hard to disagree with Plunkett’s selection, who worked as a policy advisor at Number 10 and is currently executive director of Design, Data and Technology at Citizen’s Advice. Plunkett takes each of these things in turn and examines how they could / should be reimagined for the modern world. What I wasn’t expecting from this book, was a fairly in depth examination of how the system, as we understand it today, was created to counter the mess society was in, looking at human life, work, health and education from the 19th century onwards. Plunkett is a clear writer; his style is absorbing and very well articulated. This was an excellent read but there were two things I struggled to get over. One being the focus on reforming institutions. Some institutions would be better dismantled than reformed. The second was the answer to many ills are viewed through a very rose-tinted service design lens. And whilst I agree that a focus on service design has been sadly lacking for, well probably forever, I’ve also come across folk who view service designers’ practice as near untouchable, who despite their rhetoric, continue to do things to people and not as ‘with’ as they would like to believe. The blurb said ‘refreshingly optimistic’ but I doubted I would feel anywhere close to optimism in the clusterfuck that is our current political, ecological and social climate. However, I did feel optimism at times and this was all thanks to Plunkett’s clear reasoning and evidence base he draws on. An absorbing read that should be given to every would-be politician whether they are standing at a national or local level.
September 5, 2022
End State: 9 ways society is broken & how we fix it -James Plunkett
A surprisingly optimistic book about how horrible everything is. Plunkett reckons although it may seem like it, these are not the end times. Merely a transitory period where society is changing rapidly in the internet and information era, but the governments policies, regulations and laws are yet to evolve. Likened to the industrial revolution, with monopolised railway, unregulated workhouses and child labour.
Plunkett has some compelling ideas for reform, to quote " Society didn't survive the industrial revolution by _ cap fees for turnpikes and boost funding for Knights of the garter. We replaced the old state for a new one."
And people used to say having a weekend would cripple the economy. We'll see how the future plays out.
A surprisingly optimistic book about how horrible everything is. Plunkett reckons although it may seem like it, these are not the end times. Merely a transitory period where society is changing rapidly in the internet and information era, but the governments policies, regulations and laws are yet to evolve. Likened to the industrial revolution, with monopolised railway, unregulated workhouses and child labour.
Plunkett has some compelling ideas for reform, to quote " Society didn't survive the industrial revolution by _ cap fees for turnpikes and boost funding for Knights of the garter. We replaced the old state for a new one."
And people used to say having a weekend would cripple the economy. We'll see how the future plays out.
June 3, 2022
I’ve always liked James Plunkett’s work - he’s one of the few self-professed ideas people around the UK’s think-tanks who has actual ideas, and so I was keen to read this book.
It doesn’t disappoint: the core of his diagnosis (British politics is increasingly unmoored from defining what sort of society we want) is hard to argue with, and the ideas themselves (digital regulation, UBI, higher education reform, welfare reform) are both substantive and innovatively argued. There are some duds (the bit on healthcare), but the combination of expertise and clearly thought-through arguments is a compelling one.
It doesn’t disappoint: the core of his diagnosis (British politics is increasingly unmoored from defining what sort of society we want) is hard to argue with, and the ideas themselves (digital regulation, UBI, higher education reform, welfare reform) are both substantive and innovatively argued. There are some duds (the bit on healthcare), but the combination of expertise and clearly thought-through arguments is a compelling one.
March 18, 2024
An eloquent presentation of some of the big ideas in the air. Particularly persuasive on the need for civil service reform. But this has been an odd week to hear about a model of public life in which intelligent people diligently try to improve society.
June 27, 2022
Phenomenal.
August 26, 2022
Optimistic. A readable account of what’s happened in our United Kingdom and how it can be put right.
January 2, 2023
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I felt it was educational, insightful and just really interesting to read. Plunkett's ideas / manifesto for the future of society is reason for hope.
May 11, 2024
Great discussion of some of today's big economic challenges.
July 8, 2025
Fascinating analysis of modern society with some interesting and thought-provoking suggestions of how to improve it.
August 28, 2022
A surprisingly hopeful book about how horrible everything is. Plunkett makes the case what we are going through is not the end times -- no matter how much it feels like it -- but rather a change in the nature of politics and the economy as momentous the changes that accompanied the Industrial Revolution. He argues that little solutions won't cut it today, and that we need ideas to introduce ideas as radical (to the people of their time) as the weekend and not working kids to death.
He's probably right. The ideas he discusses make a lot of sense, at least to me, and they are going to be resisted tooth and nail by every vested interest on the planet. Which is part of Plunkett's point -- the rulers of yesterday's world only made changes that we see as common sense today because they feared being deposed (if not outright executed), and it will take a similar level of fear among those in power before we see the changes the world needs.
He's probably right. The ideas he discusses make a lot of sense, at least to me, and they are going to be resisted tooth and nail by every vested interest on the planet. Which is part of Plunkett's point -- the rulers of yesterday's world only made changes that we see as common sense today because they feared being deposed (if not outright executed), and it will take a similar level of fear among those in power before we see the changes the world needs.
May 11, 2022
I wonder how naive the author is proposing giving kids the vote because he's a lefty and yet he must realise that's the quickest way to elect a hard right goverment.
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