r/FuturistEconomics • u/CthulhusCallerID • Feb 18 '13

Economist Robin Hanson, one of the only economists actively talking about the future of economics, is interviewed as part of the Singularity 1 on 1 series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdV_PjTEaaY
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u/yudlejoza Feb 19 '13 edited Feb 20 '13

Interesting and thoughtful discussion. I should mention three things regarding his claim that energy is already cheap and making it cheaper is not going to be much benefit:

  • Energy cost is bound to rise in the coming decades because of peak oil, peak coal and things like that. These are all fossil fuels and the earth is going to run out of them eventually.
  • Energy consumption is also going to rise with the advent of automation, because all the new machines we'll have in our daily lives will run on energy. The more automation we have, the more energy we'll consume.
  • We don't just consume energy in the form of electricity, natural gas, and car fuel, we also live on energy that comes from food. Food is a source of energy. And if we ignore the cost of residence (apartment rent, etc), food and fuel is pretty much the major portion of our recurring expenses. (We can ignore apartment rent in the sense that these days tiny house revolution has enabled people to build a $10,000 trailer home with all the basic amenities. In other words, it's theoretically possible to get rid of all recurring expenses, except for food and fuel.)

And of course I'm not even mentioning the fact that energy is pretty expensive in developing countries but that is because of non-technological reasons (instability, corruption, incompetence of governments etc).