Nominated for the Skroutz Book Awards 2026 readers’ choice awards.
TODAY, UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA STARE US IN THE FACE
Artificial intelligence is the first technology to replace both mental and physical labor at the same time. Entering our lives alongside robots, drones, and self-driving vehicles, it is sparking an unprecedented revolution. A new, deeply contradictory era is beginning.
With unprecedented wealth creation, but also surging inequality.
With soaring productivity that nevertheless threatens workers in knowledge services where demand is relatively inelastic, such as legal, accounting, and consulting services.
With falling prices, but also intense pressure on commerce.
With technological leaps and the simultaneous displacement of human labor.
Thodoros Skylakakis combines economic analysis, political philosophy, and historical experience to map this transition. He proposes policies to prevent people from being rendered obsolete on a mass scale and to avert social upheaval. And he puts forward a radical proposal: a shift from a society of wage earners to a society of owners, in which everyone has Universal Basic Capital.
At the same time, he defends European-style democracies as the last hope against authoritarianism and poses the crucial question: how can we avoid creating a new entity we cannot control?
A compass for the age of great upheaval.
