Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman talks to Nate Hagens on The Great Simplification podcast about his book Moral Ambition. Bregman, who has written four books on history, philosophy and economics and founded the School for Moral Ambition in 2024, explains that moral ambition combines an activist's idealism with an entrepreneur's business ambition. The goal, he says, is to pursue large, scalable solutions to very big problems, rather than make the world “a little” better.
Bregman admits that the familiar phrase “I just want to make the world a little better” bothers him. He explains that moral ambition means recognizing that if the problems are enormous, the solutions must be big too. When Hagens asks whether change will come from a few highly successful people or many small contributions, he replies that both can be true, as with an investment portfolio: some ventures fail, but a few change history.
He uses the British abolitionist movement as a historical example. The British Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded by twelve people, ten of whom were businesspeople. When they started in 1787, supporters of abolition were few, perhaps fifty to a hundred people across the entire country. But the movement grew and brought hundreds of thousands of people with it, demonstrating that moral pioneers also need a broader support network.
Bregman argues that today's definition of success is destroying us. He cites the American Freshmen Survey, according to which more than 90% of students in the late 1960s considered developing a meaningful philosophy of life an important goal, while today that figure has fallen to 50%. Over the same period, the share saying that money is a central goal rose from around 50% to around 90%. He interprets this as a search for status and recognition, rather than simply greed.
Success, he stresses, is a cultural construct that can change. The elites of the Progressive Era in the US, like British abolitionists, redefined what it meant to be a successful person: the focus shifted from mansions and money to doing real good. This became a symbol of social standing. He adds that even if someone starts for external reasons, the action itself often changes them, and they begin to care deeply.
Bregman connects the discussion to the need to broaden our definition of returns. He mentions his earlier criticism of GDP, which he describes as a useful but misleading tool inherited from war planning. He also talks about his personal experience with Giving What We Can, where he pledged to donate 10% of his income. When he began tracking his donations like a portfolio, he experienced a psychological shift: donations were no longer money lost, but a moral portfolio that generates returns and can grow.
An important part of moral ambition is perseverance over time. Bregman points out that of the twelve founders of the British anti-slave-trade society, only one was still alive when slavery was finally abolished in the British Empire. Similarly, of the 68 women who met at Seneca Falls in 1848, only one was alive in 1920, when women won the right to vote in the US. This perseverance, he says, shows that you are part of something much bigger than yourself.
Bregman explains that the abolitionist movement in Britain was not driven solely by altruism. After the American Revolution, Britain was going through an identity crisis, and abolitionists used that moment to argue that the country could redeem itself by becoming slavery's great opponent. It was, he says, a mixture of genuine compassion, a desire for status and a wish to live a life worth remembering. He stresses that we remember abolitionists because they changed history, not because they were rich.
Bregman describes the School for Moral Ambition as an attempt to move from awareness to action. He criticizes himself, saying that he spent a decade in the “awareness business,” with books, articles and talks that did not always lead to real change. The school now has 17,000 members in more than a hundred countries and offers fellowships that pay people to quit their jobs and work on pressing problems. All proceeds from the book go to the movement.
The movement's seven principles are action, impact, radical compassion, openness, kindness, enthusiasm and perseverance. For impact, they use the SSS framework: they focus on problems that are sizable, solvable and sorely neglected—in other words, large, solvable and painfully overlooked. For radical compassion, they extend the moral circle to animals, citing the Shrimp Welfare Project and the hundreds of billions of shrimp killed each year as an example.
Bregman contrasts the modern environmental movement's obsession with footprints with the need to seek the moral maximum. He says that eating a plant-based diet, driving an electric car or reducing the harm you cause is part of “moral hygiene,” but it is not enough. If everyone simply minimized their footprint, the result would be almost as though they had never existed. What is needed, he says, is the Silicon Valley mindset: when it comes to positive impact, “the sky's the limit,” rather than “this far and no further.”
Moral ambition, he stresses, is not just for the privileged. He cites research on Dutch resistance members during World War II, which found no particular psychological type or social profile: in 96% of cases, people agreed because someone asked them. He mentions Rosa Parks as a seamstress and experienced activist, and Nelson Mandela, who worked as an electrician and mine guard. He also criticizes the “Bermuda Triangle” of talent: consulting, corporate law and finance, which absorb many Harvard graduates.
Bregman believes we are living through a second Gilded Age and need a new Progressive Era. He recalls that the Gilded Age was followed by income tax, the eight-hour workday and the breakup of monopolies such as Standard Oil. He insists that change cannot rely solely on grim warnings. Martin Luther King, he says, did not say “I have a nightmare,” but “I have a dream.” The same applies to technology: alongside dark scenarios like those in Black Mirror, we need a positive story about how it can serve people.
The School for Moral Ambition's current fellowships focus on three areas: fighting the tobacco industry, tax justice aimed at a global tax on billionaires, and reforming the food system. Bregman says that tobacco causes eight million deaths annually, many times the number of victims of natural disasters. He also underlines the importance of setting priorities, saying that some interventions can be a hundred or a thousand times more effective than others.
In closing, Bregman offers two pieces of advice. The first is not to feel that you have to worry about everything; it is better to choose one or two areas you really care about and stay informed about them. The second is that our twenties are a time for committing, rather than putting things off. He advises us to look beyond simply keeping our options open and find a small group of people with whom to make the journey in real life, because change is a collective effort.
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