Thanks for your thoughtful comment J. K. I would say economics must move beyond thinking in atoms and think in knowledge. Physics is about atoms. Economics is about knowledge. The number of atoms is finite, but undiscovered knowledge is infinite. This is why the Second Law does not apply to economics. New knowledge can be much more valuable than finding new atoms. Atoms without knowledge have no economic value. If we discover a way to make cars get twice the mileage, doesn’t this yield the same result as discovering twice the amount of oil? And aren’t we actually better off with more knowledge than more oil? Thanks again for reading and thinking and talking with me.
If we transform a finite number of atoms into resources with knowledge and undiscovered knowledge is infinite, then our resources can be infinite. We need more people with the freedom to innovate to continue this process.
I suppose there could be a limit, however, not in terms of the total number of atoms in the universe, but rather the energy required to rearrange them into things that we find useful. The law of Entropy holds that energy will tend to dissipate over time and thus our use of energy, while not destroying it, makes it less useful to us.
It is thought by some, that life emerged precisely because it could dissipate energy more quickly than matter can on its own (I have an essay coming out on exactly this topic in a few weeks). Human progress accelerates the natural rate of energy dissipation.
Why do you say "infinitely abundant"? That just makes you open to derision, as cheerleaders and partisan politicos. In fact it isn't "infinitely abundant", nothing is "infinitely abundant" just as we don't need "infinite growth on a finite world" as the Malthusian DeGrowthers always claim. With energy being the critical resource, we have enough fission resources on the accessible Earth land mass to supply our current civilization for a 100Myrs. That's not infinite. In fact it is infinitely smaller than infinite. We don't need infinite, finite and large is all we do need. Be accurate, be authentic.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment J. K. I would say economics must move beyond thinking in atoms and think in knowledge. Physics is about atoms. Economics is about knowledge. The number of atoms is finite, but undiscovered knowledge is infinite. This is why the Second Law does not apply to economics. New knowledge can be much more valuable than finding new atoms. Atoms without knowledge have no economic value. If we discover a way to make cars get twice the mileage, doesn’t this yield the same result as discovering twice the amount of oil? And aren’t we actually better off with more knowledge than more oil? Thanks again for reading and thinking and talking with me.
If we transform a finite number of atoms into resources with knowledge and undiscovered knowledge is infinite, then our resources can be infinite. We need more people with the freedom to innovate to continue this process.
I suppose there could be a limit, however, not in terms of the total number of atoms in the universe, but rather the energy required to rearrange them into things that we find useful. The law of Entropy holds that energy will tend to dissipate over time and thus our use of energy, while not destroying it, makes it less useful to us.
It is thought by some, that life emerged precisely because it could dissipate energy more quickly than matter can on its own (I have an essay coming out on exactly this topic in a few weeks). Human progress accelerates the natural rate of energy dissipation.
Why do you say "infinitely abundant"? That just makes you open to derision, as cheerleaders and partisan politicos. In fact it isn't "infinitely abundant", nothing is "infinitely abundant" just as we don't need "infinite growth on a finite world" as the Malthusian DeGrowthers always claim. With energy being the critical resource, we have enough fission resources on the accessible Earth land mass to supply our current civilization for a 100Myrs. That's not infinite. In fact it is infinitely smaller than infinite. We don't need infinite, finite and large is all we do need. Be accurate, be authentic.