The problem with utopian visions like these is not that they are impossible. No, they are completely possible. There is nothing in an economic system like that incompatible with human nature. (The hunter-gatherer thing is outlandish, but let’s ignore that for the moment.)

The problem is that there is no credible path from here to there. None at all.

We are at a local maximum. There are several very dreadful local minima nearby that it’s easy to roll down into from here — such as climate-caused collapse, or nuclear war, or ecological collapse separate of climate change.

There are better local maxima — far better — but they are up slopes so steep that the chances of climbing them are basically nil. Not now, not ever.

I don’t believe there is a way around this. And perhaps that itself is human nature, that it’s impossible to transition to other much-more-beneficial local maxima without utter disaster.