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The basic fallacy here is the proposition that all economic activity involves physical work, and hence energy == economic activity. However this is not the case
by PaulAJ 7y ago
The basic fallacy here is the proposition that all economic activity involves physical work, and hence energy == economic activity. However this is not the case. My economic activity consists of staring at a screen and pressing buttons. It is therefore perfectly possible that energy consumption can level off while economic growth continues.
One can imagine a similar conversation between a geographer and an economist (if one existed) in 1700 in which the geographer made the same argument about land use; at the time economic growth was very much about bringing land under cultivation or other use, and hence (the geographer would argue) economic growth would be limited by the finite amount of land. Same fallacy.
- paraschopra 7y agoI think you're missing the basic point. Yes, pressing buttons and staring at a screen takes less energy but the value corresponding to that is expected to grow indefinitely, is that even possible? What humans value is built upon energy and resources (even clicking on buttons), and if that base is limited, where does future value creation come from?
- fallingfrog 7y agoPressing buttons is physical work, unless you're doing it via astral projection.
- dane-pgp 7y agoBut to create 10 times as much value, you don't have to necessarily press buttons 10 times faster or 10 times harder. It's possible that by pressing the same number of buttons per year (i.e. the same number of programmer hours worked), the current generation of software in the world could be upgraded to a new, more valuable generation of software. There's a question of whether new software (presumably with extra features) necessarily uses more energy (per user, per year), but it seems possible that one year's more-valuable-software could be more energy-efficient than the previous year's less-valuable-software.