11 ms·

Economies are not zero sum. Every transaction has winners on both sides. People need different things at different times.

neonological 6y ago
Economies are zero sum. Your statement is a fallacy I see touted everywhere. All economic products cost energy to generate and all energy is limited in totality by the available energy on earth. When someone uses this energy, another person cannot use it. This holds true even for the most abstract product. Say the economic product of poetry produced/sung by a poet. The poet needs energy to sustain himself and the time needed to produce the poem. When he uses that energy, entropy increases and someone else now cannot use it. That is zero sum. The transaction you are describing is the equivalent of two people taking gold from limited reserves and trading that gold. The fact of the matter is, the gold is still missing from the shared reserve regardless of how fair the trade was.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Ever get a sunburn?
  - neonological 6y ago
    Yes and the person living in my shadow didn't get a sunburn as a result. Zero sum.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Not for 'Earth', the energy came from outside. The sun hitting the planet at a given moment is on the order of 100 petawatts. Human energy utilization is on the order of 15 terawatts. It's a really good thing that it isn't zero sum.
      - neonological 6y ago
        Nah this is still zero sum. It's limited by the amount of watts we can reasonably extract from the 100 petawatts per day. We use a fraction of the energy hitting the earth because we can only extract a fraction of it. In this case rate of replenishment functions as a limit. If our rate of usage exceeds the rate in which we can viably extract useful energy from the sun then that means not everyone can have access to this energy. This is a limit. Zero Sum. If Energy truly was unlimited nobody would be paying for it.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        It's not zero sum within the earth system. Trees don't pay for energy.
        neonological 6y ago
        It is zero sum within the earth system because the energy is limited. Trees compete for light. The taller trees win, the shorter trees are deprived of sunlight and therefore are the losers.
        chrischattin 6y ago
        And this is a good thing. It’s why simple organisms evolved. It’s why trees even exist in the first place.
        neonological 6y ago
        Agreed. The Zero Sum game is critical for evolution. Competition for limited resources is the very reason why complex organisms exist. Any economic model of society that doesn't involve the zero sum nature of reality is highly highly inaccurate.
    - alentist 6y ago
      > Yes and the person living in my shadow didn't get a sunburn as a result. Zero sum. Are your comments meant to be some kind of elaborate satire?
      - neonological 6y ago
        Naw. Just this one. How else do you respond to some random: "Ever get a sunburn?"
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  How do you think GDP grows? If you have land and money and I have water, I can sell you water to grow crops while using the money for expanding my business. Do you really not see winners on either side of any trade?
  - neonological 6y ago
    You have to go deeper and trace the products to the source of creation. Land, Water and Sun is limited if not by total supply then by rate of availability. Simply by obtaining these resources others are deprived. The people who are deprived are the losers, the people who aren't are the winners.
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      We need different things at different times. Left foot right foot moves you forward at a sustainable pace. Night and day, and on and on. Things have different value at different times, it's too narrow to only regard energy as a source of development. We need rest too. You're not "losing" when you sleep.
      - neonological 6y ago
        Even sleep costs energy. You need to build a shelter and be alive in order to sleep. Both the shelter and being alive costs energy. It doesn't matter if you need things at different times. When you the trace the source of everything you that "need" you will find that at the root of it all is a limited resource.
        unityByFreedom 6y ago
        You miss my point. Darkness does not cost energy. You can't stand in sunlight 24/7, neither can a tree. Everyone puts a different personalized value on things. You are able to sleep at night because the light is not there.
        6y ago
- Fellshard 6y ago
  That degree of pedantry doesn't lead to useful analysis, though, especially since most of those factors don't end up weighing in to the human consequences, which are what are being considered. "The universe is a zero-sum system" is a true statement, but utterly useless - a tautology that has no relevance to the discussion.
  - neonological 6y ago
    I highly disagree with this. It may seem to you what I'm saying is pedantic but it is not. The entire culture of the United States from all the art, to all the technology, to all the food to all the music is sustained by this same energy. It is not sustainable for everyone in the world to use the same amount of energy that is used by the United States. This is literally the definition of zero sum. In fact it is well known that entire civilizations have fallen because they've used up all available energy reservoirs. The most famous example is the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island. Easter Island collapsed because the situation was not only zero sum but even negative as high entropy energy is not useful to any participant in the game. What people don't realize is that the economy is limited by physical actuality. It is not simply supply, demand and your limitless "imagination" on what you can potentially deem as "valuable". Supply and demand alone is a short sighted measure. The better metric for intrinsic value must include energy/entropy in the equation. There is a limit and that limit practically effects everything around you.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      No civilization has fallen because they depleted the available energy. Some have failed because their use of energy outpaced their ability to extract available energy. The amount of energy available on just our planet is unfathomably large (e=mc2). The entire planet could run for 100 years on just the toxic waste from a single US nuclear plant. We could run the entire world for millions of years just on nuclear material filtered from sea water. And that is just using current nuclear technology. We are not really energy constrained and simply using the available energy more efficiently can leave all parties better off on all but maybe billion year timelines.
