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I don't know if I agree with everything Krugman says here but the more I think about bitcoins and real money the more I realize how much better life would be if

I don't know if I agree with everything Krugman says here but the more I think about bitcoins and real money the more I realize how much better life would be if the world of abundance would finally get here. The idea of treating electricity and clean water (among a whole host of other resources) as abundant as the air we breathe is one worth pursuing.

richardjordan 13y ago
Would finally get here? What gives you the confidence this will happen in a world of finite resources and where Physics & Chemistry contain rules that don't break (like the challenges of obtaining sufficient energy supplies at an sufficiently high Energy-Return-On-Energy-Invested basis), and where we have a huge population that's still growing, and an environment which appears to be straining under these pressures? Sure, resources being as abundant as the air we breathe is an idea worth pursuing. Unfortunately it smacks into reality where resources are limited, are being converted into unusable forms at increasing rates and many if not most of the critical ones are peaking or have peaked in terms of production rates. Still... I long for Iain M. Banks Culture too... sadly I just don't think it's going to happen.
- jayfuerstenberg 13y ago
  Well somethings will always be scarce, like real estate. But other things can be made abundant. The internet and sites like Khan Academy are the first great steps in making education abundant for instance. Electricity is another resource that within the next decade anybody can have in abundance. Well, anybody with a roof onto which a solar panel can be placed that is. Little by little it is happening.
  - richardjordan 13y ago
    So one of the problems that advocates for solar panel driven futures have is that they don't add in the significant cost in terms of energy and resources of producing them, nor the fact that a lot of solar solutions start with petrochemical inputs. Once we lose the 100:1 EROEI that we get from drilled oil a lot of other assumed energy solutions become very challenging. A lot of these things are energy intenstve to produce in the first place and have finite lifetimes.
- cmccabe 13y ago
  The US population is about 300 million and is not growing that fast. In fact, it might even be declining if immigration were not a factor. China's and Europe's populations will start decling in our lifetimes. Only India and Africa are set to keep increasing their populations. "Resources" is a conveniently vague word which could mean almost anything that people happen to think they need at any given point. Are horses and buggies a resource? Because if so, we're running pretty low. If not, though, we're probably good. If software is the "resource," I could probably make 300 million copies in my apartment. Most of the "resource" problems in the world are actually governance problems. For example, if the government is too corrupt and/or unstable to set up desalination plants, then there is a critical water shortage. On a pure physics basis, we have enough energy for hundreds of thousands of years. There's a reason why the northeast US is sometimes called the "Saudi Arabia of coal." The whole Limits to Growth thing from the 1970s should be thoroughly discredited by now. They picked a particularly bad time to come up with it, too, right before the Green Revolution and a prolonged slump in commodity and energy prices...
  - richardjordan 13y ago
    Semantics don't help us. Easily mined metals are a resource. Petrochemicals are a resource. As stated elsewhere the green revolution was just pouring oil on fields (as pesticides) and natural gas (as fertilizer). When we run out of those we run out of our ability to sustain even current food yields. Then there's topsoil. That's a resource, and in much of the midwest we're down to barely the amount needed for plants to root. Potable water is a resource. The state of many of our aquifers is precarious. Your statement that begins "on a pure physics basis..." bears little resemblance to any known facts about our current energy position. I'm a physicist by training, fwiw.
    - cmccabe 13y ago
      Look, there is a shit-ton of coal in the ground. There is a process for converting coal into oil. The Germans used it during WWII. Not exactly cutting edge technology. If you are going to predict doom and gloom, you could at least give me a plausible scenario, like a supervirus or nuclear war. Running out of energy is just not going to happen any time soon. If you wanted to stretch your horizons beyond the 1940s (hard, I know)... you could predict that soon enough we'll be able to synthesize oil using yeast and some energy input. There are ways to replenish topsoil. Or even not to use it at all. Look up hydroponics-- another not-particularly-new technology. People are pretty good at dealing with gradual change, especially when there are huge economic incentives to do so.

richardjordan 13y ago

Would finally get here? What gives you the confidence this will happen in a world of finite resources and where Physics & Chemistry contain rules that don't break (like the challenges of obtaining sufficient energy supplies at an sufficiently high Energy-Return-On-Energy-Invested basis), and where we have a huge population that's still growing, and an environment which appears to be straining under these pressures? Sure, resources being as abundant as the air we breathe is an idea worth pursuing. Unfortunately it smacks into reality where resources are limited, are being converted into unusable forms at increasing rates and many if not most of the critical ones are peaking or have peaked in terms of production rates. Still... I long for Iain M. Banks Culture too... sadly I just don't think it's going to happen.

jayfuerstenberg 13y ago
Well somethings will always be scarce, like real estate. But other things can be made abundant. The internet and sites like Khan Academy are the first great steps in making education abundant for instance. Electricity is another resource that within the next decade anybody can have in abundance. Well, anybody with a roof onto which a solar panel can be placed that is. Little by little it is happening.
- richardjordan 13y ago
  So one of the problems that advocates for solar panel driven futures have is that they don't add in the significant cost in terms of energy and resources of producing them, nor the fact that a lot of solar solutions start with petrochemical inputs. Once we lose the 100:1 EROEI that we get from drilled oil a lot of other assumed energy solutions become very challenging. A lot of these things are energy intenstve to produce in the first place and have finite lifetimes.
cmccabe 13y ago
The US population is about 300 million and is not growing that fast. In fact, it might even be declining if immigration were not a factor. China's and Europe's populations will start decling in our lifetimes. Only India and Africa are set to keep increasing their populations. "Resources" is a conveniently vague word which could mean almost anything that people happen to think they need at any given point. Are horses and buggies a resource? Because if so, we're running pretty low. If not, though, we're probably good. If software is the "resource," I could probably make 300 million copies in my apartment. Most of the "resource" problems in the world are actually governance problems. For example, if the government is too corrupt and/or unstable to set up desalination plants, then there is a critical water shortage. On a pure physics basis, we have enough energy for hundreds of thousands of years. There's a reason why the northeast US is sometimes called the "Saudi Arabia of coal." The whole Limits to Growth thing from the 1970s should be thoroughly discredited by now. They picked a particularly bad time to come up with it, too, right before the Green Revolution and a prolonged slump in commodity and energy prices...
- richardjordan 13y ago
  Semantics don't help us. Easily mined metals are a resource. Petrochemicals are a resource. As stated elsewhere the green revolution was just pouring oil on fields (as pesticides) and natural gas (as fertilizer). When we run out of those we run out of our ability to sustain even current food yields. Then there's topsoil. That's a resource, and in much of the midwest we're down to barely the amount needed for plants to root. Potable water is a resource. The state of many of our aquifers is precarious. Your statement that begins "on a pure physics basis..." bears little resemblance to any known facts about our current energy position. I'm a physicist by training, fwiw.
  - cmccabe 13y ago
    Look, there is a shit-ton of coal in the ground. There is a process for converting coal into oil. The Germans used it during WWII. Not exactly cutting edge technology. If you are going to predict doom and gloom, you could at least give me a plausible scenario, like a supervirus or nuclear war. Running out of energy is just not going to happen any time soon. If you wanted to stretch your horizons beyond the 1940s (hard, I know)... you could predict that soon enough we'll be able to synthesize oil using yeast and some energy input. There are ways to replenish topsoil. Or even not to use it at all. Look up hydroponics-- another not-particularly-new technology. People are pretty good at dealing with gradual change, especially when there are huge economic incentives to do so.