Charles Crowson

Jam Tomorrow?

Over 100 years ago, Einstein changed the way we understood time from being a fixed measurement to a relative one which, rather than being 'correct' as it had been before, was now 'proper' to the body concerned. While physics, especially at the quantum level, has moved on, economics still labours under the old Newtonian idea of time as some sort of fixed, intergalactic tape measure. Jam Tomorrow? uses Einstein's conception of time to recalibrate economics in a way which puts time itself at the very heart of the economic calculus where previous ideas like supply and demand or utility held sway. Rather than just sitting on the x-axis of every graph, time becomes the key variable underpinning the economic cycle; our collective time horizon extends in a boom and contracts in a recession. Each economic agent, whether an individual, household, corporation or government, has their own time horizon which reflects their specific needs and desires, and it's the interaction of these factors which is the proper topic for economic analysis. At the most fundamental level, every economic decision is one about time because the basic economic choice is one between consuming in the present or delaying that consumption to the future through saving. Because humans are unique in their degree of self-awareness and therefore awareness of their existence in time, they alone in the animal kingdom consciously decide to delay consumption since they know that action in the present can affect the future. Economics is therefore the realm of the animal that chooses to save, and that realm is a temporal one. Jam Tomorrow? builds a new theory of value based on our economic perception of time. It redefines the relationship between the idea of value and price which incorporates a new, temporal theory of money and credit, which in turn creates new possibilities in terms of our understanding of economic and market history as well as anticipating how we might react to the economic and environmental challenges of the future.