- reilly3000 6y ago
  Just because the transaction balances doesn’t mean there wasn’t ‘winners’. If I stroll down the beach and purchase a frozen treat for $4, I am sated and the merchant gets to make a profit, pay their taxes, and sustain their supply chain. Who loses? The other sellers lose a potential customer, I gain some weight, and probably generate waste and carbon in the act. As we plod ever towards our future as dust, we’ll transact a stream of everything, making and taking and leaving our wake along the way. As it goes, it’s hard to ascribe goodness or badness or winners or losers without omission of some part of the transaction. Yet in that moment when my lips meet their first chilly bite, the universe might reveal a shimmer of its majesty, and I’ll call that good.
  - neonological 6y ago
    The point I am making is that the people making the transaction are not the losers in the game. You have to trace the origin of the product back to how it was produced and what limited resource was used to produce it. The loser here is other person who could've potentially used that limited resource for his own gain.
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      Are the stars' gases foolish to burn and radiate energy to the universe because they could have used that limited resource for their own gain? It seems simpler to consider that those who give are more likely to receive. Even a primordial entity in nature understands that the act of helping others helps itself.
    - beckingz 6y ago
      Sure there's opportunity cost. Sure there's locally optimal resource distribution that results in a less optimal global distribution. Sure you're right that entropy wins in the end and the total energy of the universe is fixed. But there are plenty of transactions and projects we can engage in that result in more value for all participants across the entire lifecycle.
      - neonological 6y ago
- malandrew 6y ago
  some transactions are zero some (pareto optimal) and some are not (nash equilibria). The easiest observable way to see that the economy is not zero sum once you take into account delta T (time) is that the economy grows and can grow both faster or slower than population growth. If it was truly zero-sum in aggregate, the size of the economy and wealth would always be strictly proportional to population.
  - neonological 6y ago
    Does this model include energy that continuously decays into higher entropy states? You need to model energy alongside an economy and population. Logically, If you limit energy, you limit the size of the economy. Therefore, energy is an important variable in any economic model. To not include such a factor in your model means your model is inaccurate.
    - incongruity 6y ago
      1) All models are wrong but some are useful. 2) What you are espousing here really isn’t all that useful other than as a way of playing “ooh gotcha” in arguments with others 3) Energy is only zero sum in closed systems and the earth is not a closed system. The overwhelming majority of our energy comes from a source outside our ecosystem and a non-zero amount also escapes from our planet. Ergo, it’s not a closed system and your zero sum notions do not necessarily always apply.
      - neonological 6y ago
        1. Except your model is missing an extremely important figure. Modern economies thrive off of the energy variable. This is not some missing detail, it is critical. 2. No it is useful and highly practical. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26352352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26352352 3. Energy is limited in the amount that arrives from the sun per day and the amount we have the ability to extract from the earth and the sun and the wind per day. The limit is evident by the fact you have to pay for it. If it were unlimited, your energy bill would be zero. There does exist products on earth that while not technically unlimited can be practically considered unlimited. One such example is the air you breath. Energy is NOT an example of this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- scythe 6y ago
  >All economic products cost energy to generate and all energy is limited in totality by the available energy on earth. The Sahara radiates more energy into space every night than the human race utilized that day.
  - neonological 6y ago
    Then according to your logic that means energy is practically unlimited. Why am I still paying for energy if it's unlimited? Because energy is still limited. The energy radiated by the Sahara is not "available" therefore not part of what I meant when I said "available energy on earth."
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Pareto improvements are positive sum because each participant has increased their utility.
  - neonological 6y ago
    My argument is that pareto sums don't practically exist because there are unwilling side participants that are usually affected negatively.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      Positive as well as negative externalities exist and are well studied, my opinion of the “usual” case is different than yours. Thanks for the reply.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- anm89 6y ago
  If economies were zero sum, our economy would have at maximum grown linearly with respect to population size from the stone age.
