Great Delusion A Mad Inventor Death in the Tropics & the Utopian Origins of Economic Growth

Endless economic growth rests on a belief in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But when did people begin to believe that societies should—even that they must—expand in wealth indefinitely? In The Great Delusion, the historian and storyteller Steven Stoll weaves past and present together through the life of a strange and brooding nineteenth-century German engineer and technological utopian named John Adolphus Etzler, who pursued universal wealth from the inexhaustible forces of nature: wind, water, and sunlight. The Great Delusion neatly demonstratesthat Etzlers fantasy has become our reality and that we continue to live by some of the same economic assumptions that he embraced. Like Etzler, we assume that the transfer of matter from environments into the economy is not bounded by any condition of those environments and that energy for powering our cars and iPods will always exist. Like Etzler, we think of growth as progress, a turn in the meaning of that word that dates to the moment when a soaring productive capacity fused with older ideas about human destiny. The result is economic growth as we know it, notas measured by the gross domestic product but as the expectation that our society depends on continued physical expansion in order to survive. Steven Stoll is an associate professor of history at Fordham University and the author of Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. His writing has appeared in Harper's, Lapham's Quarterly, and The New Haven Review. Endless economic growth rests on a belief in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But when did people begin to believe that societies should—even that they must—expand in wealth indefinitely? In The Great Delusion, the historian Steven Stoll weaves past and present together through the life of a strange and brooding nineteenth-century German engineer and technological utopian named John Adolphus Etzler, who pursued universal wealth from the inexhaustible forces of nature: wind, water, and sunlight. The Great Delusion neatly demonstrates that Etzlers fantasy has become our reality and that we continue to live by some of the same economic assumptions that he embraced.

Etzler reveals a perhaps disturbing picture of today's economic principles.  Like Etzler, we assume that the transfer of matter from environments into the economy is not bounded by any condition of those environments and that energy for powering our cars and iPods will always exist. Like Etzler, we think of growth as progress, a turn in the meaning of that word that dates to the moment when a soaring productive capacity fused with older ideas about human destiny. The result is economic growth as we know it, not as measured by the gross domestic product but as the expectation that our society depends on continued physical expansion in order to survive.

“This is a hot little book, hot in moral intensity, hot in probable consequences, and hot to handle. It will dismay some, infuriate others, and invite thinking by anyone who regards ours as the responsible species. We have memory and anticipation. Stoll wants us to observe, anticipate, and act. A stirring and eloquent piece of work.”—Roger Kennedy, Director Emeritus, the National Museum of American History “This is a hot little book, hot in moral intensity, hot in probable consequences, and hot to handle. It will dismay some, infuriate others, and invite thinking by anyone who regards ours as the responsible species. We have memory and anticipation. Stoll wants us to observe, anticipate, and act. A stirring and eloquent piece of work.”—Roger Kennedy, Director Emeritus, the National Museum of American History “An odd and intriguing chunk of history that helps us understand where our great ideé fixe—endless growth—came from. When you consider what a weird idea it actually is, and how central to our intellectual universe, its well worth trying to figure out how we first fell under this fancy.”—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

“Stolls brilliant exhumation of the life of Etzler—Frankenstein-like inventor and Hegelian con man—confronts us with the lunatic-utopian origins of our civilizations most profound (and suicidal) desire: the infinite consumption of nature.”—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

“Enthrallment with growth has brought us to a perilous state environmentally. The world economy is so large that its impacts are disrupting the planetary systems that make life on earth possible, and yet economic activity is on track to double in size in less than two decades. Stolls insightful book on the utopian origins of our growth fetish could not be more timely. It raises difficult issues about the balance of economy and ecology that must soon be faced.”—Gus Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy, Yale University

“Steven Stoll presents the technologically utopian zeitgeist of our time in biographical preview—the fascinating story of a possessed nineteenth-century German engineer named John Adolphus Etzler. It is a cautionary and instructive story.”—Herman E. Daly, Professor, School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland

