Daily Archives: February 28, 2017

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Tempted To Move Out Of The US? New Zealand Wants To Help You Escape Forbes Irving: New Zealand has a utopian reputation, a fantasy island (with Hobbits) where they speak English and the culture's not too different, far away from worldly problems. It's not a utopia New Zealand has plenty of problems and challenges. But I ... and more »

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Tempted To Move Out Of The US? New Zealand Wants To Help You Escape - Forbes

Between Two Cities challenges players to work together to build their ideal urban environment. Photograph: Owen Duffy for the Guardian

Each month, we play a stack of newly released tabletop games to help you find the ones youll love. This time, were building our vision of an urban utopia, hosting a dinner where we poison all our friends and cruelly attempting to ruin other peoples parties by poaching their guests.

3-7 players, 20 minutes, RRP 34.99 Designers: Ben Rosset and Matthew OMalley

Theres something about civic administration that seems irresistible to gamers. Ever since SimCity first hit computer screens in 1989, players have spent untold hours tweaking tax rates and manipulating zoning regulations in an effort to construct an urban utopia.

The drama, excitement and sex appeal of urban planning havent been confined to video games, though. Over the years, numerous board games have given players the chance to build the city of their dreams. Between Two Cities is one recent example, and it puts a slick, simple and addictive spin on the well-worn theme.

Rather than focussing on a single city, it challenges you to build two one each in cooperation with the players to your left and right. Each round sees you choose a pair of building tiles from a random selection. Youll place one in each of your cities and pass the remainder to the player next to you, repeating the process as the game goes on. Over time, your cities will grow, incorporating new buildings that score points based on how theyre grouped together. Shops gain you a bonus if theyre arranged in a straight line to form a thriving high street. Parks are worth more when clustered together in little green pockets. Houses lose almost all of their value if you build a factory nearby, and, just like in real life, offices are at their most successful when located next to pubs.

Youll have to confer with your partners to place tiles in the locations that maximise your score, and the result is an engaging, evolving puzzle that mixes competitive and collaborative elements to brilliant effect. It may not be a deep or realistic simulation of city management, but Between Two Cities is light, quick and deceptively cerebral. I cant wait to get it back to my table.

Also try: Quadropolis, Sushi Go!

Related: Suburbia review: Ballardian town planning on your dinner table.

2-12 players, 30 minutes, RRP 46.99 Designer: Tim Page

Raise Your Goblets casts you and your friends as power-hungry nobles vying for the throne of a fantasy kingdom. Rather than relying on political intrigue, lines of succession or simple meritocracy, though, youve decided to seize power by ruthlessly poisoning all of your rivals. Unfortunately, theyve all had the same idea, meaning that your upcoming dinner party is going to rack up an alarming body count.

The game revolves around a set of plastic goblets. At the beginning of each round, you randomly distribute tokens representing wine, poison and doses of antidote between them. After a few turns spent peeking into cups, secretly adding tokens or moving goblets around the table, youll all have to drink from the one in front of you. If it contains more poison than antidote, youre dead. Youll gain points for surviving at the end of a round, for killing off rivals and for consuming more wine than anyone else, and, after three rounds, the player with the highest score claims the crown.

To win, youll need to carefully observe your opponents, maintain an inscrutable poker face and make use of a selection of special abilities that can tip the chances of survival in your favour. Its a fun, light-hearted concept, and it leads to hilarity and recrimination as each round sees players meet with an untimely end.

This isnt the only simple, sociable game out there though, and while it looks undeniably impressive, its expensive for what it is especially as its suggested UK price is 50% higher than its European equivalent. If youre looking for a bit of duplicity and deduction at your next game night, there are other options, and unless youre irresistibly drawn to Raise Your Goblets sculpted cups and gemstone-like tokens, its worth giving some of them a look.

Also try: The Resistance: Avalon, Two Rooms and a Boom

2-5 players, 30-45 minutes, RRP 19.99 Designer: Daniel Solis

Belle of the Ball is another game focusing on high-society soirees, and, while it may not rack up quite as many deaths as Raise Your Goblets, at heart, its every bit as mean. You and your opponents take on the role of hosts who have unwittingly organised parties on the same night, and youll each try to attract the most glittering array of guests to your own get-together.

