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A review by jasonfurman
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
3.0
Kim Stanley Robinson doesn’t understand central bank balance sheets. Like, not missing some nuances but complete and total ignorance of them. Normally I would not bring up an issue like this about a novelist, I suspect most of the novelists I read do not understand central bank balance sheets and are probably the better for it. But Kim Stanley Robinson has written a “nonfiction novel” that purports to be a highly accurate and detailed account of the near future, both the ways in which climate catastrophes play out and how the world responds to them and ultimately triumphs—after a lot of pain and suffering. And central banks plays a big role in this account—with the words “central bank” appearing 80 times as compared to a mere 18 times for the phrase “climate change”. (In fact, 30 percent of the time the word “carbon” appears in the book it as part of the phrase “carbon coin,” which Robinson invents as a new central bank currency.)
Given the novel claims to be a new form of detailed realism, more like a series of opeds than a novel, it seems reasonable to judge Ministry of the Future at least in large part based on the cogency of these opeds. And in making that assessment I’ll start with central banks.
The hero of the book repeatedly meets with central banks to get them to subsidize carbon reduction, with Robinson at one point writing, “When Mary reminded them that they had quantitatively eased trillions of pounds into existence when needed to save the banks, they nodded; their job was to save the banks. To quantitatively ease trillions of pounds into existence to save the world: not their job.”
A few problems with this: (1) quantitative easing entails buying interest paying bonds with interest paying reserves at market prices, it is not a giveaway or a net increase in the amount of wealth but a transaction that simultaneously expanded the assets and the liabilities of the central bank, (2) quantitative easing didn’t save the banks, in fact the banks generally opposed it because it lowered their profit margins by lowering the interest rates they got on loans ore than the interest they paid on deposits, and (3) if you want to buy carbon there is no reason at all the central bank would or should do it.
Robinson seems transfixed by central banks having some magic money ability that the fiscal authority does not have. And that this ability would allow the expenditure of enormous resources while sequestering other resources all while avoiding any inflation or other tradeoffs.
This is not a small issue in the book which has a number of genuinely small issues (Robinson misunderstanding discounting and infinite sums in a five page chapter solely devoted to the subject and confuses the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund).
All of this was as part of an intersectional approach to climate change that for reasons I did not fully understand included discussions of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), student loan debt relief, new social networks that make micropayments for your data, and a melange of other left issues that are either orthogonal to addressing climate change or even actually competing in resources or attention with addressing it.
I found an awful lot of that highly irritating (in case you didn’t notice), and it made me nervous that Robinson’s discussions of the consequences of climate change and geo-engineering were similarly inaccurate.
That said, I did find something intriguing about the book and the way it was constructed. A series of short chapters told from different perspectives in a nonfictional, historical report type of way, the polyphony of voices was engaging and moved along. The opening depiction of mass death due to heat in India was powerful. The emphasis on geoengineering is important because that should be part of our climate solution (he also has a strong emphasis on mitigation, through extremely abrupt and damaging reductions of carbon use, especially in transportation, but is much lighter on the third aspect to the solution—adaptation).
I’m not sure if I regret reading the book or would recommend to others, but it was unique and memorable—but it was also badly flawed and to the degree it is presented as an actual manifesto for policymakers it will send them down a bunch of rabbit holes related to central banking, student loan debt relief, social networks, and more that will not help solve this problem.
Given the novel claims to be a new form of detailed realism, more like a series of opeds than a novel, it seems reasonable to judge Ministry of the Future at least in large part based on the cogency of these opeds. And in making that assessment I’ll start with central banks.
The hero of the book repeatedly meets with central banks to get them to subsidize carbon reduction, with Robinson at one point writing, “When Mary reminded them that they had quantitatively eased trillions of pounds into existence when needed to save the banks, they nodded; their job was to save the banks. To quantitatively ease trillions of pounds into existence to save the world: not their job.”
A few problems with this: (1) quantitative easing entails buying interest paying bonds with interest paying reserves at market prices, it is not a giveaway or a net increase in the amount of wealth but a transaction that simultaneously expanded the assets and the liabilities of the central bank, (2) quantitative easing didn’t save the banks, in fact the banks generally opposed it because it lowered their profit margins by lowering the interest rates they got on loans ore than the interest they paid on deposits, and (3) if you want to buy carbon there is no reason at all the central bank would or should do it.
Robinson seems transfixed by central banks having some magic money ability that the fiscal authority does not have. And that this ability would allow the expenditure of enormous resources while sequestering other resources all while avoiding any inflation or other tradeoffs.
This is not a small issue in the book which has a number of genuinely small issues (Robinson misunderstanding discounting and infinite sums in a five page chapter solely devoted to the subject and confuses the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund).
All of this was as part of an intersectional approach to climate change that for reasons I did not fully understand included discussions of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), student loan debt relief, new social networks that make micropayments for your data, and a melange of other left issues that are either orthogonal to addressing climate change or even actually competing in resources or attention with addressing it.
I found an awful lot of that highly irritating (in case you didn’t notice), and it made me nervous that Robinson’s discussions of the consequences of climate change and geo-engineering were similarly inaccurate.
That said, I did find something intriguing about the book and the way it was constructed. A series of short chapters told from different perspectives in a nonfictional, historical report type of way, the polyphony of voices was engaging and moved along. The opening depiction of mass death due to heat in India was powerful. The emphasis on geoengineering is important because that should be part of our climate solution (he also has a strong emphasis on mitigation, through extremely abrupt and damaging reductions of carbon use, especially in transportation, but is much lighter on the third aspect to the solution—adaptation).
I’m not sure if I regret reading the book or would recommend to others, but it was unique and memorable—but it was also badly flawed and to the degree it is presented as an actual manifesto for policymakers it will send them down a bunch of rabbit holes related to central banking, student loan debt relief, social networks, and more that will not help solve this problem.