Really? I don’t see a large market for seawater. The supply is immense, so there should be a demand created for it, especially since it is used as a raw material for fresh water, a product which is in high demand in many areas.
The hypothesis that the market for labor will always clear is trivially falsified.
Real per capita income is simply total production divided by population. I doubt that real per-capita income has been increasing at anywhere near a constant power across history, rather than remaining roughly constant except during periods of technological development and/or social upheaval. In particular, pastoral societies have roughly constant total production (determined by the amount of arable land available and being used), and more labor does not produce more. Similarly for some other natural resources, such as properly managed fishing. More labor does not provide a larger sustainable catch.
Really? I don’t see a large market for seawater. The supply is immense, so there should be a demand created for it, especially since it is used as a raw material for fresh water, a product which is in high demand in many areas.
Er… Maybe you should think a little harder.
Nations have fought throughout history and millions died for seawater—access to seawater, specifically, because there is so much seawater that you can use it as ultra-cheap fast transportation. (Russia alone fought several wars just to get one warmwater port anywhere, salt or fresh.) Besides that, seawater is sold commercially for fish and animal keeping; deep seawater is sold as a dietary supplement (popular in Japan); and much more importantly:
since it is used as a raw material for fresh water, a product which is in high demand in many areas.
You even provided your own example! Desalinization plants are very expensive and produce expensive water… water that is feasible because seawater is free. Supply creates its own demand.
Real per capita income is simply total production divided by population. I doubt that real per-capita income has been increasing at anywhere near a constant power across history, rather than remaining roughly constant except during periods of technological development and/or social upheaval.
Why didn’t anyone think to pump seawater into trucks and meet Russia’s need for seawater? Because Russia didn’t need seawater, it needed transportation links.
Desal plants typically don’t have dirty water shipped to them, they are located where dirty water is. The limited resource consumed by their construction isn’t seawater, it’s location.
If sea levels rise, the added volume of seawater will not make desalination cheaper, just like a surplus of labor in the presence of labor price controls doesn’t create a demand for labor at the controlled price.
At some point the escalating price does cause the curves to intersect; Russia didn’t need seawater at the prices it would cost to build canals.
Desal plants typically don’t have dirty water shipped to them, they are located where dirty water is. The limited resource consumed by their construction isn’t seawater, it’s location.
Which matters why? If you can put the desalinization plant by the ocean and pipe the clean water 85 kilometers to the city (as Australia is doing now, and similar to a planned canal in Israel), the oceanwater still is being consumed.
And consumption of the infinite ocean water is still higher than what it would have been if the supply were smaller. “Supply creates its own demand.” Not a hard concept.
Finally, I’d like to ask: how on earth does any of this undermine my original point that cryonics patients increase an economy’s capital by not consuming and hence increase long-term growth and net wealth? These are either accounting identities or borne out by many centuries of economic growth, and is a trivial claim.
A suspended person is economically as productive as a nonexistent person.
Nonexistent people have had zero impact on economy historically. Why would suspended people have an effect in the future?
And if supply created demand, there should be a huge demand for seawater, rather than a small demand. As it is, the demand for seawater is pretty much inelastic with supply.
A suspended person is economically as productive as a nonexistent person.
So no such thing as capital exists, savings has no relation to growth, and suspended peoples’ past life choices (like not spending scores of thousands of dollars on consumption) contribute exactly nothing to the economy! Of course!
I give up. You have no freaking clue about economics.
And if supply created demand, there should be a huge demand for seawater, rather than a small demand
I’ve already pointed out the huge demand. Feel free to calculate how many millions of gallons all the uses I gave make up each year. I’m not wasting more of my time on you.
A suspended person is economically as productive as a nonexistent person.
So no such thing as capital exists, savings has no relation to growth, and suspended peoples’ past life choices (like not spending scores of thousands of dollars on consumption) contribute exactly nothing to the economy! Of course!
You should still pretend to try to understand what I said.
I didn’t realize that you were seizing the saved assets of suspended people in your calculations; I was distributing them to next-of-kin or as otherwise directed by the suspended.
I didn’t realize that you were seizing the saved assets of suspended people in your calculations; I was distributing them to next-of-kin or as otherwise directed by the suspended.
I would allow a suspended person to provide directions regarding the disbursement of their property for the same reason I would allow it for a deceased person: to do otherwise would be immoral to me.
Looking strictly at the mechanical aspect, suspension requires a capital investment, and the only possible return on that investment is to preserve a brain pattern or entire body. As opposed to, for example, murdering someone considering suspension and giving the money they would have spend on suspension to entrepreneurs with good ideas and business plans.
Yes, there is a certain amount of economic activity which results in the suspension; but all of the labor and materials used in the suspension would otherwise be available for other uses, without diminishing the economic value of consumption.
Looking strictly at the mechanical aspect, suspension requires a capital investment, and the only possible return on that investment is to preserve a brain pattern or entire body. As opposed to, for example, murdering someone considering suspension and giving the money they would have spend on suspension to entrepreneurs with good ideas and business plans.
