Material basis of the economy

October 17, 2011 — October 3, 2023

ecology
economics
physics
snarks
statmech
Figure 1: UCL and Kiln visualising every ship on earth in 2012. See shipmap for more of that.

To mention: Exergy, emergy, various footprint measures. The mysteries of trade: why do countries who export cars also import cars?

What is growth? Do we have to burn petroleum to have it? Is it bad if we don’t have it? If we have it without petroleum, will that be through privatising other intangible resources, such as intellectual property, privacy, relationships, freedoms, genomes? Is that tradeoff worth it? Or even possible?

1 Energetics

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Figure 2

2 Incoming

3 References

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