"The mirage of unlimited economic growth has become one of the pervasive ideologies of our time. That quest for the ever-increasing profit and productivity can be dehumanizing and heedless of the planet's ecology is of no concern to the wise guys of Wall Street . . . Fordham University historian Steven Stoll writes with a sharp pen about the 19th-century materialist philosophies that undergird the economic world order of nowadays and examines its implications through the life of an obscure German-American crackpot, John Etzler. The founder of failed Utopian communities and inventor of failed perpetual energy machines, Etzler becomes an object lesson in the application of ideas that continues to shape society. Prosperity, abundance and happiness were Etzler's themes, and like the financiers at the helm of the global economy but on a small scale, his fantasies were harmful to whomever they touched."—David Luhrssen, The Shepherd Express

"A significant work that uses the life of 19th-century explorer and inventor John Etzler to dissect the fallacies of the global mantra for continuous economic growth. Distilling complex ideas in lucid, easily accessible prose, Stoll explains how his zealous protagonist, who believed the earth could support a population of one trillion people, was shaped by the Young Hegelian materialist theories of his era. Born in Germany in 1791, Etzler promised his followers lifelong ease and abundance based on limitless natural resources. Modern consumers, too, believe that the energy powering their iPods, cars and leaf-blowers will always exist, notes Stoll. But in time of rapidly rising gas prices and melting tundras, his timely and immensely readable book asks whether unfettered consumption can continue in a world with scarce resources. The author convincingly argues that modern economic theory, with its belief that growth equals progress, is derived from the same materialist current that inspired Etzler. He takes as a metaphor Etzler's bizarre invention, a massive, lumbering, do-anything machine called the Satellite, powered by wind, water, a pivot and ropes. The Satellite never worked, because Etzler ignored entropy; energy seeped away as useless heat (caused by friction over long ropes) and could never be recaptured. Stoll contends that the law of entropy, which establishes that natural energy resources are finite and unrecoverable, has also been willfully ignored by growth-focused economists. Unless consumerism is curtailed to a rate that allows the earth to replenish itself, and manufacturing becomes environmentally benign, he predicts that major crises will occur. In the 1840s, Etzler led a group of English emigrants to Venezuela, promising them a tropical paradise without limits on natural bounty, but delivering only destitution and death. Ideas influence behavior, Stoll remind us, and Etzler's life has a clear message for us today: 'Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.' An erudite, entertaining historical deconstruction of the modern economic world."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Environmental historian and author of the well-received Larding the Lean Earth, Stoll here considers the life and ideas of the greatly deluded J.A. Etzler, a now-obscure utopian engineer whose influence during his peak in 1820s-40s Germany and America was nil. Etzler believed that inexhaustible earthly natural resources, to which value would be constantly added through technological innovation, fated poverty and inequality to obsolescence . . . Stoll's witty account of Etzler's unworkable 'Naval Automaton,' variously described as an engine or wagon by contemporaries, is the book's highlight."—Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr College Library, Pennsylvania, Library Journal

“This is a hot little book, hot in moral intensity, hot in probable consequences, and hot to handle. It will dismay some, infuriate others, and invite thinking by anyone who regards ours as the responsible species. We have memory and anticipation. Stoll wants us to observe, anticipate, and act. A stirring and eloquent piece of work.” —Roger Kennedy, Director Emeritus, the National Museum of American History “An odd and intriguing chunk of history that helps us understand where our great ideé fixe—endless growth—came from. When you consider what a weird idea it actually is, and how central to our intellectual universe, its well worth trying to figure out how we first fell under this fancy.” —Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

 

“Stolls brilliant exhumation of the life of Etzler—Frankenstein-like inventor and Hegelian con man—confronts us with the lunatic-utopian origins of our civilizations most profound (and suicidal) desire: the infinite consumption of nature.” —Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

 