In the centre of the table is a line of cards representing potential attendees, each of whom comes with a set of topics theyre keen to discuss things such as politics, romance, military affairs or cheese. Your goal is to group characters with similar interests together, and that turns out to be more about who you exclude than who you invite. Youll start the game with a set of regret cards, which you can use to reject partygoers and attract someone else to your gathering instead. Pick a character whos already been declined by your opponents, though, and youll acquire any regret cards spent on them, giving you newfound flexibility in selecting the most desirable guests.

It means that rejected characters become more attractive over time, and combined with a set of Belle cards, which grant you special abilities and new ways to score points it elevates a simple set-building game into something far more cutthroat, where youll constantly have to adapt your tactics to the changing state of the game.

Belle of the Ball benefits from a surreal sense of humour and a distinctive art style, and while its default mode is simple enough for children to pick up, it comes with some optional advanced rules which emphasise its more competitive edge. With two players it can feel a little flat, but more opponents bring greater scope for interaction, and more rewarding ways to mess with your rivals. It all adds up to a family-friendly game that manages to be fun for grownups as well.

Also try: No Thanks!, Small World

What have you been playing this month? Let us know below.

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The board hoard: your guide to the best new board games - The Guardian

As liberal democracy seems to be crumbling under the weight of widespread despondency, some hardline opinions are in danger of becoming received wisdoms. In the global market, we are told, we must work harder andimprove productivity. The welfare state has become too large and we needto cut back on benefits. Immigration is out of control and borders need to be strengthened.

The choice seems to be either to accept this new paradigm or risk the likes of Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders gaining power. The centre ground is being dragged to the left and right, and collapsing down the middle. Meanwhile progressive politics has returned to its comfort zone, busily opposing everything and offering almost nothing. Where is the vision, the ambition, the belief?

Yet into this bleak picture drops a book and an author bristling with hope, optimism and answers. Rutger Bregman is a 28-year-old Dutchman whose book, Utopia for Realists, has taken Holland by storm and could yet revitalise progressive thought around the globe. His solutions are quite simple and staunchly set against current trends: we should institute a universal basic income for everyone that covers minimum living expenses say around 12,000 a year; the working week should be shortened to 15 hours; borders should be opened and migrants allowed to move wherever they choose.

Ive heard for years that my ideas are unrealistic. You want to stick to the status quo? Hows that working out?

If that all sounds like fantasy politics, then Bregman has assembled a wealth of empirical evidence to make his case. Better than that, though, it is not a dry, statistical analysis although he doesnt shy from solid data but a book written with verve, wit and imagination. The effect is charmingly persuasive, even when you cant quite believe what youre reading.

Bregman lives in Utrecht, arguablyHollands most progressive city, where cycling is almost obligatory and motorists are effectively deemed guilty until proven innocent. His house is a few yards from the pretty canal that cuts through the centre of a carefully thought-out town.

Thin, with a pallid complexion and a wispy rumour of a beard, he looks even younger than 28, but he speaks with impressive authority on his subject. Bregman does something very smart and mature in his book. Instead of just attacking capitalism and post-enlightenment liberalism, at the outset he celebrates its achievements. He shows the incredible improvements in life expectancy, health, wealth, education and freedoms that have been achieved in the last couple of centuries.

As for much derided globalisation, he credits it with lifting 700 million Chinese out of extreme poverty hugely more than communism ever achieved. But whereas idealists in the 60s extolled Maoism, regardless of the death and destruction it wrought, no one gets too misty eyed about what the international market has done for China. Why, I ask, are the progressive-minded so reluctant to acknowledge this remarkable turnaround?

I think the big problem on the left, says Bregman, is that it only knows what its against. So its against austerity, against the establishment, against homophobia, against racism. Im not saying Im not against those things, but I think you should be for something. You need to have a new vision of where you want to go.

