This is the fourth in a series of articles that will be published daily during the rest of this week.
The first quantum economics series and then the resulting quantum essays can be found here, but from the outset, whilst we knew the original ten-part series that laid the foundation for ideas on this issue was a starting point, there was always going to be a second series of essays, based on concepts in quantum biology, which is how and why Jacqueline, my wife and co-creator of these ideas, had become interested in these issues in the first place.
This post is chapter 3 in that new series, which will, we hope, provide a deeper explanation of our thinking on what we think is a key issue with the potential to deliver a new understanding of the economy.
A list of previous posts in this series is included at the end of this chapter.
Chapter 3 – Coupling and Uncoupling
Life is a self-organising, dissipative system characterised by the flow of electrons and protons through an electromagnetic field. Inside every living cell, the energy released by electrons moving through the redox chain must be captured carefully. If too much is trapped, the system burns itself out. If too little is held, it collapses. Cells manage this tension through coupling and uncoupling: sometimes they bind the flow of energy tightly to production, and sometimes they let some energy go as heat. Both are necessary. Efficiency without flexibility kills as surely as waste without limit.
The same is true of economies. They, too, must strike a balance between efficiency and resilience. In periods of tight coupling, almost all labour is absorbed into measured output. Growth rises, productivity improves, and everything seems to work. But beneath the surface, the system becomes brittle. When the unexpected happens — a crisis, a shock, or a change in resources — the system cannot adapt. It has lost the slack that allows it to recover.
Uncoupling, by contrast, is what provides that resilience. Some of the energy of labour is released into activities that do not directly increase output but which sustain the social and emotional infrastructure on which output depends. These activities — caring, teaching, creating, governing, maintaining public spaces and institutions — often appear inefficient in economic terms. They do not maximise GDP, and they rarely attract private investment. Yet without them, society overheats. It becomes stressed, divided, and unable to regenerate itself.
Efficiency and its limits
Neoliberal economics has spent forty years promoting the virtues of efficiency. Public services have been squeezed, labour rights curtailed, and working lives intensified in the name of productivity. Yet the outcome has not been stability or prosperity but exhaustion. The narrow pursuit of efficiency has created systems that cannot cope with uncertainty. Hospitals operate at capacity until a crisis exposes their fragility. Supply chains stretch across continents until a disruption brings them down. Workers are pushed to their limits until burnout and ill health reduce their effectiveness.
The illusion is that everything is working perfectly until it suddenly isn't. The truth is that perfection in economic terms means fragility in human terms. The energy of labour cannot be stored indefinitely in profit or output. Some of it must circulate through the forms of work that maintain human capacity itself. A society that denies this is not efficient; it is self-destructive.
The work that sustains life
The forms of labour that neoliberalism dismisses as unproductive are those that make all other work possible. Care keeps people alive and able to work. Education renews knowledge. Culture provides meaning and imagination. Public goods such as parks, libraries, and open information give people space to think and recover. Democracy allows disagreement to be resolved without violence. None of these can be measured fully in prices, but all are essential.
To describe them as “uncoupled” is not to diminish them. It is to recognise that their value lies precisely in their freedom from the constant demand for immediate output. They are what allow the economy to remain open, adaptive, and human. They are the equivalent of the controlled release of energy that prevents the cell from burning itself out.
Reclaiming balance
The challenge, then, is not to choose between coupling and uncoupling but to maintain a balance between them. Too much coupling, and society becomes brittle and unjust. Too much uncoupling, and resources are squandered. The balance is political, not mechanical. It depends on collective choices about what kinds of work deserve recognition, how much time people should have for life beyond production, and what kind of society we want to build.
A politics of care would restore that balance. It would fund public services and cultural life not as luxuries but as foundations of resilience. It would protect time for rest and family life as part of economic policy, not a concession from it. It would recognise that the measure of an economy is not how much energy it extracts from its people, but how much life it returns to them.
Conclusion
Biology reminds us that systems survive not by maximising efficiency but by managing entropy. Life is sustained through a rhythm of activity and recovery, of coupling and uncoupling, of use and renewal. Economies must do the same. When all labour is driven into productive work defined narrowly by output, the economy becomes efficient in the short term and unstable in the long. When some labour is directed towards care, culture, and community, the economy gains the capacity to endure.
The purpose of work is not simply to produce. It is to sustain life in all its forms. The task of policy is therefore not to chase efficiency to its limit but to preserve the equilibrium that allows labour to create value without destroying itself in the process.
Previous posts in this series
- The prologue
- Chapter 1: Labour, value and reflection
- Chapter 2: The circuit of value and its pathologies
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I like this series you are doing because it is helping to isolate Neo-liberalism as unnatural – and I mean this in the strictest sense.
