SUMMARY & PLOT RELEVANCE
Chapter 17 is presented as a dialogue between two interlocutors on the economy: what it is, what it is made of, and mostly who dictates it. Possible actors are listed as both human and non-human: the law as well as lawmakers. Academics and Think Tanks, or international organizations and banks. Academicians like mathematicians and professors, or elements of the economy like prices and interest rates. Ultimately, it boils down to human actors who have the agency to change things, estimated to be about 8 million in number, a thousandth of the current population of the world. One of the interlocutors insists on a focus on the people. A pushback on the other's attempt to emphasize the non-human actors and their importance.
The chapter is thought-provoking and forces one to think for themselves about what truly runs the economy. The chapter could be read in two ways: as two interlocutors going back and forth or as one individual/entity trying to make sense of the economy. At the end, most of the stress is on the people, the human actors that are of most consequence to the economy.
Many possible characters in the book could be the ones involved in this chapter. It could be Mary and Badim, or Mary and Frank, or even just Mary in her head. Nevertheless, this chapter seems like the foundation on which Mary's efforts further along in the novel are hitched. Firstly, we see Mary trying to pitch the idea of a Carbon Coin and Carbon Quantitative Easing to world leaders, who are the people referred to in this chapter as those who can change the way things are done. They have the power to make the carbon coin a reality. Further along, terroristic activites have made these solutions of Mary's most feasible in the current world, so world actors are adopting it. Building on chapter 17, we clearly see that even though we see changes in the infrastructure of the world economy, ultimately it is because of human actors: bankers and banks, lawmakers and courts. Everyone seems to be getting behind the Carbon Coin.
17
Today we're here to inquire who actually enacts the world's economy-who are the ones who make it all go, so to speak. Possibly these people constitute a minority, as it is often said that most people alive today would
actively welcome a change in the system. Only a stupid person would say that. Well, and yet I've just said it.
Yes.
But to get back to the question in hand, who do we think actually enacts the market as such? By which I mean to say, who theorizes it, who implements it, who administers it, who defends it?
The police. It being the law.
So but can we then assume that those people who make the laws are
deeply implicated?
Yes.
But lawmakers are often lawyers themselves, notoriously bereft of ideas.
Can we assume they get their ideas about law from others?
Yes.
And who are some of those others? Think tanks. Academics.
Meaning MBA professors.
All kinds of academics. And very quickly their students. Economics departments, you mean.
The World Trade Organization. Stock markets. All the laws, and the politicians and bureaucrats administering the laws. And the police and army enforcing them.
And I suppose the CEOs of all the companies.
Banks. Shareholder associations, pension funds, individual sharehold-ers, hedge funds, financial firms.
Might the central banks indeed be central to all this? Yes.
Anyone else?
Insurance companies, re-insurance companies. Big investors. And their algorithms, right? So, mathematicians?
The math is primitive.
And yet even primitive math still takes mathematicians, the rest of us being so clueless.
Yes.
Also I suppose simply prices themselves, and interest rates and the like.
Which is to say simply the system itself.
You were asking about the people doing it.
Yes, but it's an actor network. Some of the actors in an actor network aren't human.
Balderdash.
What, you don't believe in actor networks?
There are actor networks, but it's the actors with agency who can choose to do things differently. That's what you were trying to talk about.
All right, but what about money?
What about it?
To my mind, money acts as if it worked as gravity does-the more of it you gather together, the more gathering power it exerts, as with mass and its gravitational attraction.
Cute.
Ultimately this is a very big and articulated system! Insightful.
All right then, back to the ones who administer our economic system as such, and teach others how to work it, and by a not-so-coincidental coincidence, benefit from it the most. I wonder how many people that would turn out to be?
About eight million. You're sure?
No.
So this would be about one in every thousand persons alive today.
Well done.
Thank you! And the programs they've written.
Stick to the people.
But if the non-human elements of the system were to break?
Stick to the people. You were almost getting interesting.
Who matters most in that group of eight million?
Government legislators.
That's a bad thought.
No it isn't. Why would you say that?
Corruption, stupidity—
Rule of law.
But—
But me no buts. Rule of law.
What a weak reed to stand on!
Yes.
What can we do about that?
Just make it stick.
Works Cited
Robinson, Kim Stanley. "Chapter 17." Robinson, Kim Stanley. The Ministry for the Future. Orbit, 2021.
Chen, James. Who Was John Maynard Keynes & What Is Keynesian Economics? 30 April 2026. 8 November 2026. <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/john_maynard_keynes.asp>.
National Conference of State Legislatures. How States Define Lobbying and Lobbyist. 8 January 2025. 8 November 2026. <https://www.ncsl.org/ethics/how-states-define-lobbying-and-lobbyist>.