Comment Re:What about solar? (Score 1) 506
You've hit upon a very good way of accounting for how a stock of resources should be used. However, I think you need to think about the capital and income of a fixed resource in terms of dollar values. After all, that's what anyone who owns and sells such a resource would do. From what you've said, it seems like it would be "overconsumption" to consume any amount of a fixed resource. However, what actually happens is, as a unit of a fixed resource is consumed (and thus destroyed), the slight constriction in the supply raises the price of a unit of that resource. Thus, the value of the remaining capital stock of that resource goes up slightly with the price. In this way, you can essentially keep the aggregate capital value of a resource (in terms of money) constant as you consume portions of it. If you trust the economics (polylogists, stay back!), this is actually what would happen in the unhampered market.
What this would mean is that gradually, although the total money spent on the it might stay about the same, the consumption of a fixed resource would always go down in the long long run as the price rose naturally. Obviously there are short term realities that change the prices and obscure this trend, and plenty of opportunities to mess with the prices of resource from a gov't level that could make this innate logic of the market fail to accomplish its natural conservation.
I also have to respectfully disagree that we should reduce energy consumption. The response about externalities actually hits the nail on the head. If solar were cheap enough, why shouldn't we use as much of it as we can afford and desire? However, even if coal is cheap enough, we might still think we should reduce our use since any use of it implies degrading the air supply for others (what in economic mumbo jumbo is called a negative externality, essentially harm done to someone who isn't compensated in a way that they voluntarily accept).
Actually one of the really cool things about solar is that if it really took off, there's such a ridiculously large amount of solar energy available that, if we can store it effectively, we can actually increase our energy consumption and do things that weren't previously possible.
What this would mean is that gradually, although the total money spent on the it might stay about the same, the consumption of a fixed resource would always go down in the long long run as the price rose naturally. Obviously there are short term realities that change the prices and obscure this trend, and plenty of opportunities to mess with the prices of resource from a gov't level that could make this innate logic of the market fail to accomplish its natural conservation.
I also have to respectfully disagree that we should reduce energy consumption. The response about externalities actually hits the nail on the head. If solar were cheap enough, why shouldn't we use as much of it as we can afford and desire? However, even if coal is cheap enough, we might still think we should reduce our use since any use of it implies degrading the air supply for others (what in economic mumbo jumbo is called a negative externality, essentially harm done to someone who isn't compensated in a way that they voluntarily accept).
Actually one of the really cool things about solar is that if it really took off, there's such a ridiculously large amount of solar energy available that, if we can store it effectively, we can actually increase our energy consumption and do things that weren't previously possible.