Are you and Jacqueline intending to write a book about this Richard? I think that you should. It would complement the hard nosed maths based critiques of Steve Keen and others because I think that you have picked fault with the base philosophy of Neo-liberalism. And Neo-liberalism is anti-life for society, the collective, because in practice it only works on the basis of faulty allocation of resources to too few individuals.
I am completing David Graeber’s book ‘Bullshit Jobs’ and he centres on the end to what he sees as resentment towards people who have jobs that publicly are actually useful and help others. It turns the accusation of politics being based on jealousy over money between groups in society on its head, and explains why teachers, nurses and carers are so under valued. Because they look good and arguably are and make others wonder what everyone else is up to.
So it makes sense for politicians and think tanks to undermine ‘caring’ – a valuable commodity – pay them less, accuse them of failure (Ofsted etc.,) so that people aren’t looking at what you are doing (or more likely not doing) on over a million pounds a year or say on a prime minister’s salary.
It’s a sick world eh?
A book may happen….
We are discussing it
Coffee tomorrow morning will be about that
We had a team meeting this morning and there was not time for this
Back in circa 1989, I had a letter published in the FT attacking an article by a couple of economists on the subject of Westland Helicopters. The word “efficient” and the phrase “efficient allocation of resources” were used repeatedly. I noted that efficency was important as a measure of action – but was the action effective? I finished by pointing out that it was quite possible to efficienctly do – the wrong thing & that the application of common sense could act as a counterweight (the writer of the article went bonkers in a follow up letter attacking my letter – very satisfying – obvs I had hit a nerve – good).
“The task of policy is therefore not to chase efficiency to its limit but to ” …………act effectively such that the actions that result benefit the organism as a whole. The organism could be part of a biological process or indeed, part of society.
On a related note. I was struck by an article by Monbiot – main focus was potholes & the harm they cause. From a GDP point of view potholes are good – they generate economic activity (car crashes, increase the purchase of tyres etc) – but all this economic activity is unproductive in terms of society as a whole.
You will like chapter 4 – but I have still to edit the final version.
I like your quantum essays! The earlier ones were heavier going, either I’ve got into them or they’ve become more broad and accessible. Refreshing and engaging. Very smart to move to a new setting where everything is novel, so we look at things anew.
Thanks
The change is down to Jacqueline
I think entropy is a good way to think about macro and micro levels. When scientists talk of entropy they are describing a macro state. They are describing a tendency of behaviour of a macro system. On the other hand a true micro level, there is no entropy. There is no macro system either. There is Brownian motion. Economists have shown a tendency to mix these up. They have applied brownian motion to the stock market when it is really entropic.
When you say there is no entropy at the micro level, I think you mean that at the absolute micro level, the system is in a definite state e.g. a single electron, or even a single atom, or even an entire isolated micro-configuration. At those levels there can be a state where these is no uncertainty i.e. birth position and momentum (or the quantum state) are fully defined within the framework you use. Then you claim is true. Entropy only appears when you average over possibilities. But the fact si we always average our possibilities. So at the micro level economics recognises there is always entropy – and negentropy as well.
What?
That’s not how life is characterised.
Life isn’t characterised by a flow of electrons or protons. And what electromagnetic field?
Jibberish nonsense.
That’s only true if you have not tried to engage with the issue via quantum biology.
I think Ella that it was Andy Capp who said that those who know the least are often the loudest about it.
Congratulations. You are the Dunning-Kruger effect in motion.
🙂
What I find sad about individuals like you Ella is you actually think it’s acceptable to lash out against others without a shred of a coherent counter-argument! You were clearly taught no manners as a child!
Such comments are a sure sign of fascist anti-intellectualism.
Caring is what psychotherapy is about. It is most effective when therapist and client are in a state where personal boundaries temporarily dissolve. Some use Martin Buber’s term I-Thou relationship.
My personal understanding is that there is a flow of coherent energy at a quantum level which helps to heal the psyche promoting resilience and creativity and reduces disorganised attachment and emotions.
My impression is that is takes place in a deeper context, a universal consciousness field.
Some pick this up in a group meditation or, perhaps in a Quaker meeting, places where people know each other over a period of time and sort of tune in.
Mainstream medicine is only just beginning to investigate. IMHO we have much to learn from the traditions of the East.
You chalenge the neoliberal paradigm with what you say. That does not allow for energy beyond the person. We are all sealed, homogenous, units in its bizarre worldview. It is wrong. You are right. Mainstream medicine is a million miles behind right nopw. Quantum biology is not.