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More From Less: The surprising story of how we learned to prosper using fewer resources – and what happens next by [Andrew McAfee]

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Andrew McAfee

More From Less: The surprising story of how we learned to prosper using fewer resources – and what happens next Kindle Edition

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Bestselling author and co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Andrew McAfee says there’s a new reason for optimism: we’re past the point of 'peak stuff' - from here on out, it’ll take fewer resources to make things, and cost less to lead a comfortable life.

This turn of events invalidates the predictions of overpopulation alarmists and those who argue we need to drastically reduce our conception of how much is enough. What has made this turnabout possible? One thing primarily: the collaboration between technology and capitalism.

Capitalism’s quest for higher profits is a quest for lower costs; materials and resources are expensive, and technological progress allows companies to use fewer of them even as they grow their markets. Modern smartphones take the place of cameras, GPS units, landline telephones, answering machines, tape recorders and alarm clocks. Precision agriculture lets farmers harvest larger crops while using less water and fertiliser. Passenger cars get lighter, which makes them cheaper to produce and more fuel-efficient. This means that, even though there’ll be more people in the future, and they’ll be wealthier and consume more, they’ll do so while using fewer natural resources. For the first time ever, and for all time to come, humans will live more prosperous lives while treading more lightly on the Earth.

The future is not all bright, cautions McAfee. He warns of issues that still haven’t been fully solved. (For example, our oceans are still vulnerable to overfishing; global warming is still running largely unchecked; and even as 'dematerialisation' - the reduced need for raw materials - improves our global situation, power and resources are getting more concentrated. That creates an even larger division between the haves and the have nots.)

More From Less is a revelatory, paradigm-shifting account of how we’ve stumbled into an unexpected balance with nature, and the possibility that our most abundant centuries are ahead of us.

Print length

351 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Simon & Schuster UK
Publication date

October 1, 2019
File size

4402 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Contrary to the doomsayers, humanity can grow the economy while healing the environment, according to this hopeful exploration of sustainable development…McAfee synthesizes a vast literature on economics and the environment into a lucid, robust defense of technological progress, including nuclear power and GMOs. This stimulating challenge to anti-capitalist alarmists is full of fascinating information and provocative insights.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[McAfee] is convinced that, on balance, we’re heading the right way: ‘We need to step on the accelerator, not yank the steering wheel in a different direction.’ It is precisely his commitment to societal and planetary health that compels him to call on the generative power of tech and capitalism to elevate humanity, as he stands athwart progress and cries, ‘More!’”
—Wall Street Journal

“McAfee’s focus on corporate use of resources is refreshing. Too often, businesses are caricatured as rapacious predators of Earth’s bounty. In fact, since the dawn of capitalism, they have produced products that become lighter on the ground and on the wallet because profit-hungry bosses see advantage in thrift.”
—The Economist

“Deeply engaging and useful in understanding the roles of capitalism and technology in shaping humanity's future.”
—Booklist

“The future may not be so bleak after all….A cogent argument.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Everyone knows we’re doomed by runaway overpopulation, pollution, or resource depletion, whichever comes first. Not only is this view paralyzing and fatalistic, but, as Andrew McAfee shows in this exhilarating book, it’s wrong…More from Less is fascinating, enjoyable to read, and tremendously empowering.”
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“The shortest path to improving the world is to notice objectively what is already working, and do more of it. As for the things that are still going wrong, figure out the minimalist way to turn them around, and do that. McAfee’s More from Less is packed with practical news and advice that will disconcert ideologues of every stripe.”
—Stewart Brand, editor of the The Whole Earth Catalog

“In his new book More from Less McAfee applies his positive approach to the case of our planet, arguing that we have reached a critical tipping point where technology is allowing us to actually reduce our ecological footprint—a truly counterintuitive finding....[This book is] well worth reading even if your first impression, like mine, is: it can’t be true!”
—Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund

“In More from Less Andrew McAfee conclusively demonstrates how environmentalism requires more technology and capitalism, not less. Our modern technologies actually dematerialize our consumption, giving us higher human welfare with lower material inputs. This is an urgently needed and clear-eyed view of how to have our technological cake and eat it too.”
—Marc Andreessen, cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz

“I've always believed that technological progress and entrepreneurship make our lives better. Here, Andrew McAfee shows how these powerful forces are helping us make our planet better too, instead of degrading it. For anyone who wants to help create a future that is both sustainable and abundant, this book is essential reading.”
—Reid Hoffman, cofounder of Linkedin and coauthor of Blitzscaling

