What’s the difference between utopia and dystopia? Exactly: dystopias in the form of autocratic, exploitative systems of rule—such as Hitler’s fascism—have repeatedly become reality throughout human history.
Utopias, by contrast—the human-friendly visions of the future—have had a much harder time. Either they eventually mutated into dystopias themselves—just think of so-called real-existing socialism and its Stalinist perversion.
Or their protagonists never managed to implement their utopias at all, because they mistakenly hoped that “the good” (in human beings) would somehow prevail on its own.
The Horror Scenario
The happy ending has yet to materialize. And things could still get worse. Which, curiously enough, also contains an opportunity. First, the scenario:
Imagine the trade war between the major powers escalates, leading to de-globalization—and with it, a new-old form of economic nationalism.
Imagine a country like Germany (or, alternatively, the EU) is forced to seriously rethink its one-sided export orientation as a result.
Imagine China continues to grow ever more powerful, and countries like Germany want—or have—to escape this influence, as well as that of other great powers driven by economic and political ambitions.
And finally, imagine the climate crisis intensifies to such an extent that “business as usual” becomes absolutely impossible—because it would massively accelerate our ecological suicide.
Then the time has come to reshuffle the deck. And that’s something worth being prepared for. With a draft, a blueprint, a model for a new economic order: the BEconomy. That said, our economic system can, of course, be revolutionized evolutionarily at any other point in time as well. Preferably before the Big Bang 😉
Basic Law and Economic Order
Nota bene. And here are a few not entirely unimportant excerpts from the „Grundgesetz“ (Basic Law) of the Federal Republic of Germany:
Article 14 (2) Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good.
Article 14 (3) Expropriation is permissible only for the public good.
Article 15 Land, natural resources, and means of production may, for the purpose of socialization, be transferred into public ownership or other forms of collective enterprise.
© The Economics Coach 2026 (cover photo: Rawpixel/Envato)
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