Bregman has a vision. And its a pretty clear one. But, wait a second. Universal benefit, a 15-hour working week, open borders, really? How?

Ive heard for three years that many of my ideas are unrealistic and unreasonable and that we cant afford them, he says, by way of preamble to a more comprehensive reply. And the simple answer is Oh, you want to stick to the status quo? Hows that been working out?

In Bregmans Holland the status quo has taken quite a bashing of late, and as a result the white-haired Wilders, who wants to stop Muslim immigration and ban the Quran, has emerged as the countrys most powerful politician. The debate in what used to be Europes most tolerant nation has become increasingly toxic. But as bad as that situation is, it still doesnt explain how a universal basic income would be paid for. The first thing we should acknowledge, says Bregman, is that poverty is hugely expensive. It varies from country to country, but most of the time its around 3, 4 or 5% of GDP. If you look at what it would cost just to top up the income of all the poor people in a country, it would cost about 1% of GDP.

Perhaps, but hes talking about paying everyone rich and poor around 12,000 a year. Thats a vast amount of money. How could that be achieved? Youd have to tax the middle class so much that what theyd receive would be wiped out, and then try to tax the very wealthy at a much higher rate which has not proven a successful policy, because the rich are very good at protecting their money.

Bregman gets a little bit vague at this point. He says that even neoliberal economists such as Milton Friedman were keen on universal basic income (UBI), although they tend to call it negative income tax. He also notes that the country that has come closest to implementing a UBI is the US, under President Nixon. It was only because the Democrat-controlled Senate thought Nixon wasnt offering enough money in the basic income that the policy was ditched at the last moment.

He acknowledges that a genuinely universal system would involve a massive overhaul of our tax system and that it would require an enormous amount of public and political support. But youve got to start somewhere, is his outlook, and the best place to start is in redefining what we mean by work.

There was a poll in the UK that showed that 37% of British workers think that their job doesnt need to exist. Well, its not the bin men, and the care workers and the teachers that say that. Were talking about consultants, bankers, accountants, lawyers etc. The implications of that are radical. We could cut the working week by a third and be just as rich. Probably richer!

Well, I say, just because someone doesnt value their job, doesnt mean that it doesnt have value. These things can be part of an invisible network of jobs that keeps everything else going. They cant just be excised like that.

Thats the best we can come up with nowadays? he asks, shocked at my dull pragmatism. People are saying: I feel alienated, I think my job is useless, and the only answer we have for them is No, no, its really useful. You know the invisible hand knows best. Were paying you so much money, it has to be useful!

I say I was thinking more of the film Its a Wonderful Life, which, after all, is about a banker. He thinks his life is worthless and yet we see the depth of his effect on others when his input is stripped away. Anyway, I take his point. We should reconsider much of what society through the inequality of financial payment deems important.

One of the basic lessons of history, says Bregman, is that things can be different. The way weve structured our economy, our system of welfare, its not natural. It could be different.

Bregman is the son of a small-town Protestant preacher in the south of Holland. He studied history at university and thought of becoming an academic, but found that life too cloistered. Instead he began working as a journalist, but realised the news was a distorting way of viewing the world. Its about exceptions terrorism, corruption, crisis rather than the everyday means of how things actually work.

So he found a job at a new newspaper, the Correspondent, that enabled him to write in a way that brings together journalism and a more academic approach to the world. The result is a hybrid thats reminiscent of the New Yorkers Malcolm Gladwell: lots of compelling anecdotes, backed up with information from an array of surveys and research papers delivered in a tremendously readable style.

But theres also an extra layer of idealism with Bregman, a belief that people are essentially good and that all it requires is a rational analysis of the facts and good governance to make the most profound and lasting changes. As he repeatedly points out, democracy, equal rights for men and women, the abolition of slavery these were all once deemed the preserve of utopians.

He quotes approvingly the famous Oscar Wilde formulation: A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out and seeing a better country sets sail. Progress is the realisation of utopias.

