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Malthus is in the air
The original dismal economist did not anticipate the productivity explosion bequeathed by technology. But when does the magic stop?
Andrew Leonard [2008-04-21]

  • Knowledge may be an "unlimited resource"

    but I'd like the cornucopian cheerleaders over at BusinessWeek to explain to me how I can eat knowledge, heat my home with knowledge, and travel on knowledge power.

    Oh right, they will explain with insulting condescension, that "knowledge-driven increases in efficiency" will enable us to better utilize available resources to provide more food, energy, and so on from the same resources.

    Wonderful.

    But "efficiency" is most certainly not an unlimited resource. Supposing we can increase our utilization efficiency from, say, 30% to 97% for a given resource. That's a big improvement. We gobble up this efficiency in no time with exponential growth. Now our unlimited reserve of "knowledge" can give us another boost, from 97% to 98 or even 99.9% efficiency. In other words, it can give us nothing at all. It has only delayed the inevitable "end of the growth line." Exponential growth comes to a crash.

    On another point I would argue that knowledge is not actually an unlimited resource, but that is not necessary.

    -- nkennedy
    [Read nkennedy's other letters]
    Monday, April 21, 2008 10:01 AM
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