The Ministry for the Future: A Novel

Old words obscure new situations.

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.

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

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

This is what our thinking has been reduced to: essentially a neoliberal analysis and judgment of the neoliberal situation.

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.

My point exactly. By that line of reasoning, you end up saying design is technology, law is technology, language is technology— even thinking is technology! At which point, QED— you’ve proved technology drives history, by defining everything we do as a technology.

Don’t keep talking about cost as if that’s a real thing. Money isn’t real. Work is real.

Demonstrations are parties. People party and then go home. Nothing changes.