Everything tends towards decay unless energy is applied. That is not ideology, it is physics.
In this video, I explore light through the lens of entropy and explain why care, maintenance, and public services are not optional extras but survival mechanisms.
Austerity withdraws energy from our systems. Neoliberalism assumes self-maintenance. Both are wrong.
If we want societies to endure, we must invest in care, because entropy never rests.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Welcome to this, the fourth in my video series on the importance of light, which I'm putting out over this Christmas season. And this time, I want to look at light through the lens of entropy.
Left alone, let's be honest, everything falls apart. It's not cynical to say that; it is simply the consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. Entropy always increases without energy, and it is light that resists that process. That is another reason why light is so important in our world, and so in our economy.
Entropy is the tendency towards disorder. Buildings decay; bodies weaken; institutions erode; and maintenance is not optional as a consequence. We have to look after all of these things, and of course, ourselves. Life only exists because we are constantly absorbing energy, and that energy mostly comes from light.
The order that is created, though, is temporary, and it is care that sustains it. We cannot neglect this process or decay advances. We do therefore have to take care seriously. Care is, in fact, an energy input into our systems.
Healthcare resists bodily entropy.
Education resists social entropy.
Infrastructure and its maintenance resist physical entropy.
And all of these things require continuous investment.
Cuts in that case can only increase disorder. But in that one statement, there is a massive economic message. Austerity withdraws energy from our economic systems is the inference of what I just said. Austerity pretends decay is efficiency. It treats breakdown as inevitability, but that is not about economics. Economics is about maintaining capital, and austerity is clearly about the mismanagement of capital as a consequence. It is a failure, and not an input into the way in which we manage our economic cycle.
Neoliberalism in this sense assumes that economic systems self-maintain, but they clearly do not. Worse still, neoliberalism assumes that all our systems of economic management are isolated and removed or apart from the rest of the world, but again, that's not true. Our economic systems are integral to the rest of the world, as of course we are. So, markets do not and cannot replace care, and failure to care then produces crisis.
Crisis is then blamed on failure, but that failure is the failure of neoliberalism itself. Quite simply, care is not built into neoliberalism, and therefore, it fails.
And maintenance is absolutely essential. It rarely produces headlines, but it does prevent disasters, and its success looks like nothing is happening because life goes on; that's the point. But what care does is protect the politically vulnerable, until it stops, that is.
Public services in this sense are part of the process of keeping the lights on, and that is why they're so important. They stabilise society, they resist breakdown, they are not waste, they are survival mechanisms.
You cannot control entropy. You can only manage it. And that is why survival is our goal, but that also requires humility, plus, I'm going to say it yet again, care, because that is the fundamental input that is required if we are to succeed in this absolutely essential role of managing decay, which entropy makes inevitable.
I'm not talking about ideology here. I'm talking about necessity. The choice is not whether systems fail because we know they will. The choice is how quickly they will fail and who will bear the cost. That is what is important here, and we can recognise that and realise that politics of care does indeed recognise this entropic process.
The politics of care is then all about maintenance. It's all about valuing continuity, and essentially, it's about investing in light because without light, none of those things are possible.
What we have to accept is our future depends on whether we accept this responsibility for maintaining the light. If we don't keep the lights on, we will fail. If we do invest in continuing with the light, we will succeed. This is not a matter of choice. This is a matter of necessity, but it's something more than that. It's deeply political because keeping the lights on is something that we know will not happen automatically.
We know that fossil fuels are failing us. We know that the systems that are dependent upon them have to come to an end. We know we have to make alternative choices about how we keep the lights on. We know that will change the power structures within society, and we know that this will require democracy to be working at its very best.
Can we do that? That's the challenge that light presents us with. We must rise to that challenge.
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Not understanding the necessity for a nation’s government to spend increases entropy. Not understanding the commensurate process involved in the government creating its spending money also does the same. When the state spends, it doesn’t convert existing base money into broad money; it increases both base money (commercial bank reserves) and broad money (private sector bank deposits) simultaneously creating new money.
My comment start like this:
The Fifth Element
Throughout the long course of history, earth, water, air, and light have woven a thin yet immensely diverse and intricate texture of life upon the surface of the planet – one in which our own existence is deeply embedded. Now, three of these elements – earth, air, and water – are under existential threat, while the fourth, solar energy, has been joined by a destructive rival: the products of ancient sunlight, extracted from the depths of the earth – coal, oil, and gas.
