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This doesn’t really make sense, Local resources exist in abundance because transportation cost is not zero. Iceland has more geothermal power than it knows wh

This doesn’t really make sense, Local resources exist in abundance because transportation cost is not zero. Iceland has more geothermal power than it knows what to do with, north of Canada has abundance of fresh water but it’s uneconomical to move it to California, etc.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> Iceland has more geothermal power than it knows what to do with Build more aluminum smelters and data centers!
- eru 2y ago
  Yes. (And they are already doing that.) You can also build a high voltage direct current undersea cable to some other bigger grid.
Nasrudith 2y ago
I suppose it depends on how you define 'extreme' as a matter of boring tautological semantics. If extreme is defined as 'enough that it is worth extracting to anybody who discovers it'. Sort of like how ore is defined. Basically there being a limit to abundance before it is too extreme to exist sustainably (without being extracted). You can have Cerro de Potosi, a very silver rich mountain sustainably exist. But a mountain made of solid gold? That would be extracted from until gold devalued itself.
- skybrian 2y ago
  A good way to think about this is to compare the cost of a commodity to shipping costs. Sure, pricey bottled spring water gets shipped all over the world, but bulk agricultural water (measured in acre feet) doesn't. It's heavy for what it's worth, so it's mostly transported downhill in rivers, canals, and so on, with occasional pumps. There's no global market for water, like there is for oil and liquified natural gas, because the price of water is much lower. Instead there are regional water projects. Even for natural gas, there aren't pipelines everywhere, and shipping natural gas (by ship) is more expensive than transporting it through pipelines.
  - eru 2y ago
    Yes, that's true. There can be localised relative abundances of some inputs. Eg almost all of the world has an abundance of air. But submarines and space stations do not. I guess I can rescue my statement that we don't have localised abundances of (easily) tradeable goods. And that leads to no localised abundances of all the inputs required to make a tradeable good. To come back to the original example: flood farming would produce an abundance of agricultural outputs, and those are fairly easy to trade. Both across space and these days also across time, thanks to preservation techniques. (Not all agricultural outputs are easy to transport or preserve, but there's probably something you can grow that is.) I hope that in the future almost everywhere in the world will still have way too much air so that it's too cheap to measure; but thanks to global trade food prices will always be relatively flat across the globe. So even people farming insanely productive regions will have plenty of incentives to innovate to further improve productivity.
    - skybrian 2y ago
      Yes, we can see that in the American West where most water is used by agriculture. Exporting food can be seen as a more practical alternative to exporting water. When there's a drought, maybe don't export quite so much? Water rights are complicated, so water is far from freely-traded commodity, but over time, cities do pay more, and that means they tend to get their way. There's a saying that water flows uphill towards money. Local abundance is traditional: fruit and vegetables in season. It's still true for people with big gardens, when it's not worth their while to sell it.
      - eru 2y ago
        > Local abundance is traditional: fruit and vegetables in season. It's still true for people with big gardens, when it's not worth their while to sell it. Yes, that was basically my point: participating in modern economies tends to smooth out local abundance. [0] That's good overall! Less waste, more innovation. But, of course, there are certain specific things lost to be nostalgic about. You are also right that water as an input is subject to lots and lots of distortions. And that leads to wasting of water, especially expensive in places where water is actually scarce. > Yes, we can see that in the American West where most water is used by agriculture. Exporting food can be seen as a more practical alternative to exporting water. When there's a drought, maybe don't export quite so much? When water has a proper market clearing price, that's exactly what happens. [0] Home production in a garden is a good example here, because it's usually not for participating in the wider market economy.

throwaway2037 2y ago

> Iceland has more geothermal power than it knows what to do with Build more aluminum smelters and data centers!

eru 2y ago
Yes. (And they are already doing that.) You can also build a high voltage direct current undersea cable to some other bigger grid.

Nasrudith 2y ago

I suppose it depends on how you define 'extreme' as a matter of boring tautological semantics. If extreme is defined as 'enough that it is worth extracting to anybody who discovers it'. Sort of like how ore is defined. Basically there being a limit to abundance before it is too extreme to exist sustainably (without being extracted). You can have Cerro de Potosi, a very silver rich mountain sustainably exist. But a mountain made of solid gold? That would be extracted from until gold devalued itself.

skybrian 2y ago
A good way to think about this is to compare the cost of a commodity to shipping costs. Sure, pricey bottled spring water gets shipped all over the world, but bulk agricultural water (measured in acre feet) doesn't. It's heavy for what it's worth, so it's mostly transported downhill in rivers, canals, and so on, with occasional pumps. There's no global market for water, like there is for oil and liquified natural gas, because the price of water is much lower. Instead there are regional water projects. Even for natural gas, there aren't pipelines everywhere, and shipping natural gas (by ship) is more expensive than transporting it through pipelines.
- eru 2y ago
  Yes, that's true. There can be localised relative abundances of some inputs. Eg almost all of the world has an abundance of air. But submarines and space stations do not. I guess I can rescue my statement that we don't have localised abundances of (easily) tradeable goods. And that leads to no localised abundances of all the inputs required to make a tradeable good. To come back to the original example: flood farming would produce an abundance of agricultural outputs, and those are fairly easy to trade. Both across space and these days also across time, thanks to preservation techniques. (Not all agricultural outputs are easy to transport or preserve, but there's probably something you can grow that is.) I hope that in the future almost everywhere in the world will still have way too much air so that it's too cheap to measure; but thanks to global trade food prices will always be relatively flat across the globe. So even people farming insanely productive regions will have plenty of incentives to innovate to further improve productivity.
  - skybrian 2y ago
    Yes, we can see that in the American West where most water is used by agriculture. Exporting food can be seen as a more practical alternative to exporting water. When there's a drought, maybe don't export quite so much? Water rights are complicated, so water is far from freely-traded commodity, but over time, cities do pay more, and that means they tend to get their way. There's a saying that water flows uphill towards money. Local abundance is traditional: fruit and vegetables in season. It's still true for people with big gardens, when it's not worth their while to sell it.
    - eru 2y ago
      > Local abundance is traditional: fruit and vegetables in season. It's still true for people with big gardens, when it's not worth their while to sell it. Yes, that was basically my point: participating in modern economies tends to smooth out local abundance. [0] That's good overall! Less waste, more innovation. But, of course, there are certain specific things lost to be nostalgic about. You are also right that water as an input is subject to lots and lots of distortions. And that leads to wasting of water, especially expensive in places where water is actually scarce. > Yes, we can see that in the American West where most water is used by agriculture. Exporting food can be seen as a more practical alternative to exporting water. When there's a drought, maybe don't export quite so much? When water has a proper market clearing price, that's exactly what happens. [0] Home production in a garden is a good example here, because it's usually not for participating in the wider market economy.