  - neonological 6y ago
    It's a complex equation when you involve the discovery of new resources and increases in technology. Let me illustrate to you what's going on with pet fish example: So I have 5 fish. I put a fish flake in the tank. The game the fish play with the flakes is zero sum. Only one fish can get the flake. Next time, I put two flakes in the fish tank. The economy has increased by 2x! But only two fish get a flake so the game is still zero sum. What if I put 30 flakes into the tank? The biggest fish beats up all the other fish and eats all 30 flakes. The game is still zero sum. Increasing the size of the economy does not change the nature of the zero sum game.
    - anm89 6y ago
      No. The size of our economy is also not people x resources.
      - neonological 6y ago
        Sure but in the fish tank is fish vs. resources and given that nothing else exists in the “fish tank universe” the flakes therefore function as the total amount of resources and also the entire economy at the same time. I can triple the size and value of the fish tank economy just like how Reddit can increase the value of GameStop. The fact of the matter is it’s all still a zero sum game.
        anm89 6y ago
        Consider me unconvinced. The gamestop extravaganza is immaterial here.
        neonological 6y ago
- nubbins 6y ago
  This is a strangely mechanistic view of the economy not allowing for human joy (which economists would lump in as utility.) I get a great amount of satisfaction from great food or art far beyond the costs required to produce them. I don't see how that isn't creating value beyond the simple energy equation.
  - neonological 6y ago
    It's not strange. The amount of satisfaction you have is arbitrary and your own personal opinion. It's valid to you but not a valid part of the discussion because it's so arbitrary. It could be that in reality the satisfaction I gain from art is worth 999 trillion dollars. If it's true then it's true but is it worth discussing? No. The critical point here is that even things of value that people believe to be seemingly abstract are connected to a physical and limited resource. This is not just pedantry. Art such as Opera or symphonies or blockbuster movies require a huge energy hungry economy to produce. You can't get most of the art you "enjoy" from human powered economies like tribals still living in the Amazon rain forest. None of the "art" mentioned above can ever come out of economies like that. You can't even get children's drawings (art) like you do from modern economies because tribal economies can't even produce crayons or paper. There is a huge correlation between the quality of the abstract things you enjoy and the energy required to produce it. It's just a general correlation but it's a correlation nonetheless. So rather then call it strange. Take it as new insight. You once considered "art" to some abstract concept that you "enjoy". Now you know that art is also a low entropy configuration of paint. Lowering entropy costs energy therefore most abstract things are always related to energy. You can still enjoy a painting, but now you are armed with additional knowledge. Greater knowledge means things that were previously mysterious can now be viewed in a more technical light. You can call it strange or you can call it learning something new. It's up to you. Either way you are still free to enjoy your art as if it was worth 999 trillion dollars.
    - nubbins 6y ago
      Sorry for the late reply, I don't entirely agree but thank you for laying out your argument point by point, it has certainly given me a different way to look at things. I do agree that the quality of art is roughly proportional to the size of the economy that "spins it off" so to speak. Obviously hunter gatherers are not going to produce great art without surplus goods or division of labor. At base I think we can't just write off human pleasure because some of it varies based on the individual. Economists estimate things like this all the time. I enjoy my favorite music albums very much, much more than say a $10 album cost, but if it cost instead $300 and my choice was between an album or a bicycle you can bet I would buy fewer albums no matter how much I liked them, so we can at least bound my enjoyment at $10 - $300 and realistically much narrower. I do admit most of my favorite poetry and literature was produced by great imperial powers, even if by relatively impoverished or humble members of that society. There is something to this- whether Rome, Song China or Colonial Britain lots of good art and luxury is created by conquest.
- hntrader 6y ago
  Nonsense. If I'm moving from the UK to the US, and someone else is moving from the US to the UK, then I really need USD and that person really needs GBP. We can then trade USD for GBP and both be better off as a result. The transaction was demonstrably positive sum in utility terms.
  - neonological 6y ago
    Not Nonsense at all. Cash is an abstraction of product so let's talk in terms of trading the product that the USD and GBP actually represents. The "products" that were traded in your example above represents an exchange in energy because all products must be created from energy. Entropy is removed from raw materials and transferred to energy increasing the entropy of the energy and decreasing the entropy of the raw materials into usable product. High entropy energy is unusable. Usable Energy is therefore limited and as a result in order for those products to even exist usable energy must be sourced from a limited supply. When you take from a limited supply someone else loses. Hence zero sum. Even utility costs energy no matter how much you try to inflate it's worth with your imagination. You have much more "utility" living in a high energy economy then you do in say a human powered tribal economy in the amazon rain forest.