Behind this development lies the fifth element: the perpetual interplay between the structuring force of energy gradients (negentropy) and their inevitable dissipation (entropy). This ceaseless dynamic – an interaction between internal (endogenous) and external (exogenous) forces, the dynamics of metis (1) – has, through an intricate web of chance and necessity, produced a bio-friendly texture of life on this small speck of rock we call Mother Earth. Humanity itself is one of its emergent patterns.
see the whole comment: https://www.academia.edu/127564169/The_Fifth_Element
Yours
Matti Vesa Volanen
Dr. of Psychl.
Finalnd
Thank you. I note your idealism, and many shared roots in our respective approaches. I am not sure your conclusions are saleable, as yet. But I could be wrong.
Thanks again for an enlightening article!
Might Neoliberalism/Austerity be a policy and set of practices to increase light and maintenance for some at the cost of less light and maintenance for a majority of others?
Might the consequential destabilising of societies and the environment be met by increasing repression of the badly maintained majority by the ostentatiously well maintained, more cohesive and powerful minority?
Miight the recent legislation and mere pronouncements to repress even wriitten and spoken objections to the darkenig power plays in Gaza etc. be an example of this?
Interesting ideas…
A question I wish journalists would ask government ministers:
(actually, several questions)
When do YOU think we will run out of fossil fuels?
Why do you keep backtracking on net zero preparations?
What are your plans for when fossil fuels DO run out and you are faced with the reality of enforced de facto net zero, whether you like it or not?
In fact, in addition to the current series on “questions” I’d like one on “questions the journalists don’t ask”. Because there are a lot. I’m old enough to remember the days when politicians got a real grilling on R4Today, Newsnight etc. but that was 40-50 years ago, when Parliament was worth listening to.
As an example of the sort of question I mean, why doesn’t anyone ask our Financial Mismanagement Ministers, starting with Ms Reeves being grilled on, “Where does taxpayers’ money come from?” (although that might breach the rules on cruel and unusual punishment, and be prevented on welfare grounds).
I wish your wish comes true.
Stephen J Newbury has attempted to formalise a mathematical treatment of entropy as applied to economics in two recent papers:
https://zenodo.org/records/17881471
https://zenodo.org/records/17881197
His blog has a more accessible summary here:
https://theuaob.substack.com/p/the-agency-trap-why-we-must-fail
Thanks
Hi Richard, hope you and all the blog readers had a lovely Christmas.
Tim Jackson has a nice chapter in his book ‘Postgrowth’ on entropy and its relevance to perpetual economic growth. His final recommendations involve ideas such as economies centered around care and living within safe planetary boundaries (sustainable resource management and distribution etc).
His book, and his earlier 2015 report ‘prosperity without growth’, frame governmental decision making as constrained by the classical household budget. Funds must be raised by tax or borrowed, there are references to increasing levels of sovereign debt becoming problematic. In the 2015 report there is one sentence referencing Wray (i think but it might have been Mosler, Kelton or similar) regarding governments being able to generate their own currency, before stating that the report will follow the assumption that a government must first raise funds for spending.
I was wondering if you had ever had a conversation with him? He demonstrates that within the popular (incorrect) paradigm a sustainable economy is possible, which I’m sure is easier to sell to politicians and decision makers. Do you think this is why he, and others, take this stance or do they all really believe it is the case? I thought maybe there is a chance you have discussed this exact topic with him and could give us some insight into the concensus/thought-processes in this space.
I know Tim Jackson, but only very slightly. I also admit I have read nothing by him for ages. Perhaps I should revisit it. Right now,I’m am not sure I can comment.
You might want to consider Chaos Theory that proposes that order emerges from chaos. Dalio suggested that the universe itself was formed out of the chaos of the Big Bang. Maybe that’s a little more hopeful?
Order is possible
Order is possible with the caveat that global entropy will increase, achieved by using energy. Furthermore, the nature of a dynamical system may mean there are infinite equilibria the system can converge/diverge from transiently, heading to a desirable path may require much energy. I feel hope in the interpretation that economic management is possible using low entropy methods for achieving a steady state (sustainability) using feeback control (solar!!! And effective resource distribution). Excuse the hand-wavy nature of my description
In simple terms, austerity is neglect of the nuts and bolts of a society by not spending what is necessary to keep society in working order.
If you ran a taxi company, you could save money by not having your vehicles serviced and repaired regularly.
Obv. they would start breaking down and your taxi service would lose customers and the company would eventually fold.
Simplistic,I know, but understandable to everyone. Society is not so simple, yet nearly everyone who is not wealthy is affected by austerity. The principle is the same: cutting spending on essentials is false economy whatever the activity. Agreeing on what is essential is open to argument.
Simplistic, but right.
I will recall it when required.