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More From Less: The surprising story of how we learned to prosper using fewer resources – and what happens next Paperback – August 6, 2020

by Andrew McAfee (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 332 ratings
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'Everyone knows we’re doomed by runaway overpopulation, pollution, or resource depletion, whichever comes first. Not only is this view paralysing 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
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.
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  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Simon & Schuster UK
  4. Publication date
    August 6, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    5.12 x 0.83 x 7.8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1471180360
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1471180361
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster UK (August 6, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1471180360
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1471180361
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 0.83 x 7.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 332 ratings

About the author

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Andrew McAfee

Andrew McAfee

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Andrew McAfee (@amcafee), a principal research scientist at MIT, studies how technology changes the world. His new book "The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results" explains how a bunch of geeks iterated and experimented until they came up with a better way to run an organization. His previous books include "More from Less," "Machine | Platform | Crowd" and "The Second Machine Age" with Erik Brynjolfsson, and "Enterprise 2.0."

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.

He 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 stars
4.3 out of 5
332 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Important and timely for environmentalists to keep doing their good work
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2019
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At a time when I hear from everyone that everything is wrong, it’s important to learn what is right, so we can do more of it. And at a time when I hear so often that there are too many people for the planet, it is important to learn how population growth is on a trajectory to harm the planet less - if only because historically people who saw no alternative put their efforts into people dying. Industrialisation has been devastating to the planet but wealthy economies in the last 30 years have decoupled income growth from material destruction. China, India and other poorer countries are earlier in their curves, with more destruction, but it is important to know that their curve eventually reversed, and that they will go through their curve faster than previous economies.

This is not to say that we should not worry and we should do nothing. We should worry and we must do more of the good things and less of the bad things. This book gives a good framework of the 4 forces: technology (the change), capitalism (yes, to adopt the change), popular awareness (to demand the change) and government (to put a high price on the lack of change).

Interestingly he says people who seriously care about the environment should back nuclear power and GM food. I wish this would be properly included in environmental debates.

I also wish the second half of the book was as numerical and specific as the first half, spelling out more future changes like it had described past changes. Of course this is much harder.

Great book, I really enjoyed it.
4 people found this helpful
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sien
4.0 out of 5 stars 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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Walton Francis
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read with vital analysis for understanding human progress & overcoming misinformation
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2019
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As an economist with a good deal of background in the subjects covered in this book, I cannot recommend it too highly. It is a readable tutorial in good analysis coupled with good data and common sense. It belongs on the essential knowledge bookshelf along with Matt Ridley's "Rational Optimist," Pinker's "Enlightenment Now," and Rosling's "Factfulness," along with Acemoglu and Robinson's "Why Nations Fail." It is a particularly strong antidote against the neo-Malthusians in every generation who cannot grasp that increasing productivity and other technical advances created in free-market consumer-driven capitalist economies far outweigh the arithmetic of population growth, and against the "doom is now" crowd who utterly fail to understand the world-wide economic and social progress of recent decades. There are plenty of real problems to worry about without believing that economic growth and future progress are doomed by allegedly unsustainable resource use or imaginary tipping points. I have some technical addenda that I may add in an amended review, but wanted to get the main message delivered that this is a book for knowledge seekers to buy and appreciate.
3 people found this helpful
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Mentor
5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Let the Government Be the answer
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2020
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There are so many great things happening to make the world better...cleaner and most of them are being driven by the private sector. This is a great book for baby boomers to share with the younger generations. The idea the far left wants people to accept. "This is a crisis, we don't know if we can stop it, but just give us lots of money with no guarantees" should scare all of us. I am a centrist, I think climate change is real, and that man is contributing. But we cant say how much, although the author has a source that says it all us, that is not true. I think we should be thinking about the issue, modernizing our grid ect....but the lessons of "Earth day" should be clear.. This book is a great way to start a conversation
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Daniel G. Murray
3.0 out of 5 stars Important Book But Could Have Been Better
Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2020
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The chapter on dematerialization is exciting and uplifting. The rest of the book seems to go through the motions. That said, I still recommend the book.
One person found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Dont go for it
Reviewed in India on April 2, 2022
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Boring N repeatative.
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Chillyfinger
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insights But Be Prepared For a Fight
Reviewed in Canada on January 6, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book introduces a paradox. In the US at least, we are consuming about the same amount of "stuff" as we have for the last 50 years or so. That's *total*, not "per capita", so that means that, per capita, we are consuming *less*. This fact alone will get you into a shouting match with your friends who are convinced that consumption is going wild and will eventually be our doom. But it gets worse. The *reason* we are becoming so efficient (according to this book) is the built-in need in a capitalist economy to produce more from less. That means that capitalism is a good thing. Again, you can prepare to duck vegetables flying from the hands of your friends who are sure in their bones that capitalism is an evil thing and *responsible* for exactly the non-existent phenomenon of rampant resource consumption. Of course, we do need to consume less oil and gas (for totally different reasons) but, in fact, capitalism seems to be reducing our consumption of these materials far more efficiently than any climate agreement. Duck.