“This book is the best kind of surprise. It tells us something about our relationship with our planet that is both unexpected and hopeful. The evidence McAfee presents is convincing: we have at last learned how to tread more lightly on the Earth. More from Less shows how we accomplished this, and tells us how to keep it going.”
—Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google

“In More from Less Andrew McAfee lays out a compelling blueprint showing how we can support human life using fewer natural resources, improve the state of the world, and replenish the planet for centuries to come.”
—Marc Benioff, Chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce

“More from Less is a must-read—timely and refreshing! Amid the din of voices insisting that the ravages of climate change are unstoppable, McAffee offers a desperately needed nuanced perspective on what governments and society have got right, and he compellingly argues that commendable progress has already been made….A gem.”
—Dambisa Moyo, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Aid, How the West Was Lost, Winner Take All, and Edge of Chaos

“Riveting…By subverting our common perceptions of capitalism and technology as enemies of progress and environmental preservation, McAfee offers all of us a clear-eyed source of optimism and hope. Critically, he also makes the case for what comes next—offering up vital lessons that have the potential to make the world both more prosperous and more just.”
—Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation

“Andrew McAfee’s new book addresses an urgent need in our world today: defining a framework for addressing big global challenges. His proposals are based on a thorough analysis of the state of the world, combined with a refreshing can-do attitude.”
—Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum

“Andrew McAfee’s optimistic and humane book documents a profoundly important and under-appreciated megatrend—the dematerialization of our economy….Anyone who worries about the future will have their fears allayed and hopes raised by reading this important book.”
—Lawrence H. Summers, former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and Director of the National Economic Council

“Yet another magnificent contribution from Andrew McAfee. Along with his prior works, More from Less will help us navigate society’s future in profound ways.”
—Clayton M. Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Andrew McAfee is a principal research scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management and the cofounder and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, where he studies how digital technologies are changing business, the economy, and society. He has discussed his work at such venues as TED, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and the World Economic Forum. His prior books include the New York Times bestseller The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MJ7N61S
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster UK (October 1, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4402 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 351 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1471180336

Customer Reviews:
244 ratings

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Andrew McAfee

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Andrew McAfee (@amcafee), a principal research scientist at MIT, studies how digital technologies are changing the world. His new book "More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources - and What Happens Next" will be published by Scribner in October of 2019. His prior book, written with Erik Brynjolfsson, is "Machine | Platform | Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future." Their 2014 book "The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies" was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Financial Times / McKinsey business book of the year award.

McAfee has written for publications including Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall St. Journal, the Financial Times, and The New York Times. He's talked about his work on The Charlie Rose Show and 60 Minutes, at TED, Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and in front of many other audiences.

McAfee and Brynjolfsson are the only people named to both the Thinkers 50 list of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics.

McAfee was educated at Harvard and MIT, where he is the co-founder of the Institute’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, watches too much Red Sox baseball, doesn't ride his motorcycle enough, and starts his weekends with the NYT Saturday crossword.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

244 global ratings

5 star		56%
4 star		28%
3 star		9%
2 star		3%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Brian LaRocca

We now live in a world of sustainable growth

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 15, 2019

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Andrew McAfee has a good hook for this pop-econ book:

- From the years 1200-1800, Malthus was indeed correct: we consumed more, produced more children and then fought a zero-sum game for resources curtailing any income gains we may have seen.
- Industrialization comes around: we use fertilizer, steam locomotives, generators, engines and indoor plumbing to boost growth and the quality of our lives.
- Starting around 1800, it takes 125 years for us to get to 2bln people. It had taken 200k years for us to get to 1bln.
- GDP growth is highly correlated with the depletion/use of steel, fertilizer, and aluminum.
- This leads to Neo-Malthusianism best summarized by Nobel Prize winner George Wald's quote, "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."

Why has civilization not collapsed?

Americans are consuming fewer resources per capita and less in total of steel, copper, fertilizer, timber and paper. Since 2000, GDP growth became decoupled from the use of resources. Thank the "four horseman": tech progress, capitalism, public awareness, responsive government. McAfee gives some great examples of these forces at play:

- In 1992, farmers abandoned so much farmland they were using as much acreage as 25 years before
- An average soda can that used to weigh 85g now weighs 12.75g
- The smart phone has consolidated a lot of the stuff we need
- Fracking has produced low cost natural gas which is better for the environment than coal
- Per Matt Ridley, "A car today emits less pollution traveling at full speed than a parked car did from leaks in 1970."