But utopias also have a habit of turning out to be dystopias. Bregman is alive to this threat, and is scathing in his assessment of the communist experiment, but also argues that the unintended consequences of massive change can sometimes be virtuous too. I mention that in his book he suggests that universal basic income will enable the low-paid to study and then get the kinds of jobs they want to do. In which case, I wonder, who will be a cleaner?

He smiles at the question.

I think one of the most important facts of basic income would be that its not only a redistribution of income, but also of power. So the cleaners and bin men would have a lot more bargaining power. If you look at a university, for example, the cleaners will get paid more than the professors, which I think is an entirely good thing. Professors love their jobs, they dont need additional money for it. The cleaners dont like their jobs well, they get rewarded for it!

I suggest that someone suffering through a PhD might not share that particular conviction. But he answers with a conviction that has triumphed over doubt. Basic income would give people the most important freedom: the freedom of deciding for themselves what they want to do with their lives.

I can imagine many old heads questioning the wisdom of a young man who has barely experienced the stubborn complexity of the world. But Bregman is clearly on to something. Following his advocacy, Utrecht and several other Dutch towns are conducting trials on basic income. Finland has implemented a trial, but only with the unemployed. Two Scottish councils, Fife and Glasgow, are looking at a scheme and the Swiss are also interested. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has said that it might be an idea whose time has come, and Benot Hamon, the French Socialist candidate in the forthcoming elections, has included it in his manifesto. Even visionary US tech billionaire Elon Musk is in favour.

One reason why Musk supports a basic income is that work is likely to become much more scarce in the near future of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence and thats also a reason for a much reduced working week. In a way Bregman has less of a hard sell with shorter working hours. History is moving that way and has been for some time. Its just a question of when and how were going to acknowledge the inevitable.

However, there are still problems to iron out, some of which Bregman doesnt tackle in his book. For instance, expertise tends to be gathered over intense periods of study and practice. Who wants to fly on a plane piloted by someone with limited flying hours, or be operated on by a surgeon who hasnt done much surgery?

Bregmans answer is to point out that overworked pilots and surgeons are a danger. Yes, but that doesnt mean a lack of work is not also a potential menace. Now he gets really fuzzy, saying that there would be a paid 15 hours, and then if pilots and surgeons and other experts wanted they could also work in their spare time. When I try to pin him down on what that would mean, he says we need to redefine work as contributing to society in your own way.

This sounds a little too utopian to my ears. Yet if you step back and examine where we are, there is undoubtedly a rational cause to rethink work, especially the well-remunerated jobs that dont appear to create anything of tangible value. Its impossible to read Utopia for Realists without wondering at the efficacy of advertising executives, management consultants, speculative currency investors and, yes, perhaps even feature writers.

Probably Bregmans weakest argument is for open borders not because it isnt viable long term, but because he doesnt really examine the drawbacks. Three obvious problems are 1) population density if millions more arrived in an already cramped Holland, it would create a great deal of tension to say the least. 2) Cultural conflicts the large-scale movement of people from one culture into another does present genuine difficulties of assimilation, many of which Holland and other European countries are already contending with. 3) If it is the better-off in poorer countries who are most likely to leave, it robs those nations of a much-needed middle class.

Bregman listens to all these points and says that for him, open borders are not something he believes will happen tomorrow. Its an aspiration, something to work towards. The same could be said for all of his arguments. However, the critical thing is that he has pointed towards a destination, somewhere that in these embattled times the progressively minded can aim towards, and hes provided some well-researched evidence to support his contentions.

Yes, he is a utopian, but a practical one. He knows there are many problems to overcome, but the first and toughest is the belief that things can change. In that he has made a major contribution. Listen out for Rutger Bregman. He has a big future shaping the future.

Utopia for Realists And How We Can Get There by Rutger Bregman is published by Bloomsbury on 9 March (16.99). To order a copy for 14.44 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

Rutger Bregman will be speaking at Londons How to: Academy conference on 7 March, Second Home, London on 8 March and Bristol Festival ofIdeas on 9 March

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Rutger Bregman: 'We could cut the working week by a third' - The Guardian