As Samuel L. Jackson's character says in Pulp Fiction: "I like it, but it ain't true".
Bregman's book is self-contradictory to the extreme degree. He, correctly, suggests that crime and violence tend to decrease on average since the beginning of the industrial era and then rejects the evidence that hunter-gatherer societies (which he terms as 95% of human history) were enormously violent. This author once suggested that a modern hunter-gatherer tribes could be "history's D-students" who did not learn to control violence--the only comparison of their causality rate in modern history was the USSR in 1942, the year of Stalingrad. But it cannot be denied that the only evidence we have is that their life was "poor, brutish and short".
He attacks Machiavelli for his dim view of the human nature and suggests that in hunter-gatherer societies as in other close-knit groups persons with "Machiavellian" traits would be quickly exposed and exiled to starve. Not debating his interpretations of the actual writings of the great Florentine, the persons colloquially called Machiavellian are not spiteful and proud bullies. Vice versa, these characters exhibit steely self-control and the ability to cover up their power plays by the "greater good" and "the will of the people". Clinton and Obama were much more fitting examples than Bush or Trump.
His pronouncements are trivial: power corrupts, infinite power corrupts infinitely and the like. Bregman suggests, in quite a Marx's--whom he detests--fashion that human puppies grow into violent sociopaths because of adverse influences of their environment. A disquisition of "nature vs. nurture" can be infinite until the new breakthroughs in neurophysiology will obviate this needless philosophizing discourse.
Another mix of misrepresentation and naivete is involved with discussion about humanization of prisons. Bregman asserts that a "touchy-feely" Scandinavian prisons work better in terms of violence between guards and convicts, convicts themselves and the rates of recidivism. However, the conditions in most prisons are not the exclusive results of the prison regimen imposed by the guards and administration. In Brazil (I use Brazil simply as the best-documented case) there exists a parallel governance of the prisons by the Primero Comando da Capital. Basically, a new arrival who does not belong to the gang, whether he (overwhelmingly, he) is there for murder, or theft, or insurance fraud is met by the representative of the criminal administration who explains to him his responsibilities before the leader if he, or his relatives outside are to stay alive. These responsibilities may include giving up food parcels from relatives, providing sexual favors to the gang members, or help in trafficking SIM-cards or drugs into prison. In Mexico, the gangs are predominantly territorially based, Russian gangs are ethnic-territorial (based on a city of origin, or from Caucasus, Central Asia, etc.) and USA prison gangs are supposed to be racially based.
Bregman objects to the Milgram and Stanford studies on the basis of newly discovered diaries but the evidence he presents to bolster his suggestion that the studies were faked is specious and unconvincing. For instance, he writes that "only" 56% of the tested persons in Milgram experiment were convinced that the electric shocks were real. That is quite enough.
Rutger Bregman is one of the relatively new crop of paperback philosophers (Fukuyama, Henri Levy were the pathfinders) valued not for their profound ideas but for their media-savvy presentation of the latest intellectual fashions and prejudices. But he writes well.
