The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

Old words obscure new situations.

because economics was above all a system of quantified ethics and political power that depended on measurement.

it was trying to think through how to do the needful in the biosphere’s time of crisis, while orthodox economics failed to rise to the occasion, and stayed focused in its old analysis of capitalism, as if capitalism were the only possible political economy, thus freezing economics as a discipline like a deer in the headlights of an onrushing car.

The market needs the state healthy, to back money itself. The state needs the market healthy, to keep the economy liquid. But state and market aren’t working hand in hand. Or they are hand in hand, but only because they’re arm wrestling! Struggling for control of the situation they comprise together.

A just civilization of eight billion, in balance with the biosphere’s production of the things we need; how would that look? What laws would create it? And how can we get there fast enough to avoid a mass extinction event?

It’s a life or death thing, society, and I think people mainly do recognize that, and the people who deny it are stupid fuckers, I say this unequivocally. Ignorant fools.

This suggests a general operating principle similar to the Leopoldian land ethic, often summarized as “what’s good is what’s good for the land.” In our current situation, the phrase can be usefully reworded as “what’s good is what’s good for the biosphere.” In light of that principle, many efficiencies are quickly seen to be profoundly destructive,

Jevons Paradox applies here too, but economics has normally not been flexible enough to take on this obvious truth, and it is very common to see writing in economics refer to efficiency as good by definition, and inefficient as simply a synonym for bad or poorly done. But the evidence shows that there is good efficiency and bad efficiency, good ine

Jevons Paradox proposes that increases in efficiency in the use of a resource lead to an overall increase in the use of that resource, not a decrease.