Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Geoffrey G's avatar

You may have seriously neglected or at least underweighted a key variable in the flywheel: energy. There is a very direct relationship between increasing density of energy for work and GDP growth. Most work used to be done by human bodies, until we domesticated animals like horses and oxen, and then developed technologies to make animal power more efficient (yokes, carts, horseshoes, etc.), and then stalled for centuries after that. Which is why GDP only increased 0.01% per year and population growth was gradual and extremely variable. What changed in the 18th Century? Coal and then the steam engine, of course. But even before that, there was also the mini-revolution of wind and water-wheels, which created a boon in Europe in the late Middle Ages and were a contributing factor to the Renaissance.

Dense sources of energy for work continue to be key for the "technology eating the world," which you (incorrectly) assert a miraculous immateriality. At the far end of every Google search is ultimately organic matter that was densely compacted into energy-rich muck over the eons in a few choice locations on the planet.

Google, like the Internet itself, is a dense web of servers and fiber optic cables. It is material. It is also energy. The solar PVs that will "solve" the issue of freshwater's uneven distribution are energy embodied. They are created from silica, which is mined through an energy-dense process in places like Western China. Places are are desperate for the coal, diesel, and other energy-dense mediums that make technology and its cheap mass production possible.

Israel, Singapore, and the mega-region around London are fed be unimaginable amounts of energy, almost all of it imported in some manner. They do not exist in an energy vacuum. Where does their electricity come from? Where do all the computers come from? What is making the container ships and airplanes that deliver them go?

Silicon Valley is located in California, which was one of the first regions in the world to commercialize refined petroleum products at scale. To this day, California, though famous for its environmental regulations and "green industries" like Tesla, remains a significant source of "dead dinosaur juice." Silicon Valley is so-named because it used to be as Taiwan is today, the preeminent manufacturing hub for a very material thing: silicon chips. Mined from the earth and then manufactured into delicate instruments with exacting precision using massive amounts of energy from the oil wells down south. The legacy of this persists today: the sleek corporate campuses of Silicon Valley still sit atop some Superfund sites and are still reached by Stanford graduates in cars and Google Buses mostly powered by gasoline. Their world of bits and code is still a material one, built atop an empire of oil.

Energy isn't evenly distributed. The English industrial revolution was built on rich seams of coal, like the current Chinese one is. The United States has been blessed with the black rocks, as well as an even more valuable black liquid: petroleum. Other advanced economies (e.g. Germany and Japan) also lean heavily on coal, but have entirely outstripped their own indigenous supply and are perilously dependent on imports, oftentimes from potential adversaries or vulnerable supply lines.

Green generation technologies can be more evenly distributed, yes, but they are like batteries. They must be created with a massive infusion of energy, up front. Energy that, right now, is created by consuming other dense, material stores of energy. They are essentially energy that has been "stored" in a generation medium (PV, wind turbine, hydroelectric dam, or nuclear plant). They harvest energy from the sun, wind, water flow, or atomic bonds of atoms... but only after we expend massive amounts of energy from other sources creating, feeding, and maintaining them. Where does that initial energy come from?

And, unfortunately, current green energy technology doesn't create a perpetual energy flywheel. Nuclear power plants take decades to build and only last as long before decommissioning (again, another extremely energy-intensive process). Solarvoltaics last up to 30 years, but with decreasing performance. Turbines, subject to extreme forces, last much less long. Li-Ion batteries last mere years. So, again, green energy is more like a battery than a lump of coal. You fill it up with energy up front, use it for a while, and then must replace it. This is a tyranny of physics that isn't addressed in your model.

Expand full comment
Chris Lakin's avatar

This reminds me of this interactive simulation: https://ncase.me/loopy/

Expand full comment
48 more comments...

No posts