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ty for everybody else through con- gestion and competition for road space. We add capacity at individ- ual level while potentially reduc- ing efficiency at system level. That is an important characteristic of entropy— more energy enters the system, yet an increasing amount is dissipated through friction. Population growth creates a similar dynamic. Malta's rapid expansion has supported employ- ment, consumption, government revenue and economic growth. Migration in particular allowed businesses to expand when do- mestic labour supply could not meet demand. These are genuine economic benefits. Yet additional population also requires housing, roads, electricity, water, health- care, schools, waste management and public infrastructure. The relevant question is therefore no longer simply whether addition- al people generate GDP. Clearly, they do. It is whether the marginal economic value created exceeds the additional pressure imposed upon an increasingly constrained system. Tourism presents the same dilemma. Malta's success in at- tracting millions of visitors rep- resents a remarkable commercial achievement, but a small island should increasingly evaluate tour- ism through value rather than vol- ume. The meaningful question is not simply how many visitors ar- rive but how much value is gener- ated relative to the scarce resourc- es consumed. The same reasoning applies to hotels, supermarkets and proper- ty development. Each new project can make perfect economic sense when assessed individually. An- other hotel creates beds and em- ployment. Another supermarket creates retail capacity. Another apartment block creates housing and financial returns. Yet what is rational at project level is not automatically optimal at nation- al level. The cumulative effects emerge elsewhere through deliv- ery vehicles, additional workers, greater electricity demand, more waste, higher land values and in- creased pressure on roads and public services. Malta's challenge is that these externalities increas- ingly collide within an exception- ally confined space. We get the entropy we incentivise This is where incentives become central to the argument. Markets respond extraordinarily well to the signals we give them. If de- veloping property offers a safer and more attractive return than financing an innovative company, capital will flow towards property. If recruiting another worker re- mains cheaper than reorganising a business around technology and productivity, firms will recruit. If increasing visitor numbers re- mains more profitable than ex- tracting greater value from each visitor, tourism volumes will rise. If driving remains substantially more convenient than the alter- natives, households will continue buying cars. We then become frustrated by the aggregate outcome while con- tinuing to reward the individual behaviour producing it. Seen this way, many of Malta's supposedly separate problems are manifestations of the same under- lying system. Traffic, construction, tourism intensity, migration, elec- tricity distribution, waste, prop- erty prices and weak productivity growth interact continuously. We keep adding inputs to sustain ex- pansion while paying insufficient attention to how much value is be- ing lost through the friction those additional inputs create. This is also why GDP can pro- vide an incomplete picture of pro- gress. Congestion can generate economic activity. Repairing over- stretched infrastructure generates expenditure. Building additional roads adds investment. None of this makes GDP wrong; it simply reminds us that GDP measures economic production rather than the efficiency with which socie- ty converts scarce resources into wellbeing. An economy can there- fore become larger while simulta- neously becoming more cumber- some to live and operate within. Entropy offers an interesting way of reframing productivity. Productivity is normally defined as generating more output from a given quantity of inputs. For Malta, perhaps we should also think about it as losing less value between input and outcome. An hour not spent unnecessarily in traffic is recovered productive or personal time. A genuinely digital public service reduces adminis- trative friction. Better buildings consume less energy. Better ed- ucation allows human potential to migrate towards higher-value activities. Better capital allocation directs savings towards produc- tive investment rather than mere- ly inflating existing assets. This is not an argument for stop- ping growth, closing hotels, pre- venting development or rejecting migration. It is an argument for becoming considerably more so- phisticated about the quality and organisation of growth. Malta's next development model must increasingly extract greater value from every scarce input rather than assume prosperity can in- definitely be generated by adding more inputs. A small island should think differently There is another lesson from entropy that is particularly rele- vant to policymaking. Order re- quires continuous investment. Infrastructure deteriorates unless maintained. Electricity networks require upgrading. Skills depre- ciate. Institutions become bu- reaucratic. Urban environments degrade. Preventive maintenance is less visible than emergency re- pair, just as educational reform is less immediately rewarding than recruiting another cohort of workers. Yet allowing disorder to accumulate eventually makes restoration considerably more ex- pensive. Perhaps Malta's greatest strate- gic advantage is that we are small enough to see the system as a whole. We should be capable of connecting planning to transport, transport to housing, housing to migration, migration to educa- tion, education to productivity, tourism to infrastructure and in- vestment to capital allocation. In- stead, we too often manage these as separate policy files. A small state cannot afford that luxury because the consequences of one decision travel rapidly across the entire system. This is ultimately why Rifkin's in- terpretation of entropy remains so relevant. Industrial societies have often confused greater through- put with greater progress. Malta risks developing its own version of that confusion. More people, more cars, more tourists, more hotel beds, more buildings, more supermarkets and more con- sumption certainly generate more economic activity. But beyond a certain point, more throughput does not necessarily mean more progress. The alternative is not less ambi- tion. It is greater intelligence. Mal- ta should aspire to higher wages through productivity rather than simply more labour, greater tour- ism value rather than relentlessly higher visitor numbers, better mo- bility rather than more cars, better use of existing buildings rather than treating construction as the default investment, and more in- novation rather than assuming capital should continue flowing towards whatever produced the safest returns yesterday. Entropy gives these debates a common language. It reminds us that systems accumulate friction unless we continuously reorgan- ise them and that solving one problem by simply adding more energy can create disorder some- where else. We have spent much of the past decade proving how much economic activity can be squeezed onto a very small island. The next decade should be about something considerably more am- bitious: proving how much more value we can create while reduc- ing the pressure required to create it. Woody Allen's line may be fun- ny, but the Second Law behind it is rather less forgiving. Sooner or later, everything tends towards disorder. For a small island, where the consequences accumulate quickly and space for error is lim- ited, the real measure of progress may therefore be not how much more we can add, but how intel- ligently we organise what we al- ready have. 15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 AUGUST 2026 OPINION Sooner or later, everything turns to shit For a small island, where the consequences accumulate quickly and space for error is limited, the real measure of progress may therefore be not how much more we can add, but how intelligently we organise what we already have.