Infrastructure & Humanity: The Limits of Economics

Abstract:

Economics is presented to us by various communities as a basis for assessing how best to organise human society and to sustain progress and development. The audience for this message not the species as a whole, the primary audience is capital, especially finance, and influencers of political power.

I will argue the crisis of economics is self-inflicted and that this is mainly because the thesis that economics is a sustainable way to understand and manage human organisation is flawed. That flaw is that economics is not an explanation but a justification for partial views of human organisation. Economists do not seek to communicate or achieve resonance with the public; they seek influence with the same political power.

The proposition that economics in conventional terms is not an explanation but an argument for positions of vested interests is already under much debate and scrutiny within economics. Thus, there are counterarguments variously called heterodox economics / institutional economics and new approaches from physicists and other non-standard economists.

For the subject of infrastructure I suggest we need to reframe what it means and how it can be designed. Currently it does not address the species but at the origin of human time it could only address the species needs. Our economic history is a process of commoditising infrastructure and degrading the concept of human organisation through the application of economics to policy.

Emerging critical narratives:

Some historians have attempted to position capitalism or the ‘capitalist mode of production’ [CMP], the current dominant economic system, in a broader way to facilitate deeper understanding. Piketty already famously suggested capitalism and capitalists were missing the boat by underfunding demand growth through inequality. Beckert [2026], makes the argument that the CMP was always global, thus the birth of the CMP is the birth of the global dynamic. This oversteps Piketty’s position as a failure of competition. He aligns with Smith and Marx by assessing historical developments, but he avoids making evaluations as Smith and Marx or some noted 20^th century economists [Schumpeter, Keynes] did. Keen has for some time, a decade at least, been a major source of radical ideas around the failures of essentially neoclassical economics, but really, he is attacking the basis of economics. His core thesis is that energy is the only source of value, not land [Quesnay, Ricardo], not labour [Smith, Marx] and not Utility [Mill, most neoclassicals].

Irrespective of historical narrative, there is growing acceptance that the body of thought called economics and the system of human activity called ‘the economy’ is in crisis. For these critics crisis means poverty, climate change, wars, and social dysfunctionality / trust deficit. Throughout the 20^th century there was a growing crisis thesis that the economy was mismanaged by models which tried to accommodate expanding non-financial variables such as housing, education, or welfare. The monetarists / neoclassical strand has been promoting an alternative crisis narrative since the mid-20^th century. The two world wars supported the counter argument that the crisis was social and macroeconomic. In both cases the focus was on what ‘the state’ should do.

If there is a moment to consider the role and value of ‘economics’ and ‘the economy’, this is a very apposite one. One consistent theme for me is the failure to address the human species and to choose sub-optimal categories of analysis.

Irrespective of the economic theory, why is there poverty anywhere, war, corruption, and prejudice. Unless these are dynamic variables that are necessary for a specific version of ‘economics’ to work.

Economists themes:

Focus	Themes
Lead concepts/ category	·         Infrastructure capital ·         Cost efficiency ·         Pricing and regulation	Earth is an input for humans to exploit financially; waste does not matter. Efficiency is financial not ecological.
Narratives	·         Drivers / enablers of growth ·         Macro welfare and efficiency benefit	Our goal is political and financial; human individuals plus all other life forms are subject to that system model.
Sustainability	·         Externalities / separate environment ·         Discounting the future ·         Sectoral silos ·         Non-market goods	The future is a financial investment with returns, not life quality and nothing about other energy forms and life.
Theoretical debate	·         Limits of utility-based frameworks ·         Adaptive networks v factor endowment ·         Systems based theory / multi-variable theory / sustainability	Policy above science, do what power elites think is affordable not what is required for species and earth. System integrity above species success

Without a more holistic assessment we cannot generate a species valuable approach that could offer humans a more sustainable model. The economistic model reinforces the Cartesian duality of means and ends.

As had been made clear [Keen, Beckert, Piketty] we have evidence that we do not manage what we have very well. In the current time there is widespread evidence of how poorly humans are managing. In other spaces there have been theories and evidence that we do not understand the earth as a system and our role as a species.

Human Infrastructure:

In the appendix there is a putative timeline of how different infrastructures, understood in the conventional sense, have evolved over millennia. In current times these are assets and they are essentially treated by economists as costs, although some treat them as investments [Mazzucato, Pettifor] However, even those investment-oriented theories mistreat the earth’s role and misread our role as a species. For Pettifor we merely require more socially accountable regulation of finance. For Mazzucato we should recognise the state as an entrepreneur and allow it to guide direction. They do not question the basis of economic fundamentals.

