Paul Krugman | Economic science fiction
Economic science fiction
May 4, 2008 1:46 pm May 4, 2008 1:46 pm
I'm startled at Brad DeLong's ignorance: he thinks there's something new about science fiction novels where the science in question is economics.
This theme actually goes back a long way. I once stumbled across Robert Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon, a very early novel that's actually inspired by the then-popular doctrine of secular stagnation, which argued that rising savings and declining investment opportunities would lead to persistent problems in getting people to spend enough.
Oh, by the way — it's a terrible novel, though not as bad a novel as The Internecine Project is a movie. Charles Stross's Merchant Princes novels, on the other hand, are economic science fiction worth reading.
Update: Several commenters mentioned Issac Asimov's Foundation novels. It's somewhat embarrassing, but that's how I got into economics: I wanted to be a psychohistorian when I grew up, and economics was as close as I could get.
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Nylund May 4, 2008 · 2:25 pm
There is also the hyper-capitalistic (basically anarchistic) economy of Snowcrash where the government has become just one of many corporations that can offer public services like police and roads but citizens are free to choose other alternatives. At the time, I was taking a course by the Austrian economist and Mises expert, Israel Kirzner. It sounded very much like his dream world (but not mine).
Joe Buck May 4, 2008 · 2:26 pm
Ah, Heinlein. He did that kind of thing all the time. He's write a story set in a society that had peculiar economic or social relationships, usually inspired by Heinlein's combination of extreme libertarianism and militarism (you might think that they don't go together, but plenty of right-wingers disagree). Then he'd have a character say, "Look around you! It works!" and of course it does, because the author wrote it that way.
RWB May 4, 2008 · 3:11 pm
I agree with you that The Merchant Princes novels are worth reading, but just barely. Stross writes a pretty good potboiler, but he's a lazy prose stylist. Nonetheless, I was hooked on these books because of their economic implications. The titular merchant prices reminded me of rich Saudis, coming over to the U.S. or Europe to get their B.S. and M.B.A. degrees, then returning home to a country where women cannot be in the same room as non-related men… They deal with development economics in a way I can't recall other science fiction books doing. Although there are plenty of novels about humans meeting advanced aliens, we rarely see this interaction economically. Technologically advanced aliens are, in effect, rich aliens, and there are implications there that are rarely followed up on.
John Voorheis May 4, 2008 · 3:13 pm
Quite a bit of Stross's output fiddles about with economics. Accelerando (and actually the whole Macx clan universe) primarily deals with how self-aware intelligences would economically interact with us meat-brains. There's also, if I remember correctly, a bit about an Italian communist using computing power to overcome the inefficiencies of a command economy.
Matt S. May 4, 2008 · 3:26 pm
Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle novels prominently feature currency and investment and are actually really good. It's mostly set in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it's all written like science fiction.
A. Kelly May 4, 2008 · 3:37 pm
James Blish wrote a series of books between 1955 and 1962 about anti-grav drives enabling cities to fly through the galaxy engaging in the service economy. How the cities found markets, made profits, and rode out galactic depressions were major themes of the series.
//www.amazon.com/Cities-Flight-James-Blish/dp/1585670081
And Clif Simaak wrote wrote a book in the early 1960's about alien real estate agents touching off a worldwide housing bubble. hmmmm…..
Greg Sanders May 4, 2008 · 3:56 pm
I actually just did a post on a bad example of economic science fiction. I greatly enjoy the new Battlestar Galactica but while I think they tend to do politics and such well, the series seems to have no real sense of economics. Admittedly they're in a militant post-apocalyptic setting but I'd still expect more capitalism or at least an interesting alternative.
Brad DeLong May 4, 2008 · 4:01 pm
I must confess that my memory of *BTH* is foggy–it seems to me it had much more to do with ennui and dueling and scientific research into life after death than with secular stagnation driven by "oversaving." That, it seems to me, is Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World*.
Anyone for a game of centrifugal bumble puppy?