neonological 6y ago

Economies are zero sum. Your statement is a fallacy I see touted everywhere. All economic products cost energy to generate and all energy is limited in totality by the available energy on earth. When someone uses this energy, another person cannot use it. This holds true even for the most abstract product. Say the economic product of poetry produced/sung by a poet. The poet needs energy to sustain himself and the time needed to produce the poem. When he uses that energy, entropy increases and someone else now cannot use it. That is zero sum. The transaction you are describing is the equivalent of two people taking gold from limited reserves and trading that gold. The fact of the matter is, the gold is still missing from the shared reserve regardless of how fair the trade was.

maxerickson 6y ago
Ever get a sunburn?
- neonological 6y ago
  Yes and the person living in my shadow didn't get a sunburn as a result. Zero sum.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Not for 'Earth', the energy came from outside. The sun hitting the planet at a given moment is on the order of 100 petawatts. Human energy utilization is on the order of 15 terawatts. It's a really good thing that it isn't zero sum.
    - neonological 6y ago
      Nah this is still zero sum. It's limited by the amount of watts we can reasonably extract from the 100 petawatts per day. We use a fraction of the energy hitting the earth because we can only extract a fraction of it. In this case rate of replenishment functions as a limit. If our rate of usage exceeds the rate in which we can viably extract useful energy from the sun then that means not everyone can have access to this energy. This is a limit. Zero Sum. If Energy truly was unlimited nobody would be paying for it.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        It's not zero sum within the earth system. Trees don't pay for energy.
        neonological 6y ago
        It is zero sum within the earth system because the energy is limited. Trees compete for light. The taller trees win, the shorter trees are deprived of sunlight and therefore are the losers.
        chrischattin 6y ago
        And this is a good thing. It’s why simple organisms evolved. It’s why trees even exist in the first place.
        neonological 6y ago
        Agreed. The Zero Sum game is critical for evolution. Competition for limited resources is the very reason why complex organisms exist. Any economic model of society that doesn't involve the zero sum nature of reality is highly highly inaccurate.
  - alentist 6y ago
    > Yes and the person living in my shadow didn't get a sunburn as a result. Zero sum. Are your comments meant to be some kind of elaborate satire?
    - neonological 6y ago
      Naw. Just this one. How else do you respond to some random: "Ever get a sunburn?"
unityByFreedom 6y ago
How do you think GDP grows? If you have land and money and I have water, I can sell you water to grow crops while using the money for expanding my business. Do you really not see winners on either side of any trade?
- neonological 6y ago
  You have to go deeper and trace the products to the source of creation. Land, Water and Sun is limited if not by total supply then by rate of availability. Simply by obtaining these resources others are deprived. The people who are deprived are the losers, the people who aren't are the winners.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    We need different things at different times. Left foot right foot moves you forward at a sustainable pace. Night and day, and on and on. Things have different value at different times, it's too narrow to only regard energy as a source of development. We need rest too. You're not "losing" when you sleep.
    - neonological 6y ago
      Even sleep costs energy. You need to build a shelter and be alive in order to sleep. Both the shelter and being alive costs energy. It doesn't matter if you need things at different times. When you the trace the source of everything you that "need" you will find that at the root of it all is a limited resource.
      - unityByFreedom 6y ago
        You miss my point. Darkness does not cost energy. You can't stand in sunlight 24/7, neither can a tree. Everyone puts a different personalized value on things. You are able to sleep at night because the light is not there.
        6y ago
Fellshard 6y ago
That degree of pedantry doesn't lead to useful analysis, though, especially since most of those factors don't end up weighing in to the human consequences, which are what are being considered. "The universe is a zero-sum system" is a true statement, but utterly useless - a tautology that has no relevance to the discussion.
- neonological 6y ago
  I highly disagree with this. It may seem to you what I'm saying is pedantic but it is not. The entire culture of the United States from all the art, to all the technology, to all the food to all the music is sustained by this same energy. It is not sustainable for everyone in the world to use the same amount of energy that is used by the United States. This is literally the definition of zero sum. In fact it is well known that entire civilizations have fallen because they've used up all available energy reservoirs. The most famous example is the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island. Easter Island collapsed because the situation was not only zero sum but even negative as high entropy energy is not useful to any participant in the game. What people don't realize is that the economy is limited by physical actuality. It is not simply supply, demand and your limitless "imagination" on what you can potentially deem as "valuable". Supply and demand alone is a short sighted measure. The better metric for intrinsic value must include energy/entropy in the equation. There is a limit and that limit practically effects everything around you.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    No civilization has fallen because they depleted the available energy. Some have failed because their use of energy outpaced their ability to extract available energy. The amount of energy available on just our planet is unfathomably large (e=mc2). The entire planet could run for 100 years on just the toxic waste from a single US nuclear plant. We could run the entire world for millions of years just on nuclear material filtered from sea water. And that is just using current nuclear technology. We are not really energy constrained and simply using the available energy more efficiently can leave all parties better off on all but maybe billion year timelines.
