Automating the Labour of Decision
The Contradictions of Cost-Benefit Analysis

by Larry Lohmann

first published 30 October 2023

For many decades, the technique called "cost-benefit analysis" (CBA) has played a complex, conflict-provoking role in social and environmental politics worldwide. This draft chapter for a forthcoming book on the political economy of the environment argues that it may prove useful to popular movements to understand CBA as part of the longer history of business' use of machines in its war against labor.