Did you know the world's paper consumption peaked in 2013 and total global paper use has been declining ever since? Or that since 1982, America has taken an area the size of Washington State out of cultivation while simultaneously increasing total crop tonnage by 35%?

Welcome to the power of "dematerialization." I first encountered this idea while reading Buckminster Fuller's 1969 "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth," although he called it "ephemeralization." MIT economist Andrew McAfee takes Bucky's idea and updates it for the world of 2019, writing a clear synthesis of many of the key ideas of the last 50 years. "More from Less" presents a strong case against neo-Malthusian alarmism and is required reading for anyone who wants to have an informed conversation about economics and the environment.

A surprising graph! Total timber use down by a third and paper by half since 1990. From page 105

McAfee's central thesis revolves around what he calls the "four horsemen of the optimist" - namely technological progress, capitalism, public awareness, and responsive government. These forces combine to create new solutions for many of the major challenges we face. In the environmental sphere, this manifests as the reduction of natural resource inputs into economic production, hence the title "More from Less."

But don't humans have unlimited wants? Don't we always want to consume more? McAfee elegantly deflates this classic argument with one of the best one-liners in the book:

We do want more all the time, but not more resources.

Or, said another way, I really just want to buy a pair of pants - I don't care about the nitrogen and water inputs used to grow the cotton that goes into the pants.

This intellectual approach stands in stark contrast to the alarmist rhetoric of other members of the academy, especially tenured Stanford biology professor and notable neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich. McAfee devotes an entire chapter to the Paul Ehrlich / Julian Simon bet on the future prices of commodities - a bet Ehrlich famously lost. In the same tradition, McAfee actually puts up $100K of his own money for a series of commodity bets he lists at the end of the book! For deeper reading on the topic, I'd recommend Yale professor Sabin's "The Bet."

McAfee's book is a timely and clear synthesis of history of big ideas in environmental economics. Here's a (partial, semi-chronological) list of many of the usual suspects along with a few surprising characters:

* Thomas Malthus - the intellectual grandpa of resource scarcity alarmism
* de Tocqueville - a footnote wryly comments that de Tocqueville references are de rigueur for any "serious" book about America
* Adam Smith, Marx, and Engels - it is a book about economics, after all!
* Thorstein Veblen - author of "Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899) and intellectual father of the theory of conspicuous consumption
* Buckminster Fuller - early thinker on "ephemeralization" of production (1960's and 70's)
* Paul Ehrlich - famous neo-Malthusian alarmist and author of "The Population Bomb" (1968)
* John Holdren - Obama's science advisor and frequent collaborator with Paul Ehrlich
* Donella Meadows - part of the "Limits to Growth" (1972) team and the "Club of Rome"
* Julian Simon - economist, Ehrlich antagonist, and author of "The Ultimate Resource" (1981)
* Ronald Coase - won a Nobel for being the intellectual father of cap and trade
* William Nordhaus - Yale prof and climate economist
* Vaclav Smil - one of Bill Gates' favorite authors and a prodigious producer of really dense books on resource flows in the global economy
* Bjørn Lomborg - controversial author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (1998). Sort of a bold move for McAfee to favorably cite him!
* Robert Putnam - author of "Bowling Alone" (2000)
* Tyler Cowen - author of "The Great Stagnation" (2011) and perhaps our generation's greatest reader? Not mentioned by name, but McAfee takes a shot at his big idea - "I believe that technological progress today is faster than ever before in our history."
* Daron Acemoglu - author of "Why Nations Fail" (2012)
* Matt Ridley, Stephen Pinker, Hans Rosling - authors of popular modern books about how the world is getting better
* Johann Hari - author of "Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs" (2015) about the epidemic of alienation in America

These ideas exert real influence on policy and incorrect analysis can lead to immense human suffering (a theme familiar to readers of another one of my favorites - "Seeing Like a State"). McAfee notes that Song Jian, the architect of China's infamous "One Child Policy" was heavily influenced by the book "Limits to Growth." As modern China struggles with a severe gender imbalance and a rapidly aging population, most contemporary analysts have cast the One Child Policy as an unmitigated disaster for the country (to say nothing of the tragedy and violence endured by Chinese individuals). Yet when the policy was officially retired in 2015, Ehrlich tweeted, "China to End One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children… GIBBERING INSANITY—THE GROWTH-FOREVER GANG."

McAfee, on the other hand, actually looks at the data. Fortunately for our civilization, the numbers are actually looking pretty good. One exception to this is Branko Milanovic's famous "Elephant Chart."

The famous "elephant chart" - great Voxplanation at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/16868838/elephant-graph-chart-global-inequality-economic-growth

This chart is so famous that somehow I had never even heard of it. It shows that while the global poor and the super-elite have generally seen a large improvement in their incomes, those in the 80-90th percentiles (the middle class in the US and Western Europe) have been stagnating. If you see me in real life at any point in the next few years, I'll probably still be ranting about this graph.

Anyways, I loved this book. It surprised me with data, presented a clear theory of change, and was accessibly written - what more can a non-fiction reader ask for? (OK, it didn't have the Shakespearean majesty of Caro's "The Power Broker," but honestly, who does these days?) McAfee is sort of an odd duck ideologically - how many other public intellectuals are pro-GMO, pro-carbon-tax, pro-nuclear, and pro-vaccine? I pay attention to what he says. He was very early on this current wave of thinking about automation, publishing "Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy" back in 2011. "More from Less" cements his status as a must-read popular author on the modern economy. I'm looking forward to his next book.

Also, if you know him in real life... could you connect me?

Full review and highlights at https://books.max-nova.com/more-from-less

More from Less - Likewise Book Reviews

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