“Many recent developments that produced a lot of value, like radio, computing, and the Internet, didn’t do it by using proportionally more atoms.”
There are vacuum electronic tube production facilities (late 18th century onward), many billion dollar semiconductor factories (late 1970s onward), and piles and piles of electronic waste that say this isn’t true.
By “proportionately more” I meant more than the previous economic-best use of the same material input, which the new invention displaced (modulo increasing supply). For example, the amount of value derived by giving everyone (every home? every soldier? every car?) a radio is much greater than any other value the same amount of copper, zinc etc. could have been used for before the invention of radio. We found a new way to get more value from the same material inputs.
For material outputs (radio sets, telegraph wire, computers), of course material inputs are used. But the amount of value we get from the inputs is not really related to, or bounded by, the amount of input material. A new way of using material can have an arbitrarily high value-produced-to-materials-consumed ratio.
I’ll run with your example of semiconductor factories. A factory costs between $1-20 billion to build. The semiconductor industry has a combined yearly revenue of $500 billion (2018). Doesn’t sound like a huge multiplier so far.
But then consider that huge amounts of modern technology (= value) require semiconductors as an input. The amount of semiconductor industry inputs, and material waste byproducts, was similar in 1990 and 2020 (same order of magnitude). But the amount of value enabled by using those semiconductors was enormously larger in 2020. Whole new markets were created thanks to the difference in capability between 1990 semiconductors ($100 per megabyte DRAM) and 2020 ($0.003 per MB). Smartphones, PCs, modern videogames, digital video and audio, digital cameras, most of the way the Internet and Web are used today; but also all modern devices with chips inside, from cars to satellites; the list is almost endless.
All of these require extra inputs besides semiconductors, and those inputs cost time and money. But the bill of materials for a 2020 smartphone is smaller and cheaper than that of an early 1990 cellphone, while the value to the owner is much greater. (A lot of the value comes from software and digital movies and music, which don’t consume atoms in the relevant sense, because they can be copied on demand.)
Thank you for clarifying the definition you’re using for “proportionately more”.
Two points come to mind:
The material waste products of the electronics ecosystem between 1990s and now has shifted from mass/toxic atoms (cathode-ray tubes/lead, mercury) to less mass but more rare(er) earth elements such as indium and cobalt. 1 The problem of “this can’t go on” may not be limited by total of all atoms but by total of electronically important elements that can be mined “sustainably” on earth. All atoms are not equal. As you’re probably aware, “rare earth” is not always about the total amount of atoms of said element in the earth but of how the element is dispersed (or not) and, thus, how “easily” it can be mined. (“easily” includes physical as well as political impediments2)The electronic waste stream efforts are very likely to shift from dealing with mass/toxicity to harvesting the rare earth elements from electronic waste. I can imagine the trade-off graph between all of the costs of more pit mines in more politically diverse areas for harvesting virgin rare earth elements vs harvesting electronic waste. I can’t imagine either being anywhere close to all of the atoms on earth much less the entire universe. Orders of magnitude seem likely but I could be persuaded otherwise.
The idea of “modern technology (=value)” seems to have a presumption of that value being only positive. When I see that kind of blanket statement about technology I am reminded of the 2012 cover of The MIT Technology Review with Buzz Aldrin saying “You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook”. No argument from me that use of atom-light applications are valued in the stock market. No argument from me regarding the excitement/”value” of block-chain and it’s use of more electricity than many countries. Humans used to be pretty thrilled about tulips, too. Maybe the point of downsides of modern technology, including the exploitation of human nature wrt self-image (Instagram), in-group/out-group (Facebook), metabolic balance (Ultra-Processed Food), and attention (video games), fall to the stagnation/collapse buckets of the OP.
The second point plays into the first: modern technology value of human nature exploitation diverts technology from going off-planet to get more electronically important atoms.
I hope the two links can be followed. I’m new to this commenting tool. I’m open to advice if I’ve linked incorrectly (or inelegantly).
The OP’s argument is general: it says essentially that (economic) value is bounded linearly by the number of atoms backing the economy. Regardless of how the atoms are translated to value. This is an impossibility argument. My rebuttal was also general, saying that value is not so bounded.
Any particular way of extracting value, like electronics, usually has much lower bounds in practice than ‘linear in the amount of atoms used’ (even ignoring different atomic elements). So yes, today’s technology that depends on ‘rare’ earths is bounded by the accessible amount of those elements.
But this technology is only a few decades old. The economy has been growing at some % a year for much longer than that, across many industries and technological innovations that have had very different material constraints from each other. And so, while contemporary rare-earth-dependent techniques won’t keep working forever, the overall trend of economic growth could continue far beyond any one technology’s lifespan, and for much longer than the OP projects.
Technology and other secular change doesn’t always increase value; often it is harmful. My argument is that economy can keep growing for a long time, not that it necessarily will, or that all (or even most) changes over time are for the best. And GDP is not a good measure of human wellbeing to begin with; we’re measuring dollars, not happiness, and when I talk about “utility” I mean the kind estimated via revealed preferences.