Bribes May 4, 2008 · 5:35 pm
Though it was mainly sociological, Frank Herbert's Dune series had a fair amount of economic sci-fi in it.
Mark Kraft May 4, 2008 · 6:58 pm
Mr. Krugman,
I was wondering what you thought of Senator Clinton's criticism of both you and other economists who oppose removing the gas tax.
"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists. . . We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."
Do you consider yourself, as an economist, to be an elitist who supports policies that disadvantage the majority of Americans? If not, can you speak to your motivations, and to what you think of the rhetoric being used by Senator Clinton?
It should also be pointed out that Asimov's classic "Foundation" series was based on a character using statistical means of predicting the future, in a kind of socioeconomic science… and human psychology is increasingly at the heart of economics.
Jim Kuemmerle May 4, 2008 · 7:08 pm
Also of note, Ursula LeGuin's _The_Dispossessed_, which deals with the divisions and contradictions in a capitalist society on one planet and the isolated anarcho-communist society on the orbiting moon.
Mel May 4, 2008 · 7:40 pm
Of course, one will never forget "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," no matter how hard we try. The opening crawl text reveals that the movie was based on a economic blockade that resulted from a trade dispute. The two Jedi Knights are sent as economic ambassadors.
km May 4, 2008 · 10:53 pm
Krugman doesn't mind contradictions–secular stagnation is not an idea to take seriously but of
course Malthus was right except for industrialization,
which inevitably leads to secular stagnation unless
drastic measures are taken (in 1984 the surplus was used up in continual warfare, which Americans can
surely appreciate at this point).
The key theme of the novel Beyond This Horizen was not how to dispose of surplus but rather a discussion of how MAD (not so named) at the individual level could lead to social stability (politeness). MAD was brought about by
everyone being armed and if you did manage to win a duel, then the deceased's friends would likely come looking for you (Heinlein writes of disposing of a corpse by dumping him in the city streets and making him appear the victim of a private "quarrel").
How this might work out in practice can be determined by considering inner-city areas (Drudge was carrying a headline of a "quarrel" where uzis were used a day of so ago). But Heinlein romanticized non-governmental social mores in maintaining the type of society he considered ideal (consider The Moon is a Harsh Mistress). Beyond This Horizen is not a bad novel as Krugman claims but its implications are horrendous.
For a good economic novel, read The Space Merchants (CM Kornbluth and Frederick Pohl), where advertizing agencies rule the world. Its reductionist approach to human economic activity will appeal to anyone who has ever cracked open a micro-economics textbook.
CJT May 5, 2008 · 2:55 am
Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is a far better read about a war fought for economic reasons.
If you're going to pick on Heinlein, may I suggest Number of the Beast or Stranger in a Strange Land? These blatherfests were probably written with Heinlein's household economics in mind as they're pandering to the sixties culture. Grok is a pretty cool word of course.
Expat May 5, 2008 · 3:26 am
Foundation series: psychohistory, sociology, and economics on a galactic scale.
dairubo May 5, 2008 · 3:43 am
And don't forget Isaac Asimov's free-marketeering-inspired Foundation series. Better fiction than economics, sort of like the present unregulated market advocates.
Junsok Yang May 5, 2008 · 5:00 am
The neatest piece of economic analysis in a SF story that I've ever read was John Barnes "The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky" which dealt with revolution on the Moon. He used the old GDP equation Y = C + I + G to show that the independent Moon will remain dependent on the Earth economics-wise, (and thus the Earth will not need to re-invade Earth). Due to independence, output will rise, but since (in the background of the novel), there will be little increase in investment or government spending (libertarian economy), consumption will rise, but since most consumption goods are made on Earth, imports will have to rise. (presumbly, exports will rise as well, but most Moon exports will be technology-intensive not-necessarily consumption goods, and increasing interdependence between Moon and Earth).
Also, John Barnes had an article in Analog a couple of decades back on how to build a future economy. Interesting reading. I believe John Barnes had some degree in economics (though it may have been heterodox radical econ).
For my money, the best Stross book, (and one of the best books I've read in a long time) is Accererando.
