Money as Energy: Increasing the pool of money

    In the previous post, I talked about how money is basically an abstraction of the combination of resources, labor, and energy. We are fortunate that we do, presently, have more than adequate amounts of each. Distribution of such, however, is very uneven and, thus, causes areas of poverty, famine, and other physical and social lacks.

    I ended the previous post with the idea that -- although our current problems are more concerned with distribution rather than actual shortages -- the New Age idea of an unlimited pool of money is not currently a reality. Is there anything to be done about that? Is there actually a way that everyone can have more (even with distribution problems)?

    To address that question, it comes back to the three components of money -- resources, labor, and energy. It also requires a fourth "catalyst" which is technology. By using technology, energy can be converted into additional resources and increased labor availability. This argues that energy is the prime limiting factor within economics.

    We can look around at the world and see how the availability of energy (applied via technology) has increased the "wealth" of the world. Farmers, via the use of equipment (using energy and technology to create and energy to keep active), can produce much greater amounts of food than what one person working the ground with manual labor can do. Harvesting of material resources -- trees, ores, fish -- are possible on a much larger scale than a single person could do making use only of manual labor (allowing a hand-built boat and fishing equipment).

    The above paragraph indicates how energy (with technology assistance) can increase the amount of labor. It does NOT increase the amount of resources. But the amount of food for people has been increased -- isn't that an increase in resources? No, it isn't -- because the ecological pyramid has not changed. The amount of base-level food has not increased. The plankton, plants, and other solar-using food plants have not increased. The labor has been used to change the varieties of food harvested and the distribution of the food (from other animals to people). In fact, due to pollution and other side-effects of application of energy to increase labor, the total amount of food resources may go down (decrease in sea life in general, decrease in fish population, decrease in non-human animal population).

    Can energy increase resources available to us? Yes, in two ways. The first is a continuation, and expansion, of what we presently do -- redistribution. We find other, more energy intensive, methods of accessing resources. However, this often has negative environmental effects and is also just speeding up the use of resources. So, although it increases resources available on a short-term basis, it does NOT increase the amount of resource. A second aspect of this (still redistribution) is to bring resources from other places -- the asteroid belt, for example, is a potential area from which to redistribute resources.

    The second method of increasing resources requires much higher levels of energy. Besides the potential of alchemy (changing one element into another -- possible with huge amounts of energy), there are many endothermic reactions possible with increased energy available. Endothermic means "requiring the absorption of heat". Thus, it is possible to convert raw elements into more complex molecules and, finally, into "organic" materials needed for human eating, or use for furniture, or such. This is actually a metamorphosis of resources and not an increase -- but it's "close enough" for our uses.

    So, with energy, the pool of "money" becomes bigger. Distribution remains a major problem. A larger problem is making sure that the energy is renewable -- we do not want to empty the bank as that would cause widespread catastrophe for the existing economy. The other problems aren't directly concerned with energy-as-money but are related to social, and environmental, responsibility for using it in a life-affirming way.