If you had unlimited energy, what would you do with it?
This was part of a discussion I had with clients this morning. We were talking about the "state of the world" and I sketched out how it all comes down to the economy, where the incentive is to generate profits for shareholders - not stakeholders. We are all stakeholders in the outcomes of the world, because we are all affected, yet we don't have equal control over the decisions made and are increasingly feeling victimized by the decisions of others, which leads to all kinds of breakages.
However, the decisions of others are economic, where the incentive for profitable outcomes is the driving mechanic and if there is a demand, there will be a supply - regardless of the harm it might do. For instance, if people want to buy jeans with rips in them, someone will make jeans without rips, and then rip them. Similarly, if someone wants to have sex with a child in the Philippines, another will provide a child at a cost, with no regard for the child. They are treated as just another version of a pair of jeans.
Going back to the energy question though, a lot of the decisions made are made so, because of energy restrictions in one form or another. For instance, "time" is valuable because it is scarce, as is skill in particular areas. Because of this, someone can get paid for providing their time to apply their skill to accomplish an outcome. If 100 units of time is needed to satisfy the demand, but only 80 are available, the cost of acquiring the skill increases, and therefore, so does the cost of producing the outcome.
All of these kinds of resources are just different forms of energy, but if we had unlimited energy, what could we do? If you woke up in the morning full of energy and no matter what you did throughout the day, that energy supply was constant, what would you do with it? This is an interesting question in terms of being a passive consumer, or an active creator.
If we had unlimited money, we would still be limited by time and our energy. We could buy anything, but not be able to use everything we buy, do everything we would want to do. But, with unlimited energy, we can do far more and would likely move away from passive consumption, because we would more readily enjoy active creation. We would like spend our unlimited energy on improving our lives, not trying to conserve energy.
What would we do if we lived in a world where there was unlimited, clean electricity?
And this is an interesting question, because if there was unlimited clean electricity available, it would have to be approaching free. The only reason electricity has a cost, is because it is a scarce resource and does harm, like time. But, with unlimited clean energy, we can pay "at cost" prices, making what we do with the energy the value proposition.
This is interesting from a design perspective. For instance, my clients are working in a company that provides large machinery for very large manufacturing factories. A lot of their design work is about limiting energy consumption, whilst increasing effectivity. It is a tradeoff design. But, if there was unlimited clean energy, they could just look at effectivity.
And then, there is the "cost" of cleaning up the environment, which has come about through that mechanism for profits. In order to maximize profits, the design tradeoff has been to make as much money as possible, despite the harm it does, including the type of energy used for production, and the cost of cleaning waste. The hierarchical incentive is for the profit for shareholders, not for the wellbeing of stakeholders.
And now that a lot of damage has been done, the argument is that "the cost" of undoing the damage is too great. But, this can't be the case. Because, if the cost was too great, that means there is economic incentive to supply it. The reason that it isn't being supplied, is because the cost isn't great enough, meaning that there is still more profit to be made by those with decision making power* from continuing on the current model.
In a hypothetical world that someone invented clean and free electricity, the cost of development of innovations comes down incredibly, meaning that immediately, there is more profit in development of new, rather than the maintenance of old. All of the investment into dirty and expensive energy collapses, as does the decision-making power of those who benefit from keeping the status quo as is, because there is no longer any demand for it - which is the only thing that drives a supply for something that costs to make. If there is no gain to be made, no company will take the risk.
As I see it, for now at least, the majority of the global resources should be going into making the cleanest, cheapest energy possible, because that allows us to innovate freely. However, this isn't going to happen, because choking the energy supply and putting it out of reach of most people, is a control mechanism - literally stifling innovation, as innovation threatens disrupting the status quo.
Look at the arguments that are employed against Bitcoin, which lies in the cost of energy it takes to mine it. This is a silly argument in a world where energy is clean and free, isn't it? But, since it isn't clean and free, it seems valid to people who don't understand that the monetary system is part of the profit-making algorithm that keeps them enslaved, keeps them suffering, keeps them breating dirty air, doing jobs they don't like, and not having any energy left at the end of the day to do something meaningful - so they sit down in front of a screen, and shake their head at the state of the world.
Creating nothing to make a difference.
I get the feeling that a lot of us are running out of energy these days, and our tired and frustrated experience is shining through in our behaviors. So many components of society are breaking, which gives rise to opportunity to take what spills out to gather more control from us. There seems to be no end to the resources that can be spent to fight each other, but very little available to improve wellbeing.
The question is, who benefits from us fighting?
They are selling misery. And we are buying.
Too much energy going into too few pockets.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