reilly3000 6y ago
Just because the transaction balances doesn’t mean there wasn’t ‘winners’. If I stroll down the beach and purchase a frozen treat for $4, I am sated and the merchant gets to make a profit, pay their taxes, and sustain their supply chain. Who loses? The other sellers lose a potential customer, I gain some weight, and probably generate waste and carbon in the act. As we plod ever towards our future as dust, we’ll transact a stream of everything, making and taking and leaving our wake along the way. As it goes, it’s hard to ascribe goodness or badness or winners or losers without omission of some part of the transaction. Yet in that moment when my lips meet their first chilly bite, the universe might reveal a shimmer of its majesty, and I’ll call that good.
- neonological 6y ago
  The point I am making is that the people making the transaction are not the losers in the game. You have to trace the origin of the product back to how it was produced and what limited resource was used to produce it. The loser here is other person who could've potentially used that limited resource for his own gain.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    Are the stars' gases foolish to burn and radiate energy to the universe because they could have used that limited resource for their own gain? It seems simpler to consider that those who give are more likely to receive. Even a primordial entity in nature understands that the act of helping others helps itself.
  - beckingz 6y ago
    Sure there's opportunity cost. Sure there's locally optimal resource distribution that results in a less optimal global distribution. Sure you're right that entropy wins in the end and the total energy of the universe is fixed. But there are plenty of transactions and projects we can engage in that result in more value for all participants across the entire lifecycle.
    - neonological 6y ago
malandrew 6y ago
some transactions are zero some (pareto optimal) and some are not (nash equilibria). The easiest observable way to see that the economy is not zero sum once you take into account delta T (time) is that the economy grows and can grow both faster or slower than population growth. If it was truly zero-sum in aggregate, the size of the economy and wealth would always be strictly proportional to population.
- neonological 6y ago
  Does this model include energy that continuously decays into higher entropy states? You need to model energy alongside an economy and population. Logically, If you limit energy, you limit the size of the economy. Therefore, energy is an important variable in any economic model. To not include such a factor in your model means your model is inaccurate.
  - incongruity 6y ago
    1) All models are wrong but some are useful. 2) What you are espousing here really isn’t all that useful other than as a way of playing “ooh gotcha” in arguments with others 3) Energy is only zero sum in closed systems and the earth is not a closed system. The overwhelming majority of our energy comes from a source outside our ecosystem and a non-zero amount also escapes from our planet. Ergo, it’s not a closed system and your zero sum notions do not necessarily always apply.
    - neonological 6y ago
      1. Except your model is missing an extremely important figure. Modern economies thrive off of the energy variable. This is not some missing detail, it is critical. 2. No it is useful and highly practical. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26352352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26352352 3. Energy is limited in the amount that arrives from the sun per day and the amount we have the ability to extract from the earth and the sun and the wind per day. The limit is evident by the fact you have to pay for it. If it were unlimited, your energy bill would be zero. There does exist products on earth that while not technically unlimited can be practically considered unlimited. One such example is the air you breath. Energy is NOT an example of this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
scythe 6y ago
>All economic products cost energy to generate and all energy is limited in totality by the available energy on earth. The Sahara radiates more energy into space every night than the human race utilized that day.
- neonological 6y ago
  Then according to your logic that means energy is practically unlimited. Why am I still paying for energy if it's unlimited? Because energy is still limited. The energy radiated by the Sahara is not "available" therefore not part of what I meant when I said "available energy on earth."
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Pareto improvements are positive sum because each participant has increased their utility.
- neonological 6y ago
  My argument is that pareto sums don't practically exist because there are unwilling side participants that are usually affected negatively.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Positive as well as negative externalities exist and are well studied, my opinion of the “usual” case is different than yours. Thanks for the reply.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anm89 6y ago
If economies were zero sum, our economy would have at maximum grown linearly with respect to population size from the stone age.
