Imagine a debate on nutrition reduced to a confrontation between those who eat only salad and those who eat only chocolate. Absurd, isn’t it? In the face of extraordinary complexity, economics, the framework that studies value and exchanges, has become enclosed within this sterile debate.

The issue with neoclassical economics

In economics, theoretical developments often revolve around two distinct flavours: freedom and equality. Antagonistic by nature, these two regimes have come to define the core tension of the discipline. History has shown that these two diets are fundamentally irreconcilable: we cannot implement liberal policies that reduce inequality while also expanding individual freedoms through social policies. This polarisation inevitably influences the science that studies such mechanisms. Ideological positioning becomes a prerequisite, determining the tools that follow. Thus, economics drifts away from the universal towards the normative and political proposals.

Freedom, triumphant and selfishly associated with wellbeing, has, in its excess, begun to erode our quality of life. Lacking alternative paradigms, politics can only persuade by promising “more.” It finds itself caught between two equally absurd trajectories. The first, humanistic in intent, seeks to reduce inequality through an upward levelling of living standards within an already suffocating environment: consumption for all, despite the depletion of finite resources. The second amplifies tensions and deepens inequalities through a technological narrative that ultimately gestures towards transhumanism. Both bet on a salvific progress and outline addictive freedom, counteracting any healthier rebalancing detox programme. What, then, is missing? Might other flavours exist?

In practice, an overabundance of either equality or freedom prevents the construction of a sustainable economy. Taken independently, both contradict the very notion of sustainability. They degrade our quality of life by ignoring the natural laws that govern balance and resilience. Every excess disrupts delicate equilibriums. They neglect the homeostatic constraint. This key mechanism regulates and sustains life, and has been largely weakened by the liberal economy. Rather than relying on excess, a subtle equilibrium is necessary: a meticulously crafted blend preserving the equilibrium from which intricate structures arise. The “flavours” of freedom and equality become artificial stimuli, disconnected excitations that drive us into the superfluous. On the other side, sustainability focuses on a balance with the environment, and passes inevitably by bridging natural science and economics.

The bridge between natural science and economics

In theory, this reconnection was first formalised by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen through the introduction of ‘entropy’, a concept that links physical disorder with economic pollution. It gave birth to the bioeconomic program, a utopian battle on ethics, that ultimately fell short of rigorous scientific reform. What remained unresolved was the core issue: the redefinition of value, the metric that guides economic frameworks.

Largely questioned in heterodox literature, this redefinition of value haunted me for years, not in an office or a university seminar, but in real life. As an engineer, I learned to look for the measurement that holds systems together. I learned that systems can fall apart when their components are detached from the natural and social environment that feeds them: harmony better than chaos, cooperation more fruitful than individualism. To this end, new principles must be introduced to restore equilibrium, the same that sustain life itself, an engineered process refined by nature over billions of years. Our task is not to outsmart it, but to mimic it. In that quest, the first report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, has been a key pillar for understanding the chaos produced by the business-as-usual dead end, but as well that model relies on intricate metrics, driving the modeller’s wishes and the destiny of the simulation. This subjective bias convinces me that our collective trajectory should be driven by a universal and unique value, rooted in its environment. How, then, can we redefine value? has been a key pillar for understanding the chaos produced by the business-as-usual dead end, but as well that model relies on intricate metrics, driving the modeller’s wishes and the destiny of the simulation. This subjective bias convinces me that our collective trajectory should be driven by a universal and unique value, rooted in its environment. How, then, can we redefine value? has been a key pillar for understanding the chaos produced by the business-as-usual dead end, but as well that model relies on intricate metrics, driving the modeller’s wishes and the destiny of the simulation. This subjective bias convinces me that our collective trajectory should be driven by a universal and unique value, rooted in its environment. How, then, can we redefine value? has been a key pillar for understanding the chaos produced by the business-as-usual dead end, but as well that model relies on intricate metrics, driving the modeller’s wishes and the destiny of the simulation. This subjective bias convinces me that our collective trajectory should be driven by a universal and unique value, rooted in its environment. How, then, can we redefine value?

Towards a new definition of value

Inspired by previous environmental economists and acutely aware that progress had transitioned to an acceleration towards exhaustion, I became convinced that economics must be rebuilt from the ground up, reconnected to the physical laws that govern all living systems. In this endeavour, entropy occupies a central place: in physics, it measures disorder; in economics, it reveals pollution and degradation.

To address it, I propose a new definition of value, where capital and entropy are antagonist. This new value, inseparable from its objective, sustainability, is defined by the conservation of a potential: the natural and social capital. They neither restrict freedom, nor reinforce inequality. They balance. Measurement is thus defined by its purpose, sustainability, as it was two centuries ago with the emergence of energy, a metric defined by it principle of conservation. In the nineteenth century, thermodynamics unified mechanics, chemistry and electricity through the single concept of energy, granting coherence to the physical sciences. By following a similar path, we can today reconcile economics with natural sciences.

This intellectual shift unexpectedly bridges Elinor Ostrom’s governance frameworks with the tragedy of the commons, thermodynamics with The Limits to Growth, report to the Club of Rome, and, most importantly, neoclassical economics with environmental economics. It also becomes possible to objectify a virtuous progress, understood as a development path compatible with biophysical limits, as in the corrective, but arbitrary, scenarios presented in The Limits to Growth. Progress is no longer measured solely through market and short-term output growth, but through the system’s capacity to remain within planetary boundaries over the long term. Integrating these temporal and ecological constraints allows progress to be evaluated against explicit criteria, such as resource stocks, pollution levels, and system stability.

The method, depicted in “Capital et entropie,” is demanding and exigent. It requires acknowledging that our rent-based economy is fundamentally unbalanced, and therefore rethinking our definition of progress. Progress must shift from a technological race towards a wiser evolution, one that prioritises natural and social order over chaos and pollution, a call to reconnect economics with life itself.