Suspension as practiced is not like that; there are more capital investments than the mechanical. You really don’t know anything about the trust funds?
Do the trust funds have a higher return-on-investment than the investments of active people? The amounts spent on maintaining the suspension are not spent on any other economic activity, and any amount reserved for the use of the suspended is unavailable for any other use.
Do the trust funds have a higher return-on-investment than the investments of active people?
Irrelevant.
The amounts spent on maintaining the suspension are not spent on any other economic activity, and any amount reserved for the use of the suspended is unavailable for any other use.
I’m not sure why comparing the finances of suspended people compared to active people is irrelevant, when one of the comparisons is between a suspended individual and an active one.
When you wake up, you either have liquid assets or you don’t. Any liquid assets aren’t contributing to meeting capital requirements. If there’s a secondary market capable of absorbing your bonds, then your bonds don’t contribute significantly to the available capital.
The comparison is irrelevant because it’s an accounting identity that capital is production minus consumption; cryonicsers, by consuming less, increase capital and increased capital increases long-term exponential growth. (Which I’ve pointed out in several ways so far but you still haven’t understood.)
If there’s a secondary market capable of absorbing your bonds, then your bonds don’t contribute significantly to the available capital.
And on the margin? If no one’s bonds ‘contribute significantly’, and one must ‘contribute significantly’ to affect anything, then we can just play the sorites game and wind up with a bond market in which the available capital is the same and yet no one actually has invested in bonds! Fascinating how your logic works.
Cyronicsers, by producing exactly what they consume (less the cryonics expenses), contribute nothing to capital while suspended.
Dead people, by consuming non of what they produced prior to their death, contribute exactly the same, except that it costs less to remain dead than to remain suspended.
Where is the maximum? What number of people put into free suspension would maximize long-term growth until they were removed. All of them? Then who does the growth? N, or N% of them? Why non N-1, or N+1; what changes from the current situation to the one in which N or N% people are in suspension?
The sorites game ends as soon as there are not enough willing buyers to buy all of the bonds that are being used as liquid assets. Those bonds would have been sold anyway- to the person who now wishes to buy them, if nobody else.
Cyronicsers, by producing exactly what they consume (less the cryonics expenses), contribute nothing to capital while suspended.
Still going on about that?
Dead people, by consuming non of what they produced prior to their death, contribute exactly the same, except that it costs less to remain dead than to remain suspended.
Wrong.
Where is the maximum? What number of people put into free suspension would maximize long-term growth until they were removed. All of them? Then who does the growth? N, or N% of them? Why non N-1, or N+1; what changes from the current situation to the one in which N or N% people are in suspension?
Long-term growth is maximized by spending as little as possible; this doesn’t change at any %, your attempt at the sorites notwithstanding. The usual explanation for why spending is not minimized relates to utility functions, discounting, and diminishing returns (which is not no returns, I say in advance to forestall one of your misunderstandings).
The sorites game ends as soon as there are not enough willing buyers to buy all of the bonds that are being used as liquid assets. Those bonds would have been sold anyway- to the person who now wishes to buy them, if nobody else.
And on each margin, fewer bonds will be offered and fewer ventures launched, the point your ‘significantly’ glosses over entirely.
Consider the world in which some event magically safely placed every human being into suspension for a period of three years; 2009-2012; then removed them from suspension today. Maintenance was performed magically to the same degree it is in the real world, and whatever other incidental magic is performed as needed.
Does this world have a larger economy than it did in 2009? Is it larger than the real world equivalent?
The sorites game ends as soon as there are not enough willing buyers to buy all of the bonds that are being used as liquid assets. Those bonds would have been sold anyway- to the person who now wishes to buy them, if nobody else.
And on each margin, fewer bonds will be offered and fewer ventures launched, the point your ‘significantly’ glosses over entirely.
I guess that’s part of ‘demand creates its own supply’ then; in both cases the number of people who want to buy bonds exceeds the number of bonds being offered; but if more of the buyers want to use bonds as liquid assets more bonds will be offered? The market doesn’t clear in either case- there are still buyers who want to buy bonds, but there are no more bonds offered. If there were more bonds being offered, then the people who would buy them on the secondary market would buy them on the primary market; there cannot be buyers with unmet demand on the secondary market and sellers with unsold bonds on the primary market.
Does this world have a larger economy than it did in 2009? Is it larger than the real world equivalent?
Your hypothetical is irrelevant and would be irrelevant even if everyone in the world signed up for cryonics.
I guess that’s part of ‘demand creates its own supply’ then
No, it’s just an observation that not every possible clearing market of bonds will maximize growth… See previous points about utility and discounting etc.
Really? I don’t see a large market for seawater. The supply is immense, so there should be a demand created for it, especially since it is used as a raw material for fresh water, a product which is in high demand in many areas.
The hypothesis that the market for labor will always clear is trivially falsified.