Ownership of resources is a consistent theme within all economics. However, the earth has no borders and no nations; humans do; no species can ‘own’ the earth. These are unstable and transient concepts that have power but are grounded in idealism. As Beckert points out we have had a few thousand years of hominids, and a few hundred years of some form of human economics. The earth is millions of years old and continues to produce species, which includes replacements and predators. Humans will be extinct and or replaced with other intelligences. The earth produced us via oxygen breathing. The earth produced ‘materials’ that modern humans came to categorise with economic thought, such as gold / previous metal, fossil fuel.

Already with this concept of ownership and property, we are inside an ideological construct and no longer explaining how, on the earth over human linear time human organisation has arrived at this point. This is the history of social phenomena, a pathology, the idea of private property is very insightful but as a phenomena it is not explained by economics, rather it is justified by economics, as religion justifies the system of God worship.

From the perspective of an AI [a non-human ‘intelligence] we can see a more aggressive and critical depiction of our species, that essentially like all other oxygen breathers reacts to the environment [more likely stated as ‘its environment’, in keeping with property-based reasoning]. However, at points in human time- the bronze age, the enlightenment, industrial age…the knowledge age- humans have adopted largely abstract categories related to abstract variables that describe particular human organisation goals. Progressively there are vast numbers of life forms subsumed within the narrative of ‘economics’ for which no bargain has been struck. Indeed, most life forms have been expelled from ‘the economy’.

When we began life on earth, we were all hominids walking the earth. Now we are partial beings with different labels, we are ‘workers, citizens, students, seniors / retired, taxpayers, sick, productive / unproductive, owners, investors. From being a species alive 24 hours a day we are now individuals with fragmented existences- labourers/workers 8 hours a day, citizens occasionally at election time, patients occasionally although increasingly, pupils 6-8 hours a day largely up to 20-21….parents 24 hours for decades, homemakers 24 hours day for life, friends 24 hours for decades….

These categories are not integrated to a species goal but are fragmented packets of uncoordinated policy which is reactive. As an individual being I am 24 hours but in all other respects I am partially funded. Our economics does not consider the whole species at all and serves to assist the extraction of value from the human individual, and other life forms, energy forms without reference to a shared purpose.

Kardashev in the 1960’s offered us as a species, in theory, the idea that we had all the energy we needed and we should consider how we harvest solar flux. Within that body of thought it can also be understood that all life forms and ecosystems are receiving energy from the sun, and thus we are embedded in an ecological design that already encompasses the earth. We did not see it that way and largely we still do not.

We are today hearing about the amount of freshwater available and certainly some historians, Cipolla [1962] had some time ago pointed out that freshwater will become a major source of crisis. The earth does not lose water, humans do. The crisis of water and population access is a human one. Keen in particular has made serious criticism of mainstream economics treatment of climate issues and resources.

Species infrastructure:

My argument is that we are now in the early 21^st human century, at a pivotal moment that can address this question of the value of a more ambitious species driven view of human organisation. That this would involve the emergence of species relevant assets that align with the evolutionary dynamics that we are a species and we are already embedded within that evolutionary pattern.

One auspicious aspect of this moment in human time is that the AI tools available to us can act as ‘the proverbial Martian’. This means an intelligence different from our own, with literally no skin in the game of humanity, but capable of relating to human organisation historically and into the future. It is of course derived from human knowledge sources but has compute power no human can address.

One example offered when I asked for such an outlook was that we layer our approach to infrastructure requirements as a 3-layer model with an outer, middle, and inner layer. This resonates with the idea of Doughnut economics from Kate Raworth.

The model is simple or at least I want only to focus on the simplest description, as I am not proposing it as a choice but merely as a conceptual vehicle for describing the possibility for alternatives ways of envisioning a human organisation that is more species aligned.

At no time do I think there is a blueprint for the future, I believe we make the human experiences and organisations that we do irrespective of, but inclusive of, thought.

This simple model can be visually represented by three rings as described by Raworth [2024]. There is no nation present in this model.

