Hacker News Reader

Comment by moog | Hacker News Reader

So when we eventually crack fusion, we'll all be millionaires!

Exactly. My point is that energy is the only thing we have that is scarce. There's water, perhaps, but we can convert salt water to potable water with enough energy. Why abstract away energy with bills or metals?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Energy isn't that scarce, actually. If we eliminated our military, for example, there would instantly be a 100% surplus as the military accounts for about 50% of the fuel this country uses. As for why we abstract energy with bills, it's because people are easier to control that way. Plus you need to account for the not to easy to calculate idea of "human energy" represented by money. If China's population doubles, bankers can increase the money supply to account for their economic activity - to a point. But how can we increase the energy "things" to do that? A bit harder.

Of course energy is scarce! We can't afford to send very heavy things into space. We can't send a radio signal into space that is so loud that you can be sure as hell everything within 100 light years is going to know we are here. We can't build superstructures, even if we got rid of the military. We could probably build a huge particle accelerator if we got rid of the military though...

Well, if we use energy for stupid, wasteful projects then of course energy is scarce; if we use it more effectively/efficiently, then less so. It's all based on how/what we use it for.

>We can't build superstructures, even if we got rid of the military.

Research Dubai. They're building the world's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and fourth greatest structures at the same time. The #1 building is almost twice the height of those towers in malasia.

> We could probably build a huge particle accelerator if we got rid of the military though..

personally making scooters and small hatchbacks sexy like they do in Europe would be a good idea, as would coordinating flights better to not have half-full jets wasting fuel taking off ...

Energy is fundamentally scarce. I am thinking about much larger scale uses of energy than anything humans are doing right now. Check out the link to the Kardashev Scale posted above, we need orders of magnitude more energy to build something like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

Okay, I'm talking about energy for a state of practical human affairs, not building a death star / second sun or whatever that thing is.

What the hell is the basis of downgrading this post? Seriously I come across posts like, "It depends" that have like, 46 points next to them. I put up a post, short, long, on point, off point, boring, interesting, and there's like a 24-hour army of down-modding ninjas tracking my every keystroke just waiting to pounce on me and downgrade ... get a life you haters!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com