La Bourse  /  Volume IV

Volume IV of VII

Production and Regeneration

You are holding, or you are about to specify, or you are about to make, something that somebody has described as better for the world than the thing it replaces.

A timber living room open to a terrace, the sun setting over forested mountains.
Volume IV11 chapters, each with its whole teaching unit, and 3 extensions: one for the practitioner, one for the corporation, one for the translation between them.

The chapters

A woman in a dark suit standing at the edge of a still green lake, seen from behind, mist on the forest beyond.
Plate IV.01The Declaration.A product and its declaration are two different objects, and the whole of this volume is about the distance between them.

Nº IV.01

Making Things That Add

You are holding, or you are about to specify, or you are about to make, something that somebody has described as better for the world than the thing it replaces.

A watercolour of a man at a desk beneath a great tree inside a glass room, plants all around him.
Plate IV.02The Assay Bench.A material is not what it was called when it arrived. It is what it assays at, and the assay is the only sentence in this chapter a buyer will pay for.

Nº IV.02

Materials and the Return Loop

You have been told that the economy is seven percent circular.

A watercolour of two trees side by side, one green and one turning gold, their roots in the same earth.
Plate IV.03The Core, at Eleven in the Morning.Every argument in this chapter is about that line: how far down it goes, how long it took to get there, and how quickly it can be put back.

Nº IV.03

Agriculture as the Model Case

Agriculture is the model case for regenerative production because it is the only large industry whose principal asset is alive, whose depreciation is visible in a hand, and whose accounts can be made to run backwards.

A man in a dark suit writing in an open book at a library desk, lamps lit among the shelves.
Plate IV.04The Scaler's Book.Every plant has a capacity plate riveted to its frame. Very few have the other one — the number the ground will hand over, year after year, without being asked twice.

Nº IV.04

Manufacture at Biological Rates

There is a sentence that gets said in every capital approval meeting for a processing plant, and it is said so naturally that nobody hears it as a claim.

A watercolour of rolling hills in late summer, a farmhouse and a line of trees on the far ridge.
Plate IV.05The Ten Thousandth.The ten thousandth panel costs less than the first. Nobody economised. Ten thousand people each learned something small and none of them could tell you what.

Nº IV.05

Energy Systems That Compound

The energy transition is usually argued as a moral question, and it is an arithmetic one.

Timber lodges at the foot of jagged mountains, their windows lit gold as the sun goes down over the sage.
Plate IV.06The Conveyor at Three Kilometres.The powder on that belt is a waste product at one end and a raw material at the other. Nothing happens to it in between. It crosses a property line.

Nº IV.06

Waste as a Category Error

There is a word in your accounts that is doing more work than you have asked it to do, and the word is waste.

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Plate IV.07The Second Room.Everyone draws a supply chain as a line because a line fits on a page. The thing itself is a population, and it is lit from a room you have not entered.

Nº IV.07

Supply Chains as Ecologies

You already know that the phrase supply chain is wrong.

A woman seen from behind, reading on a cushioned bench that looks out over a lotus pond toward a garden pavilion.
Plate IV.08The Bench at Four O'Clock.Repair is the only branch of production where the labour is visible, which is exactly why it is the only branch of production that is priced honestly.

Nº IV.08

The Repair Economy

There is a sentence people say about repair that is almost true, and the gap between almost and true is where this chapter lives.

A watercolour of hills ploughed into bands of ochre and green, a farm on the far ridge.
Plate IV.09The Nursery Rows.Nobody plants a two-hundred-year tree for the tree. They plant it for the spacing, the succession, the road that reaches it and the ledger that will still be paying somebody to weed it in eighty years. The seedling is the cheapest part.

Nº IV.09

Design for the Seventh Generation

Somewhere in your organisation there is a decision that will outlive everyone who will ever discuss it, and it is being made this quarter by people who will never be asked about it again.

A watercolour of a single tree on orange ground, a young tree growing beside it.
Plate IV.10The Same Hole, Twice.Everything expensive about proving that land is recovering comes from not knowing exactly where you stood the first time.

Nº IV.10

Measuring Regeneration

You have read, by now, a good deal about why regeneration works.

A woman in a cream cardigan reading an open book on her lap, soft light from the side.
Plate IV.11The Invoice, Read Twice.A number that will not come down is still a number you can build on. The mistake is not paying it. The mistake is calling it temporary.

Nº IV.11

Where Regeneration Costs More

This volume has spent ten chapters showing you where making things differently pays.

The extensions

Three chapters that make the volume usable by practitioners of Luminous Economics and by people inside corporations alike — because they are not different economies, only different vocabularies.

A watercolour of a small team at work in a green studio: at desks, at a screen, among hanging plants.
Plate IV.E1One Bench, Four Trades.A corporation puts those four objects in four departments and loses eleven weeks moving a decision between them. This bench has no departments, and the whole of this chapter is about what that is worth in pounds.

Nº IV.E1 · extension

For the Practitioner of Luminous Economics

The eleven chapters you have just read were written against a firm with a capital committee, a procurement function, an internal audit team and a controller.

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Plate IV.E2The Four Desks.Everything in this volume that is worth having is approved in one of those four rooms, and not one of them is the room this page was sent to.

Nº IV.E2 · extension

For the Corporation

You have a capital committee, a procurement function, a controller and a sustainability team, and somebody has handed you eleven chapters about regenerative production and asked what to do about them.

A woman holding an open journal on her lap, her eyes lowered, warm light across her face.
Plate IV.E3The Same Heap, Two Ledgers.There is one heap. The argument that has run through this whole volume is an argument between two sheets of paper about a thing that never moved.

Nº IV.E3 · extension

The Translation — One Economy, Two Vocabularies

Chapter IV.06 established the point this chapter begins from, and it established it well enough that restating it would be a waste of your time: waste is not a property of matter.