The Mordor Economy | Frankly #23
This week, I wanted to walk through an idea that I’ve mentioned in previous videos but never fully unpacked - a Mordor economy. In the default scenario, I see us heading towards a system where higher energy/extraction costs and complexity require us to devote more and more energy to providing the same amount of energy we’ve had historically. We will increasingly conflate ‘gross energy’ (what GDP measures) and ‘net energy’ the benefits to the rest of society. Additionally, as ecological limits are met - and surpassed, we’ll have to devote more energy/materials to environmental remediation (graphically indicated by the flying CO2 scrubbers around Mt. Doom in the image above) - therefore leaving even less energy/resources for eg hospitals, schools, shopping centers and eg X-boxes. This explanation is rather dense and involved topics like energy quality, debt and credit, and thinking about what areas in the margin of society will no longer have the energy available to be supported**. Is it a binary path? Either a ‘Mordor Economy’ or a ‘Great Simplification’ or is there some middle path?
**Note - this is a very complex topic - here I just present a broad brush philosophy of how these things fit together. Even measuring this is complex and nuanced - there is the PRICE of energy times the amount of energy used at all sectors. (shown at 08:30 in video) - but also there is how much energy and non-renewable inputs are used at each stage of the energy discovery, extraction, refining, delivery, maintenance, etc vectors. This all requires more research - but the path we’re on is clear - in order to procure energy for ‘society’, more is being directed to the energy sector. We are going from gazelles to scrawny gazelles en route to eg rabbits, or mice.
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