This post continues the story of quantum economics, which began here. There is a summary of posts to date at the end of this post.

Can you please note when reading this post and others in the series that I am not suggesting that quantum physics and economics are akin to each other. Instead, I am exploring how quantum thinking might help build new economic narratives, which is quite a different goal.

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Towards a Quantum Political Economy

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” – Karl Marx

We have seen in this series of posts (all of which are linked below) that money behaves like energy: a dual particle and wave, potential waiting to be released.

We have seen that double-entry bookkeeping reflects entanglement, that uncertainty is fundamental, and that speculation traps energy in sterile loops that waste resources.

We have recognised labour as the quantum of value - the photon of economics - and land as the finite field in which it operates.

What happens when we pull these insights together? We get the beginnings of a new framework - a quantum political economy.

This is not, to be very clear, physics applied literally to society. It does, instead, represent a new way of thinking: accepting uncertainty, duality, entanglement, finitude, and collapse. It is an economics rooted in reality, not abstraction. It is political because it deals with power: who controls money, labour, and land, and for whose benefit.

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First: abandoning Newtonian economics

Orthodox economics rests on Newtonian metaphors. Equilibrium. Rational agents. Predictable outcomes disturbed only by small shocks.

But economies are not machines that tend to balance. They are complex, uncertain, and entangled systems. Just as physics had to abandon Newtonian mechanics at the atomic level to develop quantum understanding that addressed previously unanswered questions, so must economics abandon its equilibrium fantasies to now address the problems seen in the real world that we live in.

A quantum political economy accepts that stability is not natural, that uncertainty is real, and that relationships matter more than isolated agents.

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Second: money as potential energy

In this framework, money is not wealth. It is potential — promises waiting to be realised.

• When released for consumption, it creates waves of demand.

• When invested, it creates jumps in capacity.

• When trapped in speculation, it creates dangerous nd potentially disruptive standing waves.

Policy must guide money's release: amplifying flows that sustain whilst investing in capacity and suppressing speculation.

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Third: labour as the photon of value

Labour is the indivisible unit of economic energy. Without human effort, nothing is produced.

• Recognising labour as quantum exposes exploitation. Surplus value is measurable again.

• It makes full employment an economic necessity, not a political option.

• It demands fair wages as the distribution of value, not charity.

A quantum political economy restores labour to the centre.

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Fourth: land as a finite field

That said, labour needs a field in which to act. Land — in the broadest sense of natural resources — is that field.

• It is finite.

• It cannot be expanded by fiat.

• Control over it generates rents and inequality.

Policy must reclaim land: through taxation of rents, public ownership where needed, and democratic planning of its use.

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Fifth: entanglement and double-entry

Every asset has a liability. Every credit has a debit. The economy is a web of relationships, not isolated atoms.

This entanglement means:

• Government deficits are always private surpluses.

• One nation's trade deficit is another's surplus.

• My asset is your liability.

Recognising entanglement dismantles the myths of government “borrowing” and “debt.” It shows that what matters is finding balance, not false tests of solvency.

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Sixth: uncertainty as a foundation

In quantum mechanics, uncertainty is not ignorance. It is reality.

In economics, too, uncertainty is fundamental. The future is unknowable. Forecasts are probability clouds, not certainties. Policy must be robust, not precise.

This means:

• Rejecting rigid fiscal rules based on five-year forecasts.

• Building automatic stabilisers that respond flexibly.

• Embracing resilience and enhancing it, not pretending to predict.

Uncertainty is not failure. It is truth, or reality.

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Seventh: collapse and crisis

Quantum systems collapse from superpositions into states. Economies collapse from booms into busts, from bubbles into crashes.

Speculation creates superpositions of value, detached from reality. Crises are the collapse, the forced return to an entangled balance.

A quantum political economy does not deny the possibility of collapse. It plans for it. It builds institutions resilient enough to withstand the shocks, meaning that collapse is controlled.

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Eighth: policy architecture

From these principles, we can sketch six policy pillars.

• First, fiscal activism is required. The unlimited ability to create money must be used to mobilise resources, guided (of course) by real capacity, which forms the constraint on activity.
• Second, labour must be given priority. People must be guaranteed full employment, and there must be investment in training and the protection of wages, inclduing through enhanced trade union rights.
• Third, there must be land reform. Rents must be taxed, and the use of land must be regulated and, if necessary, be placed in public ownership.
• Fourth, financial control is necessary. Speculation (including in land) must be suppressed with capital controls, financial transaction taxes, and regulation.
• Fifth, economic management must be based on resilient planning. There must be investment in automatic stabilisers, the green transition, and public services, which are the basis for future security.
• Sixth, there must be democratic transparency. There must be fair and accountable elections, public ownership registers, open accounting must be required across the economy, and communities must be empowered.

This is not utopia, although it is shorthand. It is realism in aligning infinite promises with finite energy.

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Ninth: the politics of power

Economics is never neutral. Who controls money, land, and labour determines outcomes.

• Landlords extract rent.

• Capitalists extract surplus.

• Speculators extract windfalls.

A quantum political economy exposes these extractions as parasitic. It demands redistribution, not as envy but as necessity. It empowers labour, reclaims land, and directs money to social use.

This is why orthodox economics resists such thinking. It is not about truth, but about power.

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Conclusion

A quantum political economy is not physics misapplied. It is a recognition that the metaphors of quantum mechanics — uncertainty, duality, entanglement, finitude, collapse — fit economics better than Newtonian equilibrium ever did.

• Money is potential energy.

• Labour is the photon of value.

• Land is a finite field.

• Double-entry is entanglement.

• Uncertainty is reality.

• Speculation creates collapse.

From these insights comes a political economy that is both more honest and more hopeful. Honest, because it recognises limits. Hopeful, because it shows abundance is possible within them.

This is the framework we need if we are to fund the future.

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Previous posts in this series

1. Discussing quantum economics, accounting, money and more
2. Quantum economics, part 1: Why Quantum Thinking Matters for Economics
3. Quantum economics, part 2: Money as Particle and Flow
4. Quantum economics, part 3: Entanglement and Double-Entry Bookkeeping
5. Quantum economics, part 4: Quantum Uncertainty and Economic Forecasts
6. Quantum economics, part 5: Speculation, Potential, and Energy
7. Quantum economics, part 6: Infinite Promises, Finite Energy (MMT and constraint)
8. Quantum economics, part 7: The Photon Question — labour as the Quantum of Value
9. Quantum economics, part 7A: The Ergon or Praxeon
10. Quantum economics, part 8: Land as the Field

 

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