- neonological 6y ago
  It's a complex equation when you involve the discovery of new resources and increases in technology. Let me illustrate to you what's going on with pet fish example: So I have 5 fish. I put a fish flake in the tank. The game the fish play with the flakes is zero sum. Only one fish can get the flake. Next time, I put two flakes in the fish tank. The economy has increased by 2x! But only two fish get a flake so the game is still zero sum. What if I put 30 flakes into the tank? The biggest fish beats up all the other fish and eats all 30 flakes. The game is still zero sum. Increasing the size of the economy does not change the nature of the zero sum game.
  - anm89 6y ago
    No. The size of our economy is also not people x resources.
    - neonological 6y ago
      Sure but in the fish tank is fish vs. resources and given that nothing else exists in the “fish tank universe” the flakes therefore function as the total amount of resources and also the entire economy at the same time. I can triple the size and value of the fish tank economy just like how Reddit can increase the value of GameStop. The fact of the matter is it’s all still a zero sum game.
      - anm89 6y ago
        Consider me unconvinced. The gamestop extravaganza is immaterial here.
        neonological 6y ago
nubbins 6y ago
This is a strangely mechanistic view of the economy not allowing for human joy (which economists would lump in as utility.) I get a great amount of satisfaction from great food or art far beyond the costs required to produce them. I don't see how that isn't creating value beyond the simple energy equation.
- neonological 6y ago
  It's not strange. The amount of satisfaction you have is arbitrary and your own personal opinion. It's valid to you but not a valid part of the discussion because it's so arbitrary. It could be that in reality the satisfaction I gain from art is worth 999 trillion dollars. If it's true then it's true but is it worth discussing? No. The critical point here is that even things of value that people believe to be seemingly abstract are connected to a physical and limited resource. This is not just pedantry. Art such as Opera or symphonies or blockbuster movies require a huge energy hungry economy to produce. You can't get most of the art you "enjoy" from human powered economies like tribals still living in the Amazon rain forest. None of the "art" mentioned above can ever come out of economies like that. You can't even get children's drawings (art) like you do from modern economies because tribal economies can't even produce crayons or paper. There is a huge correlation between the quality of the abstract things you enjoy and the energy required to produce it. It's just a general correlation but it's a correlation nonetheless. So rather then call it strange. Take it as new insight. You once considered "art" to some abstract concept that you "enjoy". Now you know that art is also a low entropy configuration of paint. Lowering entropy costs energy therefore most abstract things are always related to energy. You can still enjoy a painting, but now you are armed with additional knowledge. Greater knowledge means things that were previously mysterious can now be viewed in a more technical light. You can call it strange or you can call it learning something new. It's up to you. Either way you are still free to enjoy your art as if it was worth 999 trillion dollars.
  - nubbins 6y ago
    Sorry for the late reply, I don't entirely agree but thank you for laying out your argument point by point, it has certainly given me a different way to look at things. I do agree that the quality of art is roughly proportional to the size of the economy that "spins it off" so to speak. Obviously hunter gatherers are not going to produce great art without surplus goods or division of labor. At base I think we can't just write off human pleasure because some of it varies based on the individual. Economists estimate things like this all the time. I enjoy my favorite music albums very much, much more than say a $10 album cost, but if it cost instead $300 and my choice was between an album or a bicycle you can bet I would buy fewer albums no matter how much I liked them, so we can at least bound my enjoyment at $10 - $300 and realistically much narrower. I do admit most of my favorite poetry and literature was produced by great imperial powers, even if by relatively impoverished or humble members of that society. There is something to this- whether Rome, Song China or Colonial Britain lots of good art and luxury is created by conquest.
hntrader 6y ago
Nonsense. If I'm moving from the UK to the US, and someone else is moving from the US to the UK, then I really need USD and that person really needs GBP. We can then trade USD for GBP and both be better off as a result. The transaction was demonstrably positive sum in utility terms.
- neonological 6y ago
  Not Nonsense at all. Cash is an abstraction of product so let's talk in terms of trading the product that the USD and GBP actually represents. The "products" that were traded in your example above represents an exchange in energy because all products must be created from energy. Entropy is removed from raw materials and transferred to energy increasing the entropy of the energy and decreasing the entropy of the raw materials into usable product. High entropy energy is unusable. Usable Energy is therefore limited and as a result in order for those products to even exist usable energy must be sourced from a limited supply. When you take from a limited supply someone else loses. Hence zero sum. Even utility costs energy no matter how much you try to inflate it's worth with your imagination. You have much more "utility" living in a high energy economy then you do in say a human powered tribal economy in the amazon rain forest.