Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

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The sun (not sunlight) isn't part of the global economy and isn't a tradeable good. You can't sell me the sun. As such it - the sun itself - exists outside the bounds of human economy and trade (for now). It's a neutral good in the form you're talking about, generically speaking we all possess it, and that cancels out accordingly. There are edge exceptions to the concept, such as for air that is polluted (in that case we don't all equally possess eg clean air). For the most part air and sunlight are neutral, canceling goods with how you're referring to it.

Further, how do you plan to continue consuming sunlight on your skin, without producing something to then get food and shelter to survive another day or week of absorbing sunlight? How did you buy that living time in the first place, without producing anything to get you food and shelter to be alive in the present? Someone had to produce first.

And if you want to go more elaborately into the concept economically (sunlight based energy generation), you need land and technology to turn that sunlight into consequential electricity. You must produce first to generate and consume the sun-based electricity.

The value the sunlight provides, like all positive externalities, is capitalized in the value of land.

The benefits of sunlight can only be acquired if one has acquired a place on Earth to stand, suitable places to stand have been enclosed by land titles, and land rent or profits which can be acquired from ownership of these titles without having to produce anything make up at minimum 20% of national GDP.

Land and sunlight are consumed by virtue of occupying a physical space on Earth, and play an extremely large role in the economy, but land and sunlight were never produced by the economy or as a result of economic processes. They are instead the product of natural physical processes which pre-existed the evolution of humans.

All goods are certainly not the result of economic production, as this would create a chicken-and-egg problem where human civilization could not exist unless another human civilization was around to produce it.

Okay so the earlier poster was correct that capital is consumption all the way down if you twist the semantics to say that owning land is itself consumption (and that's reasonable enough, I'd accept it for sake of discussion).

Which is completely wrong as land may or may not degrade due to utilization. For most cases where it is not arable, it does not degrade therefore there is no consumption.

It is called a durable good. Land is about the most durable of all.

Consumable is another name for a non durable good.

Use of consumer durable goods is not the same as consumption - it is typically considered depreciation.

Thanks for the excellent clarification, well put.

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