“This is a hot little book, hot in moral intensity, hot in probable consequences, and hot to handle. It will dismay some, infuriate others, and invite thinking by anyone who regards ours as the responsible species. We have memory and anticipation. Stoll wants us to observe, anticipate, and act. A stirring and eloquent piece of work.” —Roger Kennedy, Director Emeritus, the National Museum of American History

 

“Enthrallment with growth has brought us to a perilous state environmentally. The world economy is so large that its impacts are disrupting the planetary systems that make life on earth possible, and yet economic activity is on track to double in size in less than two decades. Stolls insightful book on the utopian origins of our growth fetish could not be more timely. It raises difficult issues about the balance of economy and ecology that must soon be faced.”—Gus Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy, Yale University

 “Steven Stoll presents the technologically utopian zeitgeist of our time in biographical preview—the fascinating story of a possessed nineteenth-century German engineer named John Adolphus Etzler. It is a cautionary and instructive story.” —Herman E. Daly, Professor, School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland 

“The lesson Stoll wants us to learn from the mad inventors biography is clear: Despite our optimism that we can harness all the energy necessary to increase production, we cannot fool Mother Nature.” —Paul Davidson, The New Leader

Endless economic growth rests on a belief in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But when did people begin to believe that societies should—even that they must—expand in wealth indefinitely? In The Great Delusion, the historian and storyteller Steven Stoll weaves past and present together through the life of a strange and brooding nineteenth-century German engineer and technological utopian named John Adolphus Etzler, who pursued universal wealth from the inexhaustible forces of nature: wind, water, and sunlight. The Great Delusion neatly demonstratesthat Etzler’s fantasy has become our reality and that we continue to live by some of the same economic assumptions that he embraced. Like Etzler, we assume that the transfer of matter from environments into the economy is not bounded by any condition of those environments and that energy for powering our cars and iPods will always exist. Like Etzler, we think of growth as progress, a turn in the meaning of that word that dates to the moment when a soaring productive capacity fused with older ideas about human destiny. The result is economic growth as we know it, notas measured by the gross domestic product but as the expectation that our society depends on continued physical expansion in order to survive.

Endless economic growth rests on a belief in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But when did people begin to believe that societies should--even that they must--expand in wealth indefinitely? In The Great Delusion, the historian and storyteller Steven Stoll weaves past and present together through the life of a strange and brooding nineteenth-century German engineer and technological utopian named John Adolphus Etzler, who pursued universal wealth from the inexhaustible forces of nature: wind, water, and sunlight. The Great Delusion neatly demonstratesthat Etzler's fantasy has become our reality and that we continue to live by some of the same economic assumptions that he embraced. Like Etzler, we assume that the transfer of matter from environments into the economy is not bounded by any condition of those environments and that energy for powering our cars and iPods will always exist. Like Etzler, we think of growth as progress, a turn in the meaning of that word that dates to the moment when a soaring productive capacity fused with older ideas about human destiny. The result is economic growth as we know it, notas measured by the gross domestic product but as the expectation that our society depends on continued physical expansion in order to survive. Steven Stoll is an associate professor of history at Fordham University and the author of Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. His writing has appeared in Harper's, Lapham's Quarterly, and The New Haven Review. Endless economic growth rests on a belief in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But when did people begin to believe that societies should--even that they must--expand in wealth indefinitely? In The Great Delusion, the historian Steven Stoll weaves past and present together through the life of a strange and brooding nineteenth-century German engineer and technological utopian named John Adolphus Etzler, who pursued universal wealth from the inexhaustible forces of nature: wind, water, and sunlight. The Great Delusion neatly demonstrates that Etzler's fantasy has become our reality and that we continue to live by some of the same economic assumptions that he embraced.

