Rutger Bregman Wants to Save Elites from Their Wasted Lives

8 mitchbob 5 5/18/2025, 3:42:53 AM nytimes.com ↗

Comments (5)

mitchbob · 10h ago
richardatlarge · 6h ago
He sh start by not wasting our time
GianFabien · 7h ago
Yet another opinionated fluff piece about somebody intent to telling others what they should be doing instead of walking the talk and demonstrating by effective actions.
michaelhoney · 6h ago
He has literally founded a school and got funding for fellowships where people have worked on the future of food and stopping tobacco from killing people.

https://www.moralambition.org/fellowships/all-fellowships

nonrandomstring · 6h ago
You claim the exact opposite of what the author wrote.

   " the reason I wrote this book was that I became frustrated with
   myself...  You write books to convince people of certain opinions
   and then you hope that some other people do the actual work of
   making the world better... I experienced this emotion that I
   describe as moral envy: You're standing on the sidelines and
   wishing, gosh, wouldn't it be awesome to be in the arena? To
   actually have skin in the game? "
"Moral ambition" isn't for the faint-hearted or superficially "successful". You actually have to do stuff. Take a road less travelled. Eat your own dogfood. Make sacrifices and live by principles you espouse. Very few are authentic, courageous and determined in this regard and "successful" within our culture which actively rewards moral delinquency... bar a very few rare diamonds; for example Anita Roddick [0] who led the first wave of environmental, fair-trade ethics in beauty retail.

Besides, I think these are foundational personality traits ... very difficult to "learn/add-on/fake" later in life. So I think the author wastes time appealing to "elites" already saddled by their shameless immorality. Those panged by deathbed "philanthropic" regrets, fretting on their "moral legacy" or place in eternity - having spent their whole lives shitting on the world to get ahead - are a tough, niche audience. Better to speak to younger people who are not yet soured, who have not yet become extremely fearful of taking social risk or jeapordising their "career". If you're under 25 and questioning what "successful" maens, this could be a life-changing book.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick