Even as financial development was simply taking off, some economic experts were currently cynical. Coal, wrote William Stanley Jevons in 1865, is "the mainspring of contemporary material civilisation". Yet it was limited and would quickly go out. Although more could be found by digging deeper, it would be progressively expensive to extract and these higher expenses would lower the competitiveness of Britain's makers. After all, in other countries the black fuel was still in sight of daytime. Efficiency gains-using less coal to produce the exact same amount of stuff-would not save the country. Indeed, cleverer usage of restricted resources would just provide an incentive to burn a lot more coal, which would, paradoxically, cause an even faster use of British reserves. There was no escape, the Victorian financial expert thought. Coal would be exhausted and the nation was likely to "agreement to her previous littleness".


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This short article appeared in the Finance & economics area of the print edition under the headline "Rocked by DeepSeek"


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