Mitchel: Economentality

Mitchell, Timothy. “Economentality: How the Future Entered Government.” Critical Inquiry 40, no. 4 (June 2014): 479–507. https://doi.org/10.1086/676417.

Summary

focused on 1948
Talks about how initially, economics was focused on tangible land
- FDR gives a speech about no more space, and the remaining work was to be stewards of the land
  
  Our industrial plant is built; the problem just now is whether under existing conditions it is not overbuilt. Our last frontier has long since been reached, and there is practically no more free land. . .
Taft-Hartly used against the oil refinieries and the coal mines, and then the railways
- Justification of peacetime use of military power that was linked to national security
  - national security act of 1947
  - new “sacred cow” for america
creation of the CEA and the merging of economics into the gov
requires the quantification of the future
usage of the log “tames” the unknowable future
leads to truman’s idea that expertise was infinite
- modernization theory/development theory, singular future
- fundalmental belief that with the spread of expertise, everyone would merge into the same future
begins to collapse with the fall of oil prices

Three stages of history:
- quantifiable present (FDR’s speech, raw land), no perception of the future
- quantifiable future, singular future, everyone would build and end up in the same spot, development theory/structural adjustment
- quantifiable possibilities, multiple futures, not everyone would end up in the same spot, but we can make money off of that (derivatives, making money off of volatility)