Keith, Each type of energy technology not only produces its characteristic rate of productivity overall (and the true source of profit) but it also powerfully shapes the physical infrastructure in which we grow our food, live, move about, work (and then, finally, we increasingly find our relaxation and entertainment away from the community also). And with loss of community goes the loss of a great many other things, too.
arthur, Hence the need for full cost pricing, calls for which fall on "deaf ears." -----Original Message----- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 10:45 AM To: Ed Weick Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Futurework] Nitty-gritty of Energy (was La Guardia's Rule) Ed, At 08:37 13/01/03 -0500, you wrote: (KH) <<<< Yes, we and all lifeforms have free goods such as energy, fresh air and water, but it's our ability to discover and manipulate a surplus of energy (to produce true profit) above what normally falls to us from Nature's bounty. In this way we become homo economicus, and not merely another animal species, homo sapiens. Economics is not just about re-arranging things in order to survive. All species do that. It's about discovering an extra available margin of energy that leads to a profit in all transformations and subsequent transactions. >>>> (EW) <<<< What I believe you're saying is that, in any transaction, the objective is to get more out than you put in. You thus have a surplus that you can either invest or consume. While the terms you use are different, conceptually your idea seems very close to Marx's surplus value or the consumer's or producer's surplus of the neo-classicists. >>>> Precisely. But in concentrating on energy we are talking of the only factor of production which is elastic in its supply (and at constant price!) because it's coming from outside what physicists call a "closed system" (the earth). In short, there's an abundance of it coming from the sun and we only tap into the smallest part of it. This applies whether we are talking of daily sunshine, fossilised plant-life or radioactive elements such as uranium (which were made in the interior of a sun) (EW) <<<< . . . . I'd suggest that what economists focused on was not energy itself, but the ability to turn energy to productive purposes. In their view, was not energy that fueled the industrial revolution, but the entrepreneurial (including scientific and engineering) ability to combine human and natural energy into productive purposes that produced surpluses (capital) to permit further entrepreneurship. . . . >>>> I'm not arguing for one second that imagination and enterprise are not important. But without the ability to draw into the working of your innovation an appreciable amount of energy over and above what is normally available by natural ecological processes, then no amount of creative thought will get you anywhere. There are thus two ways of making a profit. You either invent a brand new method of making something that people want (and will pay for) which is also able to use energy more efficiently than any previous method, or you increase the efficiency within an existing method. What I'm trying to say is that these are the only two methods of making legitimate profits which actually adds value to the total economic system (and the extra value can pay for the cost of making the extra currency that will necessarily be required to lubricate the enlarged economy). (EW) <<<< For many thousands of years, people lived with potential sources of energy without recognizing their value. Primitive people may have used lumps of coal to heave at each other, or they may even have tried to make tools out of it. It took a very long time for people to find that you could actually derive heat energy from it and ever so much longer to discover that you could use it to drive machinery. In all of this, it was the human process of discovery and invention that was important. Without that, coal would still be lumps that people could heave at each other, nothing more. >>>> Agreed. There are two important aspects of what I'm trying to get at: (1) that the Marx theory of value meant that "profit" had to be found within the existing monetary system (that is, from the less-than-fair wages paid to the workers). The only way that profit can be found in this way of looking at things is if every single man, women and child is steadily drawn into the production system working maximum hours to the point of exhaustion even to the farcical stage that the sole remaining "capitalist" is also working in the same way! This is a blind alley and, ever since Marx, economists have been looking at money and prices as the rationale and the only source and yardstick of profits. (2) (and this is something I've never mentioned before but it now vibes with my worries about the breakdown of community, as in my other posting.) Every energy system is used in three main ways: (a) producing food, (b) producing goods, and (c) the transport (personal commuting or freight) that's involved as a consequence of (a) and (b). Now each type of energy technology -- say, whether it's a water-mill, or whether it's nuclear power, or burning natural gas and making electricity -- has varying efficiencies when applied to the three necessary activities (a), (b) and (c). If it's very cheap and efficient in one of them, then it might be more expensive and inefficient in another. Each type of energy technology therefore produces a characteristic physical infrastructure according to the relative costs of using it within each of the three main activities. What I'm hoping to do (sometime!) is to look at the main energy technologies that man has used and try and calculate (approximately, of course) what the relative efficiencies of each has had in the three main activities. Schemata could be considered for all the different types of energy that man has ever used (or is likely to use -- when thinking of the hydrogen economy). But let me choose just one -- and this is the one that worries me at present. Oil is fairly easily turned into petrol merely by fractionating, whereas oil isn't easily turned into nitrogenous fertiliser for food growing, nor does it lend itself directly to use in factories (it has to go through the power station and come out as electricity in order to be useful). This makes transport (personal commuting and goods freight) very cheap. Among other things, it means that individuals can live a long way from their place of work if they want to -- yet another break in the community in which he lives because he's away from it for long during the day. And so on, and so on. Each type of energy technology not only produces its characteristic rate of productivity overall (and the true source of profit) but it also powerfully shapes the physical infrastructure in which we grow our food, live, move about, work (and then, finally, we increasingly find our relaxation and entertainment away from the community also). And with loss of community goes the loss of a great many other things, too. That's enough. Dogwalk time. I'd welcome your crit. Regards, Keith If you win David Smith's prize, I would be only too happy to join you at lunch. Air Canada has a pretty good seat-sale on now. Best regards, Ed ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