Of course, this insight is a tiny part of the big picture, but some of us chose base whatever opinions we have on facts. Once you wrap your head around this phenomenon, other things become clearer. For example, why is it that the GDP keeps rising while resource consumption is flat? It seems to me that what is inflating the GDP must be *services*, which is great news for corporate lawyers and bad news for waitresses. It now makes sense that the GDP is inflated when it counts "services" like the Finance Industry, Insurance and Real Estate in GDP. Arguably, these industries just move things around - they don't create value. At least *some* of the reason for the widening gap in income seems to be buried here. What's more, it's *structural* and maybe not the result of greedy rich guys.

Read the book and discuss it with your friends. But wear a helmet.
One person found this helpful
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Alf Reading
5.0 out of 5 stars 4 Treiber nicht nur für wirtschaftliche Entwicklung
Reviewed in Germany on December 8, 2020
Verified Purchase
Der Autor zeigt anhand von Statistiken der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung der USA und anderer westlicher Länder, dass der Verbrauch vieler natürlicher Ressourcen seit ca. 40 Jahren nicht mehr so stark steigt wie die Wirtschaftsleistung und seit ca. 20 Jahren sogar absolut sinkt. Dies gilt wohl auch mit Einbeziehung der Importe aus Ländern, in die inzwischen viele Industrielle Produktionsprozesse verlagert worden sind. Jedoch hätte ich mir zu den Importen etwas ausführlichere Statistiken und Quellen gewünscht.

Als Ursache dieser überraschenden Entwicklung findet er 4 Triebkräfte („4 horsemen“):
Technischer Fortschritt, Kapitalismus, verantwortliche („responsive“) Regierung, öffentliches Bewusstsein.
In einer kapitalistischen Marktwirtschaft versucht jeder Produzent aus eignem Gewinnstreben, den Verbrauch von knappen und daher teuren Ressourcen mithilfe des technischen Fortschritts zu senken. Er hat aber per se keinen Anreiz, externe Effekte z.B. durch Umweltverschmutzung zu minimieren. Dazu ist ein öffentliches Bewusstsein erforderlich, das die externen Effekte als Problem erkennt, und eine verantwortungsvolle Regierung, die wie in einer Demokratie einen Anreiz hat, darauf zu reagieren. Gegen lokale Umweltverschmutzung haben die Regierungen in vielen Ländern daher strikte Mengenbeschränkungen oder flexible Emissionshandelssysteme (Cap-and-Trade) erfolgreich eingesetzt. Für das globale Problem der Treibhausgase scheint sich erst allmählich und in einzelnen Staaten ein öffentliches Bewusstsein zu entwickeln, das Regierungen und Unternehmen zu Gegenmaßnahmen anreizen kann.
Der Autor sieht aber ein Problem darin, dass das öffentliche Problembewusstsein oft weniger auf wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis beruht als auf irrationalen Ängsten. Als Bespiele führt er den Widerstand gegen Kernenergie und genveränderte Organismen an. Hierzu hätte ich mir auch ausführlichere Angaben und Quellen gewünscht.
Als wohl größtes Problem sieht er, dass sich die Erfolge der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung stark auf einzelne Regionen und Bevölkerungsgruppen konzentrieren, so dass eine Spaltung der Gesellschaft („Disconnection“) entsteht. Als Lösung appelliert er grundlegend für mehr gegenseitiges Verständnis.

Trotzt der genannten kleinen Mängel gebe ich vor allem für die gute Darstellung der Effizienz der Marktwirtschaft 5 Sterne.
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T. E.
5.0 out of 5 stars Lecture indispensable
Reviewed in France on January 13, 2020
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De bonnes nouvelles nous arrivent sur notre planète !
Bref: Nous avons fait des progrès technologiques incroyables. La situation s'améliore chaque année. Les défis demeurent mais nous sommes plus que prêts à les relever.
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Jonathan R
5.0 out of 5 stars 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
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