John Wilder over at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise wrote a post about Jevon's Paradox in which he graciously mentioned a conversation we had.
One of the things we mutually stumbled upon during that conversation was buried in the tailfeathers of Mr Wilder's post. I want to write about that insight in plain terms that don't candy-coat the future that seems to be coming our way.
The factorial nature of invention
It is commonly accepted that inventions proceed at a factorial rate.
"Factorial" is expressed as N! where "N" is the number.
3! is 1 times 2 times 3 which equals six.
4! is 1 times 2 times 3 times 4 which equals twenty-four, and so on.
Factorial increases rapidly. 8! equals 40,320. You can prove it by multiplying 2*3*4*5*6*7*8
A story problem that is described by a factorial involves 8 students who want to eat lunch. How many ways can they line up in the lunch line? Assume that some of the diners might be able to convince their buddy to stand in line and purchase their lunch for them. Yes, the answer really is 40,320 different ways.
The argument supporting the contention that invention grows in a factorial manner is that most inventions are combinations or arrangements of previous inventions. For example, a prime-mover and a coupling and a pump.
Now you might say, Joe...there is only one way to combine a prime-mover, a coupling and a pump. My response is that the order can be reversed and that is a "new" invention. For instance, a pump can act as a turbine and the primer-mover (if electric) function as a generator. That is a different invention. Or if the prime-mover is an internal combustion device, it can become an air-compressor.
Inventions that are not efficient do not get accepted into the market place and are not produced in large numbers. Efficient inventions get integrated into the economy and get "bricked into the wall" and become foundational for day-to-day life and become the basis for other inventions whose net efficiency is totally dependent on the intrinsic efficiency of the earlier invention.
Key Point: Every one of the 7.9 Billion people on this globe and our fantastic quality-of-life and freedom from anxiety are totally dependent upon this assumed efficiency and the factorial nature of technology.
But...
Imagine what would happen to a horse-drawn technology if an epidemic went through the country and killed 10% of the horses and scarred the other horses so they could only perform 70% as much work each day.
The effects on the population and economy would be cataclysmic.
The post-epidemic economy would not be N!, it would be something like ((N-.01)*0.7)! The difference between the two, N! - ((N-.01)*0.7)! is the overhang and its collapse would likely destroy the entire country unless some common religion or culture was strong enough to hold it together.
Aside: Monsoon cultures face droughts with consequences similar to the horse example every 100 years. Monsoon cultures tend to be monolithic (think "Hindu" for example) and extremely tenacious. They are not "cool religion of the week" cultures" End Aside
The conversation I shared with Mr Wilder touched on how Covid looked like the horse example. Maybe it wasn't 10% mortality but the policies, right-wrong-or-indifferent did have a material impact on the utilization rate of everybody.
If you throw in the effects of the war on non-renewable sources of energy (especially coal and hydrocarbons) then we really are in an environment where 10% of the horses died...or were killed and Covid impaired the surviving horses.
There will be no quick, graceful transition to a post-carbon economy because the fossil fuel applications are so intimately folded into every layer of the existing economy, as intimately as the central nervous system or circulatory system are a part of a body.
The entire machine that keeps us alive, that feeds us and keeps us warm in the winter and transports us to work sits on a foundation of relatively inexpensive and available fuel. Heavy-handed policies that make it uneconomical* to use non-renewable resources turn that foundation to mush. The toppling of the over-hang will be unpredictable and violent.
*I use the term "Uneconomical" in an uncommon sense. Typically, when we use that word it is in the context of comparison with other alternatives. "It is uneconomical to use a new vehicle to deliver pizzas" for instance. There is an understanding that there are other vehicles that are economical to use in that application. I use it in the sense that burning one Calorie of cornbread will result in the production of less than one Calorie of corn.
ERJ, I have enjoyed linked posts both here and at Mr. Wilder's.
ReplyDeleteProgress always assumes that things get better, but also that the foundation on which those things are being built is stable - to your point, energy (cheaper is better, of course). Without energy - the foundation on which our entire modern civilization is built - things head steadily downward, and that right quick. We are only beginning to experience the downstream effects of this. Add in food issues, both in production and supply (I think prior to this year, 80% of the population had no idea what chemical fertilizer was, where it came from, or how important it is) and we are in the sorts of territory that people write rather grim histories about - after the fact.
All we can hope for is that the “go green” cheerleaders get wiped out first, those that saw some of this coming and began working at self sufficiency may last long enough to bring what remains of an oil and gas economy back from the abyss.
DeleteOne interesting tidbit I caught in a pre-pandemic interview of Fortier by Justin Rhodes - the Canadian government requires a stiff fee of a few hundred dollars to purchase the rights to raise a chicken.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. I am about your age and work in STEM R&D.
ReplyDeleteThere has been a similar effect on innovation from affirmative action and immigration policies.
I know young students who in the past would have gone into graduate technology and science programs, and who would have been successful at it, are choosing other paths. They know they will be actively discriminated against by either official government/university policy, or the racism and nepotism of our new "citizens". There goes your 10%.
And the ones that do go into the programs are not nearly of the same caliber as when I started out. So that's the drop to 70% of previous productivity.
And this is noticable. That's not just my opinion. That's the opinion of professors I know personally as well as scientists working in industry.
So many STEM programs are so watered down that they are functionally useless, or at least most of the graduates are.
Delete20 years ago I transferred from a small liberal college to a big name State University you would all recognize. My GPA shot up an entire point with less work. The sad thing is that I've gotten jobs because of that University, whose program was pathetic compared to the small school I started at.
The 20th Century was the Hydrocarbon Man century, It still is!
ReplyDelete