Layers	Ideas	Observation of limits
Planet	Climate/ biosphere/energy	No border/nations
Institutions	Digital connection/shared meaning/institutional governance	Diversity / universal standards / access promulgation
Social	Secure / flourishing /	No-life form left behind / enable sustainability

My AI proceeded then to offer statist / human command type ideas to oversee the whole idea of a human infrastructure, thus the Doughnut concept. The debate here would be what is human sustainability and what are ecological limits. The Simon Abundance Index while crude makes a case that is not refuted by critics, which is that expansion of certain volumetrics has occurred over human time, more wheat or vegetables and that on an aggregate basis this is a progress of some kind.

My observation related to these concepts is that there is still an acceptance of humans as the central actor on a modernist basis. The enlightenment individual in a philosophically idealist epistemology, thus all we need are better ideas. Marx would argue the ideas come and go and the material reality alters all. Similarly, more modern theorists, like Schumpeter or very recently Keen. Ideas cannot prevent crisis or innovation as breakdown is organisational which is made up of all social relations and technologies plus the data points accessed / excluded.

Beyond Marx or others, the reality of human organisation itself as a dynamic variable requires addressing. My argument is that the system of nations is a source of instability as conceived, that it divides the species and that it is wasteful. Critics must cast this conceptual framing aside or at least suspend it. The putative Martian or AI can see without this lens.

Irrespective of theory and ideology great systems have been seen before. The earth has dispatched them; the earth continues on its journey in the universe. We are passengers and economics offer little in making further progress, it has run its course or at least has lost it way.

New ideas are emerging from non-economists and or economists stepping outside the community of economic thought. The stimulant to new ideas comes from the failure / failings of existing ideas / paradigms. This is an acceptable and social model of learning.

The 4 guideline themes-

·         Species

·         Energy

·         Catalyst

·         Social

Infrastructure for humans has developed within the system of human organisation prevailing through time and space. We can generalise with confidence that we consider human organisation uncritically or a technical and or a political question.

Species:

The species does not figure in economics as practised. In some marginal cases it has been given prominence, Raworth, Keen..

Even these theorists replace economistic ideas with others and some fundamentals are untouched. Money, property, wages, energy are all left in a relatively marginalised state.

Solutions are more regulation of different models of production functions. If the purpose of economics is to develop and propose concepts that enhance the lives of humans as a species, then it can do better. A financialised concept of ‘the economy’ excludes majority of human needs and most of the wider non-human ecosystem. Thus, the human centric philosophy of the enlightenment sustains the hegemonic position of the human as an earthling at the expense of all earthlings and without reference to other possibilities.

The sun produces energy, the earth produces materials, water, and an oxygen rich atmosphere. Humans produce none of these but merely seek to extract them. Our economics is a justification for rent seeking. A strand of criticism is that small cliques conspire or are privileged to exercise authority over other beings and energy forms. Thus, most humans as passive recipients and consumers. At the species level the passive actor is part of the human organisation.

Energy:

For humans’ economics provides the argument that energy is not generally available and must be discovered, when in fact it surrounds us. What kind of economics argues for investment in marginal stocks of energy in the face of unlimited and available stocks.

What kind of theory does not accept the biology of life forms and the creation of humans on earth as a function of the ecosystem itself. That in that emergence the earth ‘produced’ the human from the organic processes of other organisms. These organisms were seeking energy [food] and creating a by-product, oxygen. The human itself is an energy form and in seeking food is seeking energy. The food chain is an energy exchange within the ecosystem.

Keen most effectively, has shown that energy is the core source of value and the human is a critical actor in that process. All life forms and all capital are energy and or contain energy from which they have been produced.

Catalyst:

In today’s world the media and other communication channels are alive with the narrative about climate change and environmental destruction at the hand of the human. I argue therefore that it is already a well-developed thesis that the human is a catalyst of energy systems.

I would argue this is our modus operandi, we do not ‘sit still’, we engage the limits of our physical and other circumstances, and we devise enhanced ways to progress. The hominid has become the homo sapiens. Empiricist history and science leave us with a list of happenstance occurrences without connection or empirical connection only.

Hence religion and philosophy have filled the gap as to why things are and developed as they have. A reflexive moment can help to consider that irrespective of any theory or creed we move along through space time dealing with limits and opportunities as we discover them. The creed and philosophy come and goes but we continue, we do not ‘sit still’.

