More from Less
The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next
by Andrew McAfee · first published 2019
40% recommend60% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues that rich economies use fewer resources as they grow, backed by concrete examples like farmland and materials trends; recommended for readers wanting an evidence-based counterpoint to resource-depletion pessimism.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"A surprising analysis of the decline in consumption of natural resources despite the explosion of goods, prosperity, and population"-- Throughout history, the only way for humanity to grow was by degrading the Earth: chopping down forests, fouling the air and water, and endlessly digging out resources. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the reigning argument has been that taking better care of the planet means radically changing course: reducing our consumption, tightening our belts, learning to share and reuse, restraining growth. Is that argument correct? Absolutely not. In More from Less,
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…more resource consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dematerialization_(economics) [Edit] There's a great interview with Andrew McAfee on this concept at EconTalk. Its based on the McAffe's book More from Less that explores the topics. He mentions a few limitations of the idea including environmental concerns https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/
on “Economic Growth Is Incompatible with Biodiversity Conservation” ↗…total resource consumption decreases. For example, a richer economy might replace physical goods with digital goods which have higher value and lower resource demand. [1] Check out Andrew McAfee on More from Less
on “Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen” ↗…I think much of it could also be attributed to countries going through their own industrialisation processes Is that not just a misconception about how countries develop though? See Andrew McAfee - More from Less. E.g. we know that as a country’s manufacturing capability matures, it produces more product with less raw material and energy inputs. It’s somewhat counter intuitive though but the end result is the…
on “Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions” ↗See the book More From Less for a counter-argument. Thanks to modern efficiencies and digitization a lot of resource use has decoupled from economic growth and some has actually peaked
on “World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)” ↗• The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray • Consciousness by Annaka Harris • More From Less by Andrew McAffee • The School of Life: An Emotional Education • Perfect Sound Whatever by James Acaster • Humble Pi by Matt Parker • The Last Pirate of New York by Rich Cohen
on “Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?” ↗If you like these books I'd highly recommended two more. Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. More from Less by Andrew McAfee.
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?” ↗Yes but this has been improving in recent decades as well. See the book More From Less for an argument. Thanks to modern efficiencies, digitization, and government action, resource use has decoupled from economic growth and some has even peaked.
on “World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)” ↗For a somewhat encouraging counterpoint to this statement, check out the book "More From Less." It describes a lot of positive trends including decreasing demand for many resources whose extraction is damaging to the environment. Some examples: we farm far less land in the United States than we…
on “Satellite imagery shows Northern California kelp forests have collapsed” ↗If you ever want to stop wallowing in misanthropic nihilism, I recommend reading books like "More From Less" - Mcafee which shows that capitalism does in fact reduce/moderate consumption. Next look at "Speed and Scale" - Doerr, or "How to Solve a Climate Disaster" - Gates for a giant list of human innovations…
on “Request for Startups: Climate Tech” ↗…improved (see The Rational Optimist or Enlightenment Now). And this isn't coming at the expense of the natural world, which is better protected as the world gets more technologically advanced and wealthier (More From Less by Andrew McAfee and numerous other sources). Why would all of this reverse so rapidly in the next 80 years?
on “Lessons for a Young Scientist” ↗…say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall. ...and what you're leaving out here is that this…
on “We've Just Had the Best Decade in Human History” ↗…we consume less resources to do it today than ever before. That was the essential point of Andrew McAfee's book and his discussion on Econtalk the other week. https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/ That appears to be backed up here too; this article reports that the $GDP per kWh is increasing over time. Does this then mean that reducing GDP will have disproportionately LESS of an effect on energy…
on “What is energy, actually? (2011)” ↗…farm it. This while basically every measure of how much did the US produces goes up. This is part of a more general trend of doing more with less resources in the developed world. There’s a book on this More from Less , Andrew McAfee. Robustness and efficiency are at odds with one another. Any highly robust system will be very wasteful indeed compared to an efficient one; any system with lots of slack just isn’t efficient.…
on “MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Computers That Didn't Work” ↗Fair. I'm a person who frequently comments here that centralized systems beat decentralized on efficiency, so I understand that point. RE More from Less, I need to buy and read that book. I remember an article promoting it being discussed recently on HN, and from it I got a distinct impression that US "doing more from less" is just an artifact of not…
on “MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Computers That Didn't Work” ↗…grow increasingly possible, and the proverbial 15-hour, or less, workweek should be feasible while maintaining the same, even higher, output). But Andrew MCafee's (research scientist at MIT) recent book "More From Less" is a contemporary take on this idea. The traditional GDP would shrink in the long-term, but the idea (drawing from Charles Eisenstein, Paul Mason, etc) is that gift economies and communities would grow…
on “Some Economics of Abundance” ↗