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when valuable resources are scarce, people have an incentive to find and produce more of those resources. As Henry George put it: "Both the jayhawk and the man

when valuable resources are scarce, people have an incentive to find and produce more of those resources. As Henry George put it: "Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens, but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens" [0]. [0] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/12/the_gist_of_jul.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2009/12/the_gist_of_jul.htm...

Waterluvian 3y ago
Like with chickens, the Jayhawk should just learn to fuse hydrogen down to lithium. I think the analogy doesn’t quite work. Humans produce chickens because we can do that. We find more lithium because we need it. Jayhawks can also evolve to get better at finding more chickens. And by their very nature, have been doing exactly that.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Evolution is a bit slow. How many millenia will it take the Jayhawks to figure it out? Humans can increase chicken production this year or maybe next.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    For sure. That’s what makes us exceptional. What I’m mainly pointing to is that we can’t currently just mass produce lithium. We just go around looking for it more.
    - setgree 3y ago
      https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-simon-was-right-half-century-population-growth-increasing#simon-s-wisdom-in-historical-perspective https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-si... > when a particular resource becomes scarcer, its price increases, and that change incentivizes people to discover more of the resource, ration it, recycle it, or develop a substitute for it. As such, population growth and resource use do not automatically lead to higher commodity prices in the long run. So no, we can't mass produce lithium, but a high enough price might drive someone to discover a substitute.
      - Gravityloss 3y ago
        Sodium batteries are being researched as alternative to lithium. Same with other materials like cobalt, nickel, and graphite - there are battery versions that avoid those.
    - jacobr1 3y ago
      It is more than that. We also invent new technologies. Searching for resources, refining them, do the same stuff more cost-effectively, extraction from different kinds of compositions and ores with processing methodologies, recycling, changing other elements of a system to require different amounts or mixtures in a final product are all different ways to "increase yield." On the scale of decades, collectively, this is very responsive to demand and why arguments about "only so much of resource X exists" are usually highly misleading.
jlhawn 3y ago
that's an argument which works for capital goods (like livestock) but not for what Henry George considered to be natural opportunities of fixed supply like lithium ore (and land in general). Henry George, if he were still alive today, would probably say that valuable raw mineral deposits like this would be more likely to be discovered and brought into productive use earlier if they were taxed. The argument being that people would have no reason to speculate on a large untapped reserve of it. There would still be an incentive to bring it into production because the earned profit would be made through extraction, processing, and distribution of the material even if the higher holding cost of the land is factored in as a cost.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Like with chickens, the Jayhawk should just learn to fuse hydrogen down to lithium. I think the analogy doesn’t quite work. Humans produce chickens because we can do that. We find more lithium because we need it. Jayhawks can also evolve to get better at finding more chickens. And by their very nature, have been doing exactly that.

wolverine876 3y ago
Evolution is a bit slow. How many millenia will it take the Jayhawks to figure it out? Humans can increase chicken production this year or maybe next.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  For sure. That’s what makes us exceptional. What I’m mainly pointing to is that we can’t currently just mass produce lithium. We just go around looking for it more.
  - setgree 3y ago
    https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-simon-was-right-half-century-population-growth-increasing#simon-s-wisdom-in-historical-perspective https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-si... > when a particular resource becomes scarcer, its price increases, and that change incentivizes people to discover more of the resource, ration it, recycle it, or develop a substitute for it. As such, population growth and resource use do not automatically lead to higher commodity prices in the long run. So no, we can't mass produce lithium, but a high enough price might drive someone to discover a substitute.
    - Gravityloss 3y ago
      Sodium batteries are being researched as alternative to lithium. Same with other materials like cobalt, nickel, and graphite - there are battery versions that avoid those.
  - jacobr1 3y ago
    It is more than that. We also invent new technologies. Searching for resources, refining them, do the same stuff more cost-effectively, extraction from different kinds of compositions and ores with processing methodologies, recycling, changing other elements of a system to require different amounts or mixtures in a final product are all different ways to "increase yield." On the scale of decades, collectively, this is very responsive to demand and why arguments about "only so much of resource X exists" are usually highly misleading.

jlhawn 3y ago

that's an argument which works for capital goods (like livestock) but not for what Henry George considered to be natural opportunities of fixed supply like lithium ore (and land in general). Henry George, if he were still alive today, would probably say that valuable raw mineral deposits like this would be more likely to be discovered and brought into productive use earlier if they were taxed. The argument being that people would have no reason to speculate on a large untapped reserve of it. There would still be an incentive to bring it into production because the earned profit would be made through extraction, processing, and distribution of the material even if the higher holding cost of the land is factored in as a cost.