Overview

This book studies economies as thermodynamic engines. It recasts the laws of thermodynamics into economic language. It also offers a new framework for understanding growth, instability, and collapse. Among modern economic theories, the ideas of Keynes and Minsky fit naturally into this framework. Minsky explains how an economic engine is driven too hard until it overheats and breaks. Keynes explains why stalled engines often fail to restart without an injection of external energy. At the center of the analysis lies entropy: the universal tendency toward disorder, inefficiency, and decay. As entropy rises and overwhelms productive work, economic engines lose coordination. Workers grow discouraged. Institutions weaken. Decline begins. These ideas are applied to major episodes in economic history, including the Panic of 1873, the Great Depression, Detroit, California, the Roman Empire, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The book concludes by examining the fertility crisis and the unsettling possibility that even human civilization may sink into the quicksand of history.

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