Robinson, Kim Stanley. _The Ministry for the Future_. First edition. New York, NY: Orbit, 2020. My vote for the most important novel written in 2020. It weaves together some of the most important facts and ideas that we need to grapple with the climate emergency. Chapter 24 - Ideas from Kahnemann's Thinking Fast and Slow. Cognitive biases, and how they are persistent. - John Rawls' original position is referred to here. - Combining the 2 above, one has to wrestle with the fact that anyone thinking from the original position will do so with flawed thinking Chapter 25 - Develops the idea that the original position could be something from the future. It could represent the original position of all our unborn descendants. - To understand what kind of vote our unborn descendants should have, we need the insights from Derek Parfitt's Reasons and Persons - This also brings in Roman Krznaric's idea of the Good Ancestor Chapter 39 - hostage scene - arguments from Less is More, about the optimum income for happiness - top 1% owning more than bottom 50% Chapter 40 - Jevons paradox [[The Jevons Paradox sets limits on gains from efficiency]] - distinguishing between the 4 categories of: good efficiencies, bad efficiencies, good inefficiencies, bad inefficiencies - the Degrowth argument that not all growth is good, and not all degrowth is bad - the over-riding value should be "what's good for the biosphere" or "how do we prevent a mass extinction" - the link between inefficiency and resilience Chapter 42 - comes up with the concept of the carbon coin - https://sea.mashable.com/science/14522/fight-carbon-with-coin - Delton Chen paper: https://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-03152-7_8 - Kim Stanley Robinson's Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-22/kim-stanley-robinson-let-the-fed-print-money-for-the-planet Chapter 47 - Less is More - The Story of More - going back to 1950s Swiss standard of living - Degrowth - 2000 watt society - > Self-reliance was always a delusion, he knew that. But it was interesting to try to do more with less. At the very least, it passed the time. - Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist - The Way Home Chapter 67 - Progressive taxation. In the 1950s, people felt that wealthy individuals had helped to start and profit from WW2. They supported a top tax rate of 91 percent for earnings over $400,000. This was approved by a Republican Congress and a Republic President, Eisenhower. - Capital asset taxes, or Piketty taxes. Taxes on the assessed value of assets. Can also be progressive, so the bigger the property or corporation, the more taxes are paid. - Land taxes, or Georgist taxes. Sooner or later, much profit is turned into land assets. - Carbon tax. Can be set progressively, so the largest uses of carbon would be rendered unprofitable. - All fiat money to go digital and monitored via blockchain, to make enforcement of taxes easier. Chapter 69 - More on degrowth. Degrowth as the growth of safety. - Carbon coin leads to degrowth, because it removes carbon energy from the economy. Chapter 80 - regenerative agriculture Chapter 82 - GameB Chapter 99 - > Who holds power? No one knows anymore. Political power is itself one of those fossil words, behind which lies an unknown. - Love that coinage "fossil words". Chapter 101 - > Solidarity— there’s no feeling like it. People talk about it, they use the word, they write about it, they try to invoke it. Naturally. But to really feel it? You have to be part of a wave in history. You can’t get it just by wanting it, you can’t call for it and make it come. You can’t choose it— it chooses you! It arrives like a wave picking you up! It’s a feeling— how can I say it? It’s as if everyone in your city becomes a family member, known to you as such even when you have never seen their face before and never will again. Mass action, yes, but the mass is suddenly family, they are all on the same side, doing something important. Chapter 104 - So cool that this talks about the 2000 watt society in Switzerland and setting a standard for sustainable living. - Perfect segway into (or from) Hope Jahren's Story of More and her image of 1950s Switzerland as the goalpost. Chapter 105 - Reading the description of the restaurant made me think of Tekka in San Francisco. - The bold claim that dignity is the most important human need after food and shelter. The problem is that dignity can only be given by others. - Learning a culture's language is the best way to integrate. - Advocating localism.