A humid Friday night in a Brisbane pub. Ceiling fans useless. Footy on the TV with no sound. Adam’s already two pints in when Anna walks in with a grin and a couple more. She drops them onto the table so hard the foam nearly jumps out.
Anna: Jesus, mate, you look like someone just nicked your lunch money.
Adam: Students. Bloody students. Three of them today asked if money is “just energy wearing a tie.” And one reckons GDP’s basically a heat engine. I swear, they’ve been talking to people like you. No wonder every f*cking place is heating up they say, consuming stored solar energy like you were eating peanuts, they say, to create ones and zero’s. F*uck, I was never taught any of this shit at Uni…
Anna: Well, good on ’em. They’re catching up. Next they’ll realise economics is just astrology with spreadsheets.
Adam: Oh, piss off. You physics people think you invented truth.
Anna: No, love. We just study the bits you can’t vote away, and we actually know how to do maths, the hard stuff that doesn’t fit into a spread sheet.
Adam: Here we go. Go on then, tell me again how economics is all subjective and delusional and whatever else you reckon when you are on the piss
Anna: Mate, I’m just warming up. But yeah — most of what you lot do is stories dressed up as equations. Not bad stories, mind you, just… largely fictional. You know the supply and the demand exist but they are not truly representative of cost, you know how many forests got ripped out to make ipads, habitat for life destroyed for a chocolate mocca… and etcetera, now one these ever make it into your equations. Externalities, the cost of doing business, bullshit! mate… the f*cking koalas the f*cking developers are developing into extinction were f*cking real even if the demand for a half acre block has the edge in terms of GDP.
Adam: Complete rubbish. Markets are real, koala habitat just happens to be in the nicer areas, slightly breezy, comfortable, pretty good indicator actually…
Anna: Yeah, in the same way a herd of cows indicates a maccas.
Adam: Oh come on.
Anna: No, seriously. What runs the economy? What actually constrains it?
Adam: Resources, labour, capital—
Anna: And what constrains all of that?
Adam: Productivity?
Anna: And that?
Adam: Innovation?
Anna: And that, genius?
Adam: Alright, fine. Infinite substitutability, nah, not even I really believe that clapptrap, energy I guess, the ability to make power work, to create resources from physical reserves.
Anna: Bingo. Everything you love in life — cold beer, air-con, deep-fried anything, Uber Eats, blokes on little red razors — it’s all just energy turning itself into noise, and movement, and heat. The economy is physics doing cosplay.
Adam: You talk like energy is the only thing that matters.
Anna: That’s because it is. You can’t produce jack without it. The rest is accounting fan fiction. Dressed up as a furry because it can’t hack the truth that life is, what do the buddhists say, life is learning to suffer the knowledge that you an only see everything a single time. Every exchange of information has an energetic cost and an energetic return that makes it irrepeatable.
Adam: And I suppose you think we don’t teach this, the energy economy, because economists are secretly terrified of thermodynamics?
Anna: Terrified? Mate, most economists have never even met thermodynamics. If you introduced them, they’d shake its hand and then immediately write a paper about how it should be deregulated.
Adam: Cute. But seriously — we don’t “hide” the energy stuff. It’s just not our focus.
Anna: Yeah because focusing on it breaks the narrative. You know — that delicate little story about infinite growth on a finite planet. The one you keep patting on the back like a dodgy racehorse that should’ve been retired three Melbourne Cups ago.
Adam: Infinite growth is a simplifying assumption—
Anna: It’s a delusion, mate. You can’t get more work out of less energy forever. Humans don’t get to dodge physics any more than the f*cking koalas can dodge a bulldozer frm 50 f*ckig feet up. You can bullshit people, banks, markets, politicians — but you can’t bullshit entropy, nature, the real c*nting world.
Adam: Here we go, language babe, family venue, the f*cking Entropy Sermon. You’d think entropy paid your salary.
Anna: Someone’s gotta take it seriously. You lot treat it like background static.
Adam: Give me one example — one — where ignoring the physics actually caused anything real.