“Many recent developments that produced a lot of value, like radio, computing, and the Internet, didn’t do it by using proportionally more atoms.”
There are vacuum electronic tube production facilities (late 18th century onward), many billion dollar semiconductor factories (late 1970s onward), and piles and piles of electronic waste that say this isn’t true.
By “proportionately more” I meant more than the previous economic-best use of the same material input, which the new invention displaced (modulo increasing supply). For example, the amount of value derived by giving everyone (every home? every soldier? every car?) a radio is much greater than any other value the same amount of copper, zinc etc. could have been used for before the invention of radio. We found a new way to get more value from the same material inputs.
For material outputs (radio sets, telegraph wire, computers), of course material inputs are used. But the amount of value we get from the inputs is not really related to, or bounded by, the amount of input material. A new way of using material can have an arbitrarily high value-produced-to-materials-consumed ratio.
I’ll run with your example of semiconductor factories. A factory costs between $1-20 billion to build. The semiconductor industry has a combined yearly revenue of $500 billion (2018). Doesn’t sound like a huge multiplier so far.
But then consider that huge amounts of modern technology (= value) require semiconductors as an input. The amount of semiconductor industry inputs, and material waste byproducts, was similar in 1990 and 2020 (same order of magnitude). But the amount of value enabled by using those semiconductors was enormously larger in 2020. Whole new markets were created thanks to the difference in capability between 1990 semiconductors ($100 per megabyte DRAM) and 2020 ($0.003 per MB). Smartphones, PCs, modern videogames, digital video and audio, digital cameras, most of the way the Internet and Web are used today; but also all modern devices with chips inside, from cars to satellites; the list is almost endless.
All of these require extra inputs besides semiconductors, and those inputs cost time and money. But the bill of materials for a 2020 smartphone is smaller and cheaper than that of an early 1990 cellphone, while the value to the owner is much greater. (A lot of the value comes from software and digital movies and music, which don’t consume atoms in the relevant sense, because they can be copied on demand.)
Thank you for clarifying the definition you’re using for “proportionately more”.
Two points come to mind:
The material waste products of the electronics ecosystem between 1990s and now has shifted from mass/toxic atoms (cathode-ray tubes/lead, mercury) to less mass but more rare(er) earth elements such as indium and cobalt. 1 The problem of “this can’t go on” may not be limited by total of all atoms but by total of electronically important elements that can be mined “sustainably” on earth. All atoms are not equal. As you’re probably aware, “rare earth” is not always about the total amount of atoms of said element in the earth but of how the element is dispersed (or not) and, thus, how “easily” it can be mined. (“easily” includes physical as well as political impediments2)The electronic waste stream efforts are very likely to shift from dealing with mass/toxicity to harvesting the rare earth elements from electronic waste. I can imagine the trade-off graph between all of the costs of more pit mines in more politically diverse areas for harvesting virgin rare earth elements vs harvesting electronic waste. I can’t imagine either being anywhere close to all of the atoms on earth much less the entire universe. Orders of magnitude seem likely but I could be persuaded otherwise.
The idea of “modern technology (=value)” seems to have a presumption of that value being only positive. When I see that kind of blanket statement about technology I am reminded of the 2012 cover of The MIT Technology Review with Buzz Aldrin saying “You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook”. No argument from me that use of atom-light applications are valued in the stock market. No argument from me regarding the excitement/”value” of block-chain and it’s use of more electricity than many countries. Humans used to be pretty thrilled about tulips, too. Maybe the point of downsides of modern technology, including the exploitation of human nature wrt self-image (Instagram), in-group/out-group (Facebook), metabolic balance (Ultra-Processed Food), and attention (video games), fall to the stagnation/collapse buckets of the OP.
The second point plays into the first: modern technology value of human nature exploitation diverts technology from going off-planet to get more electronically important atoms.
I hope the two links can be followed. I’m new to this commenting tool. I’m open to advice if I’ve linked incorrectly (or inelegantly).
The OP’s argument is general: it says essentially that (economic) value is bounded linearly by the number of atoms backing the economy. Regardless of how the atoms are translated to value. This is an impossibility argument. My rebuttal was also general, saying that value is not so bounded.
Any particular way of extracting value, like electronics, usually has much lower bounds in practice than ‘linear in the amount of atoms used’ (even ignoring different atomic elements). So yes, today’s technology that depends on ‘rare’ earths is bounded by the accessible amount of those elements.
But this technology is only a few decades old. The economy has been growing at some % a year for much longer than that, across many industries and technological innovations that have had very different material constraints from each other. And so, while contemporary rare-earth-dependent techniques won’t keep working forever, the overall trend of economic growth could continue far beyond any one technology’s lifespan, and for much longer than the OP projects.
Technology and other secular change doesn’t always increase value; often it is harmful. My argument is that economy can keep growing for a long time, not that it necessarily will, or that all (or even most) changes over time are for the best. And GDP is not a good measure of human wellbeing to begin with; we’re measuring dollars, not happiness, and when I talk about “utility” I mean the kind estimated via revealed preferences.