As an omnivore we are not limiting our options for food energy. As a cognitive animal we have no equal in broad terms. As a social species we have endured and grown in population terms, although there are other species with similar success, ants / termites. The worm is not considered a catalyst yet is core to the earth’s humus which the human benefits from.

Social:

Economics is at ease with the idea of social phenomena but is simplistic in depicting the social value or organisation. Social is treated as an add-on in economics not as a core attribute of human species.

Thus, in economics it is possible to have social in terms of policy and relevant activity. The social is optional and a reflection of developed society. Early humans [ hominids] were not social at all. A bizarre thought. At the beginning of human time, we were each part of the same species without any additional nomenclature.

Economics has assisted in stripping the social away from core human activity, ‘the economy’ and rendering it a policy choice. Economists seem not to understand that the social is not a function of the brain or other intellectual assets but of the totality of human activity through time and space.

Conclusion:

As the history of paradigm change [Kuhn] already informs us, nothing is ever stood still and all paradigms come to an end. Kardashev challenged the human to manage energy and Keen especially highlights how we fail to see energy economically.

Economics and economists have enjoyed success as the last 200-330 years of human organisation has progressed. As Polanyi called it, ‘the great transformation’, meaning the movement from a predominantly agricultural model to a commodity-based model.

The lens of economics like the Enlightenment within which it developed, is now no longer capable of showing a clear path for the human species, rather it is revealed as a tool of selected perspectives and those layers of society promoting those perspectives.  

New thinkers, including those identifying as economists, Raworth, Keen have initiated radical thoughts, albeit with still significant commodity reasoning embedded. However, this is a harbinger of what Kuhn might have signalled as a pre-shift dynamic. Actors outside academia are also making significant impact from policy and other locations. BRICS while still nations are already decoupling, and it can be argued the dominant money system, the dollar, is decoupling itself. The Anglo-Saxon ‘free-market’ model of economics seems out of favour and statist systems are making progress inside the architecture of the global ‘system of nations’.

Appendix:

These tables help us to see the path that we have taken. It shows we started as social and organic systems of organisation with low technology and simple social relations. As we progress’ we have introduced authority structures and narrow definitions of value and entitlement.

Health and Care-

Our timeline shows us as with all infrastructure health is derived from organic and social organisational assets. People service and do so by looking out for themselves in their social organisation. As human organisation becomes settled and attached to land, new organisational dynamics arrive. Authority through organisation based on religion / folklore and then science instructs and determines how we survive.

Survival is a constant and this reflects that what is happening is not healthcare but survival, which means the absence of health and the avoidance of illness. Health does not enter into it. This aligns with the progressive displacement of people from land and their assignation as productive / deserving and unproductive and less deserving.

The health system is essentially keeping people alive and then in the current period at a regulated cost or within profit segments. This model has worked very well but is now challenged dues to re-prioritisation by the ‘authority’.

Transport-

We begin in nomadic systems and develop different dynamics once we settle in the bronze age / agrarian revolution. Caravans and animals were already a component of human transport systems. Rivers are also high value components. Wind powered sail becomes much more prevalent and the sea less daunting. We are exploring what is possible which leads to opportunity. The sea offers colonial conquest. Industrial age requirements expand the demand for high volume movement of people and goods across increasing distances on land and sea, and then air. The car is a 20^th century innovation, but especially a mass market invention that gives every individual human animal its own system. Transport capacity is expensive and complex in the current era. We are now debating why we travel and how we travel and sometimes if we travel.

Energy-

For the human energy is a narrow use of the term reflecting commodity / product development thinking. Thus, energy is power provided by converting a source material through a technology into electricity. Energy begins as human and animal muscle power and then wind, water, and fire. Coal and then steam from coal accelerates our progress. with fire especially science can assist in developing more effective designs for yielding energy output. Fossil fuel has been the dominant fuel source for all of the 20^th century and then begun to fall away, albeit still the dominant fuel source. Renewables are cheaper and thus the progress towards ending fossil fuel is a political question. Humans do not understand energy; they understand price of and profit from energy. The earth is dripping in energy, largely untapped.

Utilities-

As with other infrastructures we were dependent on our own resources within families / clans / tribes once we become settled. In nomadic times rivers, the sea, fire pits, springs and other on earth resources. In settlements we begin to think how we can devise shared systems. Urbanisation stimulates this development thus as we organise our lives in dense urban spaces, we can develop utility systems to share utility benefits.