P.S. I shouldn't be surprised that so many economists were inspired by Asimov's Psychohistory. However, in an essay (an editorial in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine), Asimov basically disavowed his idea that anything like psychohistory would be possible, and he did not believe that economics was a science. My own feeling is that the reason Asimov made his misguided effort to join the robot series and the Foundation series is to make psychohistory workable (in his personal view) by having the mind-reading robots guide humanity. ("If you can't make the equation fit the behavior, have the behavior fit the equation." Lucas)
MinerSam May 5, 2008 · 5:08 am
How about Economic Conventional wisdom? Or how about the Fiction inbedded in Conventional wisdom
Since Republicans sent paid aids on the Enron Plane to riot outside the vote recount room, as part of a relentless effort to stop the recount entirely, so they could procede with their staging of the looting of the US Treasury, (and such the American Middle Class dry) I often have CNBC and C-SPAN on 20 hours a day. What I have seen, live, that has gone uneported, been misreported, and disreported and the ERONEOUS common beliefs that have stemed from them could fill volumes.
Secular Stagnation sounds like a cross between Japan, and a solution to what the so called real conservatives are calling for. Are they not? i.e "the problem is that Americans don't save enough."
We can have Econimic Science Fiction should they push through their McCain.
We'll end employer based Health insurance, and to prevent people begining to drop off in the streets, new applications for the convergence of biotech and robotics may be born.
As in any radical transition the question is how to make it acceptable. One may some day look back at Incremental elements, such it people voting their team members off the island every night as having been a catalist.
Another has been the generational division Republicans began to inject into our "value" system when Mr. Bush encouraged young people not to pay into Social Security..
Roger Albin May 5, 2008 · 8:27 am
Sorry, DeLong is closer to being correct than you are. Beyond the Horizon is partially about economics but is primarily in the utopian tradition of SF novels. This has a long and distinguished history including books like More's Utopia and Bellamy's Looking Backward. Stross' somewhat garish novels are not primarily about economics but mainly about the old and very fun idea of parallel universes and alternative history.
The Daniel Abraham story DeLong cites, well worth reading, is primarily about ideas of value and exchange that economists use. This story is directly about economics in a way that Beyond the Horizon and the Stross books are not.
j.e.h. May 5, 2008 · 10:08 am
Another example of economics in sci-fi is Asimov's Foundation series. Scientist Hari Seldon creates a branch of mathematics that can predict the future of civilizations, but only at the macro level. His science is called psychohistory, but it always sounded like a cross between macroeconomics and political science to me.
Stolen Dormouse May 5, 2008 · 10:19 am
Let's not forget Fred Pohl's novels and stories about advertising and marketing ("The Space Merchants"–written with C.M. Kornbluth, about selling the colonization of Venus; and "The Tunnel Under the World," in which the hero discovers that he is part of a tabletop simulation of a model town used to test advertising campaigns.
Interstellar economics plays significant roles in Cordwainder Smith's "Norstrillia" and in Jack Vance's "Demon Princes" tetrology. In Eric Frank Russell's "The Great Explosion," one of the planets visited works solely on a highly evolved barter system.
And I'm sure I've forgotten many others in which economics plays a major or minor role.
Evil May 5, 2008 · 10:34 am
There are plenty more too. Secular stagnation is a major theme in "Brave New World," hence trying to get everyone to consume and play games of "electromagnetic golf."
Isaac Asimov's Foundation series was based on "psychohistory," his combination of math, economics and psychology to predict history.
Elvis Elvisberg May 5, 2008 · 11:45 am
I'll tell you what, if there's one thing I've learned from this dispute between you and Brad Delong, it's that "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."
Downpuppy May 5, 2008 · 11:46 am
The best early econ-SF was James Blish's Cities in Flight. New York & other cities are flying around the galaxy looking for work as "Okie Cities", while the economy goes up and down for various reasons.
The worst was (of course) Atlas Shrugged.
Oil conservation: getting over the hump
A technology I wish I had