Tech's role in this dematerialization is clear. The author mentions its ability to "slim, swap, optimize and evaporate" previous ways of doing things. Capitalism has increased life expectancy and education and reduced child mortality around the globe. In 2015, those living in extreme poverty had fallen by 60% in just 16 years.
Furthermore, government has at times been helpful. The Montreal Protocol in 1987 quickly curbed the environmental threat posed by releasing CFC's into the air.

However, reading this book can at times feel like the mere outgrowth of a cocktail party with Haidt, Pinker and Nordhaus. Its similar to a lot of their work and exposes a superficiality in some of his recommendations. We need more Golden Rice? My inner Nassim Taleb griped that regular rice with a multivitamin made more sense. True, maybe there is a consensus that glyphosate is safe but the inert adjuvants in Roundup seem problematic (ask Bayer). A vegan diet is great for the environment as long as you are not counting on the compact intake of nutrients eating animals gives you. McAfee's lack of depth in exploring these topics belies a "trust me, I am an academic" attitude that can at times be off-putting.

24 people found this helpful

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sien

A remarkable book that distills how resource use has changed

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 4, 2019

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More From Less (2019) by Andrew McAfee is a very interesting look at how developed countries are now creating more economic value from less physical inputs. McAfee is a professor at MIT who wrote the acclaimed book 'The Second Machine Age'.

More From Less uses a lot of statistics to show that contrary to many expectations in about 1970 the developed world now uses substantially less paper, cropland and many other key physical inputs than it used to for substantially greater wealth. It's quite a surprising development. McAfee also references numerous environmental reports from the 1970s including The Limits to Growth and shows that up until about 1970 their view had been roughly correct, namely that more inputs were needed for more wealth but since then they have been dramatically wrong.

McAfee says improvement has happened because of four things. He calls the the four horsemen of the optimist. They are capitalism, tech progress, public awareness and responsive government.

McAfee favourably references a number of writers including Julian Simon and interestingly Bjorn Lomborg. It's now about 20 years since The Skeptical Environmentalist was published and it's interesting to see that a professor at MIT is now referring to it favourably. McAfee also uses examples from Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and Hans Rosling and Max Roser's Our World in Data.

In the book McAfee regards human created global warming as a serious threat but one that with ingenuity humanity will overcome. He's pro-nuclear power.

The book also references quite a few management gurus and their associated books.

More From Less is a genuinely interesting book that distills what various other books have said and adds something new to environmental debates. It's well written and though provoking and appears to have a pretty solid factual base.

5 people found this helpful

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CJ

Thoughtful and Encouraging Optimism, With Some Spurious Political Commentary Thrown In

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 30, 2019

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Russ Roberts of EconTalk hosted Mr McAfee recently, which led to my purchase. Mr McAfee lays out a thoughtful optimism about technological progress and its role in reducing the destructive aspects of human behavior on our planet for rich and poor alike (actually, with the goal to lift the poor out of poverty as quickly as possible).

Alas, he can't stay out of politics. Throughout, he associates the current U.S. leadership with authoritarianism: p 174 reads, "Some democracies, though, have become more authoritarian in recent years. Such countries as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and America have elected leaders with clear authoritarian leanings. This is bad news ... the good news is that most democracies are holding strong." Sigh. Likewise, p 217 reads, "Recent election results across countries as dissimilar as the U.S., Poland, Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines, and Brazil indicate a global growing desire for authoritarian leaders." Who knew? The real howler, though (I laughed aloud when I read it), is this gem (p 225): "However, the leadership of the Republican Party, which has moved steadily to the right since the early 1980s, supports none of these [tighter gun control, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, access to abortion services, and action on global warming]. AMERICA'S DEMOCRATS HAVEN'T MOVED NEARLY AS SHARPLY TO THE LEFT [as Republicans have moved to the right]." That's simply utter foolishness: as of this review date (late November 2019), all 29 Democratic presidential hopefuls have embraced what any objective observer would describe as Socialism. Many have called for 'mandatory' buybacks of "assault weapons" (whatever those are): that's about as authoritarian as one can get.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Peter - Denmark

I believe the conclusions are wrong!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 8, 2019

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A few comments on this book – positive and negative:

Positive:
I agree with the author that ending capitalism is not the solution to problems the world is facing, incl. pollution. Quite the opposite – it is the only way forward, get people out of poverty. I also believe in the overall thinking, that technology will help us reduce our footprint going forward as products become more efficient, combined with public awareness and political action. Capitalism works, and no other system has been shown to work. But it must be tamed.