Anna: The 70s oil shocks. The GFC. The current resource squeeze. The fact that you need twelve tonnes of metal and a whole family of f*cking flamingos to make one Tesla battery. The part where “renewables will save us” is actually “renewables will stall out at the physics boundary unless we reinvent storage.”
Adam: You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you.
Anna: No, I’ve got a fizzy drink and little patience for bullshit. Big difference.
Adam: Look, economics isn’t meant to be physics.
Anna: Then stop pretending it’s objective. You call things “laws.” Laws! As if human behaviour gives a toss.
Adam: They’re metaphorical laws.
Anna: Then stop teaching them like gospel. You’re basically doing philosophy with algebra. Which is fine, but own it.
Adam: Alright. Fine. Let’s say for a second you’re right. Why isn’t this taught? Why don’t we bang on about energy in every class?
Anna: Because it wrecks the mood.
Adam: The mood?
Anna: Yeah. The vibe. The optimism. The whole “markets are efficient, growth is natural, debt is manageable, innovation is endless” story. It’s a good story! Very heartwarming. Folks love it. But it only works in a world where energy keeps increasing. And that world’s done.
Adam: So you think we’re running on a broken model?
Anna: Mate, the model’s fine. The interpretation is broken. The model says, “Here’s how humans behave given some assumptions.” The problem is you treat the assumptions like universal constants instead of vibes.
Adam: They’re not vibes.
Anna: Utility? Vibe. Risk preference? Vibe. Time discounting? Vibe. Rational expectations? Mate, have you met people?
Adam: You’re very smug for someone who forgot her own phone in an Uber last week.
Anna: That was quantum uncertainty. Phone existed in two states — “in my hand” and “in the back of a Corolla” — until observed.
Adam: Bullshit.
Anna: Of course it’s bullshit. But so is half your discipline.
Adam: You’re not answering the question. Why isn’t this taught?
Anna: Because the people teaching it don’t know they’re teaching a story. They were taught the same story. And the story works as long as energy’s cheap. And nobody wants to be the downer at the barbecue telling everyone the sausages are made of finite resources.
Adam: So economists are ignorant?
Anna: No, mate. They’re human. Humans see what the story tells them to see. If you build your whole career on models that assume growth, equilibrium, rationality, infinite substitution — you don’t wake up one day and go, “Oh shit, it’s vibes all the way down.”
Adam: That’s… actually a fair point.
Anna: Plus, if you walked into Treasury or the RBA and said, “Hey lads, maybe growth has physical limits,” they’d lock you in the stationery cupboard and pretend you don’t exist.
Adam: Because it’s politically inconvenient.
Anna: Exactly. If you tell people the map is wrong, they’ll blame you for ruining the trip.
Adam: So how many people actually see through the myth?
Anna: Tiny minority. A few weirdos in central banks, a few physicists, some systems ecologists. People who accidentally cross the streams.
Adam: And the rest?
Anna: They’re doing their best inside the story. They’re not evil. They’re not lying. They’re just… narratively committed.
Adam: That makes it sound almost tragic.
Anna: It is tragic. Bloody Shakespearean. “The Tale of the Great GDP Mirage.”
Adam: So what is real then?
Anna: Energy. Matter. Limits. Entropy. The boring stuff that doesn’t give a shit about optimism.
Adam: And economics?
Anna: A really impressive attempt to explain human behaviour inside those limits — while ignoring the limits.
Adam: You make it sound useless.
Anna: It’s not useless. It’s just incomplete. Without physics, economics is a map of a place that doesn’t exist. With physics, it’s a decent guide to how humans shuffle resources around before the grid melts.
Adam: Bloody hell.
Anna: Told you not to ask.
Adam: So what would you teach?
Anna: Easy:
The economy: physical.
Money: symbolic.
Debt: claim on future energy.
Growth: contingent.
Markets: psychology with coffee.
Limits: not optional.
Humans: chaotically moral socialist with poor impulse control.
Adam: Humility then?
Anna: Always. If you’re not humble before physics then you do not understand reality, everything returns to what it was before it could see itself.
Adam: That’s… annoyingly profound.
Anna: I have my moments.
Adam: I’ll get another round.
Anna: Make it two, champ, Gilly and Stevo are coming in ‘5.
Ceteris Paribus 