Etzler reveals a perhaps disturbing picture of today's economic principles. Like Etzler, we assume that the transfer of matter from environments into the economy is not bounded by any condition of those environments and that energy for powering our cars and iPods will always exist. Like Etzler, we think of growth as progress, a turn in the meaning of that word that dates to the moment when a soaring productive capacity fused with older ideas about human destiny. The result is economic growth as we know it, not as measured by the gross domestic product but as the expectation that our society depends on continued physical expansion in order to survive.

This is a hot little book, hot in moral intensity, hot in probable consequences, and hot to handle. It will dismay some, infuriate others, and invite thinking by anyone who regards ours as the responsible species. We have memory and anticipation. Stoll wants us to observe, anticipate, and act. A stirring and eloquent piece of work.--Roger Kennedy, Director Emeritus, the National Museum of American History This is a hot little book, hot in moral intensity, hot in probable consequences, and hot to handle. It will dismay some, infuriate others, and invite thinking by anyone who regards ours as the responsible species. We have memory and anticipation. Stoll wants us to observe, anticipate, and act. A stirring and eloquent piece of work.--Roger Kennedy, Director Emeritus, the National Museum of American History An odd and intriguing chunk of history that helps us understand where our great idee fixe--endless growth--came from. When you consider what a weird idea it actually is, and how central to our intellectual universe, it's well worth trying to figure out how we first fell under this fancy.--Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

Stoll's brilliant exhumation of the life of Etzler--Frankenstein-like inventor and Hegelian con man--confronts us with the lunatic-utopian origins of our civilization's most profound (and suicidal) desire: the infinite consumption of nature.--Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

Enthrallment with growth has brought us to a perilous state environmentally. The world economy is so large that its impacts are disrupting the planetary systems that make life on earth possible, and yet economic activity is on track to double in size in less than two decades. Stoll's insightful book on the utopian origins of our growth fetish could not be more timely. It raises difficult issues about the balance of economy and ecology that must soon be faced.--Gus Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy, Yale University

Steven Stoll presents the technologically utopian zeitgeist of our time in biographical preview--the fascinating story of a possessed nineteenth-century German engineer named John Adolphus Etzler. It is a cautionary and instructive story.--Herman E. Daly, Professor, School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland

The mirage of unlimited economic growth has become one of the pervasive ideologies of our time. That quest for the ever-increasing profit and productivity can be dehumanizing and heedless of the planet's ecology is of no concern to the wise guys of Wall Street . . . Fordham University historian Steven Stoll writes with a sharp pen about the 19th-century materialist philosophies that undergird the economic world order of nowadays and examines its implications through the life of an obscure German-American crackpot, John Etzler. The founder of failed Utopian communities and inventor of failed perpetual energy machines, Etzler becomes an object lesson in the application of ideas that continues to shap

Economic growth is more than an observable fact—its a belief in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But when did people begin to believe that societies should—even that they must—expand in wealth into the indefinite future? Did they think about the limits of the natural environment?

 

In this vivid book, the historian Steven Stoll considers the way people throughout the Atlantic world read wealth into nature during the 1830s and 1840s. Opening among the supersized products and high-stacked shelves of Costco, The Great Delusion weaves past and present together through the life of a strange and brooding German engineer and technological utopian named John Adolphus Etzler, who pursued universal wealth from the inexhaustible forces of nature: wind, water, and sunlight. He was not a major theorist. He did not invent anything we use today. But Etzler absorbed and articulated just about every major materialist idea of the time, using those theories to pursue his own program for abundance and happiness. In Etzler we see a disturbing picture of ourselves. If he seems eccentric—or just plain crazy—he was no less so than the most pragmatic thinkers of his time, and of ours. Eloquent and insightful, The Great Delusion neatly demonstrates that Etzlers fantasy has become our reality and that we continue to live by some of the same economic assumptions that he embraced.

Steven Stoll is an associate professor of history at Fordham University and the author of Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America (Hill and Wang, 2002). His writing has appeared in Harpers Magazine, Laphams Quarterly, and The New Haven Review.