Negative:
I believe the data analysis is simply wrong, or at least very prone to being wrong. The main crux of the book is the graphs on pages 79-89, showing US consumption of raw materials plotted against US GDP and Industrial Production. It shows a decoupling between consumption of materials and GDP and Industrial Production, starting in year 2000. This, the author claims, is the great new news, called dematerialization or “More from Less”.

However, on the first slide on page 79, he notes that the data excludes impact from Import/export of finished goods. Not raw materials but finished goods. He comments that Net import is only 4% of GDP in the US.
Here he makes a (potentially) devastating error – (potentially) invalidating his conclusion.

While Net imports is indeed around 4% of GDP, the gross numbers are Exports at approx. +13% and Imports at approx. -17%. So any mix difference in finished goods in Export and Import, can significantly change the conclusion. It so happens that US is a major Net importer of finished goods e.g. Machinery, electronic equipment and autos (finished goods, with materials not included above in the consumption data). Basically, a big part of US’ consumption of cars, washing machines, computers etc. are made in Mexico, China etc. They contain a lot of materials, not included in the graphs, upon which he builds his conclusion/thesis. So quite possibly, there is no de-coupling.

He further measures the 4% as a % of GDP, which includes a lot of services (not requiring materials) – so the impact is even higher in terms of potential for distorting the numbers. It should be measured up against US production of goods, not total GDP.

What is most surprising, to me, is the number of notable people/institutions who “endorses” his findings, incl. Steven Pinker, Christine Lagarde (Head of EU Central Bank – scary), WSJ, The Economist and several others. Even if Lagarde is quoted as saying “Truly counterintuitive” – she should probably follow her intuition.

The author would be well served to update the book with more thorough analysis on the data, and inspiration can be found in some of the references made in other reviews of the book, like, made by J. M. Korhonen (Nov. 20, 2019):

Wiedmann, T. O., Schandl, H., Lenzen, M., Moran, D., Suh, S., West, J., & Kanemoto, K. (2015). The material footprint of nations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(20), 6271–6276.

18 people found this helpful

Jonathan R

Fascinating insights into how our world is changing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 29, 2019

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For those interested in improving how we treat the planet and exploit it less, I suggest you read this book. It tells a counter-intuitive story of how forces such as capitalism and technology that previously may have propelled us the wrong direction (pollution, species extinction, habitat inhalation etc.) are now conspiring to help us ‘tread more lightly’ on the planet’s surface. The combination of these forces as well as public awareness and responsive government is leading to a dramatic dematerialisation in rich countries. America is post-peak in many of the principal materials used to power its economy and the lives of its citizens. Understanding how this came about and what it means for future policy is fascinating.

This book unwraps a lot of surprising positive insights (improvements in both the human condition and the state of nature) but Andy doesn’t shy away from the challenges. He embraces the difficulties facing us in areas such as climate change and social inclusion and provides intelligent analysis on effective ways we might begin to tackle them.

Our human intuition is brilliant but buggy (as McAfee described with Brynjolfsson in other books). Protecting our environment is too important a task to entrust to our intuition (no matter how well intentioned). That’s why it behoves us all to rigorously understand the facts and trends that are making the biggest impact. More From Less does that brilliantly.

5 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

A heady dose of optimism

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 23, 2020

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More From Less sets out the argument for a positive outlook on the future of our planet - thanks to the combined forces of capitalism, technology, responsive government and public awareness.

Walking us through the most significant milestones of our collective history, McAfee shows how mankind has made significant, odds-defying progress with dematerialisation - learning how to do more with less and tread more lightly on the planet.

Challenging long-held arguments against everything from GMO crops and nuclear power to markets, competition and work, McAfee builds his case effectively - drawing on a vast array of research material so exhaustive in detail that this book requires over 30 pages of notes.

A scholarly tome, More From Less is not a speedy or easy read. It carries all the weight of a well-considered study, but if you give it due time and effort, the pay-off of facing the future more assuredly makes the time invested worthwhile.

Robert

Interesting but...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 27, 2021

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I liked it, easy to read and gets it's message across.

The first half of the book was best, where history of our growth was discussed, very enlightening to me.

But then I found it got a bit 'leftie' and some of the hopes for the future were more or less fantasies (such as solar and wind).

William J.

Very interesting read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 22, 2020

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Well written and researched, not sure why other reviewers are saying it doesn't account for exported consumption when it very clearly states sources that include that data. Some of the arguments of his tangents don't stack up so well, but the core premise of the book is cogent, well argued and interesting.