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Comment by RyanHamilton | Hacker News Reader

I think it may be a zero sum game.

This universe and planet has finite resources. There is only so much iron/steel to build cars, rare earth metals to build electronics.. Fundamentally that's a zero sum game?

Sure in the recent short term, we've got lucky that population was small relative to planet size and we got significantly better each year at extracting resources. Even if we get lucky again and find a way to extract resources from space and energy from some amazing new tech. At some point that too levels off, especially as population keeps increasing exponentially, but energy capture/generation does not. Then we are back to zero sum game.

Historically most tribes/kings etc got rich at the expense of the workers/slaves they exploited. Wealth distribution has and long term mostly will be zero sum, or so it seems to me?

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At some point, "extracting" resources from landfills becomes economically viable.

This is the beauty of the market - interests are balanced against one another and an equilibrium is reached. If more people want cars than can be built, prices go up and demand goes down. Someone out there finds a way to make cars more cheaply, which reduces per-unit resources costs, allowing more people access to them.

Also, overpopulation is never going to be an issue in the sense that you're considering here. Population growth is inversely correlated to economic success, to the point that developed nations have reproduction rates below that of replacement. As people are raised out of poverty the world's population growth will slow, and if we are successful at eliminating poverty, reverse.

Neither the universe or the planet has finite resources... in a practical sense.

100K years ago, all resources of Europe were barely enough to sustain a few tens of thousands of humans. With agriculture and metal technologies, it went up to a few millions, just because metals, wood or fields were new resources. Industrial revolution meant lots more people could live in cities, because coal were a new resource. Same happened with petrol or uranium in the XXth century: new resources, more people could live better where previous resources were scarce.

We have no reason to think it will be different in the future and we will stop uncovering new resources that will let us live better. In any case, the rate of discovering new resources has done nothing but increase its pace all through history.

There is only so much iron/steel to build cars

Steel doesn't really have an innate value, the value only comes when you've turned your steel into cars. If someone comes up with really clever way to make the same car using 30% less steel then we've effectively increased the total value of a fixes amount of steel and thus we are no longer looking at a zero-sum game.

Sure in a large enough time scale there are only so many atoms in the universe and you can't fight thermodynamics (we think...), but that kind of argument is really interesting when looking at a practical level and time frame.

>> when looking at a practical level and time frame.

Consider the current rate of population growth: 2017 7,515,284,153 2010 6,929,725,043 2000 6,126,622,121

Roughly 1.28% growth per year. Unless you are able to make a car using 30% less steel EVERY 21 years you are in trouble within "a practical time frame". Oh and you also need to reduce the emissions by 30% every 21 years per person just to maintain current pollution levels.

Exponential growth is a beautiful thing for income, not so good for consumption.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jul/07/research.waste

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