Andrew McAfee on More from Less

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2019

⏱️ 94 minutes

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Summary

Andrew McAfee of MIT's Sloan School of Management talks about his book, More from Less, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. McAfee argues that technology is helping developed nations use fewer resources in producing higher levels of economic output. The improvement is not just a reduction in energy per dollar of GDP but less energy in total as economic growth progresses. This "dematerialization" portends a future that was unimaginable to the economists and pundits of the past. McAfee discusses the potential for dealing with climate change in a dematerialized world, the non-material aspects of economic progress, and the political repercussions of the current distribution of economic progress.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.6	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:17.6	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:20.5	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:24.8	back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:29.6	We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.8	Today is September 9, 2019, and my guest is Andrew McAfee of MIT, where he is the co-director
0:40.5	of the Initiative on the Digital Economy.
0:42.2	This is his second appearance on e-contalk.
0:44.3	He was part of a panel with Megan McArdle and Leo Haney and on the future of work, which
0:48.9	aired in June of 2014.
0:51.3	His latest book is More From Less, the surprising story of how we learned a prosper using
0:56.9	fewer resources and what happens next.
0:59.4	Andrew, welcome back to Econ Talk.
1:01.0	Russ, it's always a pleasure.
1:02.3	Thanks for having me.
1:03.5	The main theme of your book is a mouthful of word, dematerialization.
1:09.5	It's not the prettiest word, but it's a really important phenomenon.
1:13.4	What is it?
1:14.4	Yeah, and we probably need to hire a good PR firm to find a better word and a shorter word
	...

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