Real per capita income is simply total production divided by population. I doubt that real per-capita income has been increasing at anywhere near a constant power across history, rather than remaining roughly constant except during periods of technological development and/or social upheaval. In particular, pastoral societies have roughly constant total production (determined by the amount of arable land available and being used), and more labor does not produce more. Similarly for some other natural resources, such as properly managed fishing. More labor does not provide a larger sustainable catch.
Er… Maybe you should think a little harder.
Nations have fought throughout history and millions died for seawater—access to seawater, specifically, because there is so much seawater that you can use it as ultra-cheap fast transportation. (Russia alone fought several wars just to get one warmwater port anywhere, salt or fresh.) Besides that, seawater is sold commercially for fish and animal keeping; deep seawater is sold as a dietary supplement (popular in Japan); and much more importantly:
You even provided your own example! Desalinization plants are very expensive and produce expensive water… water that is feasible because seawater is free. Supply creates its own demand.
Oh for heaven’s sake. Go look it up!
Why didn’t anyone think to pump seawater into trucks and meet Russia’s need for seawater? Because Russia didn’t need seawater, it needed transportation links.
Desal plants typically don’t have dirty water shipped to them, they are located where dirty water is. The limited resource consumed by their construction isn’t seawater, it’s location.
If sea levels rise, the added volume of seawater will not make desalination cheaper, just like a surplus of labor in the presence of labor price controls doesn’t create a demand for labor at the controlled price.
At some point the escalating price does cause the curves to intersect; Russia didn’t need seawater at the prices it would cost to build canals.
Which matters why? If you can put the desalinization plant by the ocean and pipe the clean water 85 kilometers to the city (as Australia is doing now, and similar to a planned canal in Israel), the oceanwater still is being consumed.
And consumption of the infinite ocean water is still higher than what it would have been if the supply were smaller. “Supply creates its own demand.” Not a hard concept.
Finally, I’d like to ask: how on earth does any of this undermine my original point that cryonics patients increase an economy’s capital by not consuming and hence increase long-term growth and net wealth? These are either accounting identities or borne out by many centuries of economic growth, and is a trivial claim.
A suspended person is economically as productive as a nonexistent person.
Nonexistent people have had zero impact on economy historically. Why would suspended people have an effect in the future?
And if supply created demand, there should be a huge demand for seawater, rather than a small demand. As it is, the demand for seawater is pretty much inelastic with supply.
So no such thing as capital exists, savings has no relation to growth, and suspended peoples’ past life choices (like not spending scores of thousands of dollars on consumption) contribute exactly nothing to the economy! Of course!
I give up. You have no freaking clue about economics.
I’ve already pointed out the huge demand. Feel free to calculate how many millions of gallons all the uses I gave make up each year. I’m not wasting more of my time on you.
You should still pretend to try to understand what I said.
I didn’t realize that you were seizing the saved assets of suspended people in your calculations; I was distributing them to next-of-kin or as otherwise directed by the suspended.
What part of suspending a person creates capital?
Which you would do… why?
Look up how suspension works.
I would allow a suspended person to provide directions regarding the disbursement of their property for the same reason I would allow it for a deceased person: to do otherwise would be immoral to me.
Looking strictly at the mechanical aspect, suspension requires a capital investment, and the only possible return on that investment is to preserve a brain pattern or entire body. As opposed to, for example, murdering someone considering suspension and giving the money they would have spend on suspension to entrepreneurs with good ideas and business plans.
Yes, there is a certain amount of economic activity which results in the suspension; but all of the labor and materials used in the suspension would otherwise be available for other uses, without diminishing the economic value of consumption.
Suspension as practiced is not like that; there are more capital investments than the mechanical. You really don’t know anything about the trust funds?
Do the trust funds have a higher return-on-investment than the investments of active people? The amounts spent on maintaining the suspension are not spent on any other economic activity, and any amount reserved for the use of the suspended is unavailable for any other use.
Irrelevant.
True and false respectively.
I’m not sure why comparing the finances of suspended people compared to active people is irrelevant, when one of the comparisons is between a suspended individual and an active one.
When you wake up, you either have liquid assets or you don’t. Any liquid assets aren’t contributing to meeting capital requirements. If there’s a secondary market capable of absorbing your bonds, then your bonds don’t contribute significantly to the available capital.
The comparison is irrelevant because it’s an accounting identity that capital is production minus consumption; cryonicsers, by consuming less, increase capital and increased capital increases long-term exponential growth. (Which I’ve pointed out in several ways so far but you still haven’t understood.)
And on the margin? If no one’s bonds ‘contribute significantly’, and one must ‘contribute significantly’ to affect anything, then we can just play the sorites game and wind up with a bond market in which the available capital is the same and yet no one actually has invested in bonds! Fascinating how your logic works.
Cyronicsers, by producing exactly what they consume (less the cryonics expenses), contribute nothing to capital while suspended.
Dead people, by consuming non of what they produced prior to their death, contribute exactly the same, except that it costs less to remain dead than to remain suspended.
Where is the maximum? What number of people put into free suspension would maximize long-term growth until they were removed. All of them? Then who does the growth? N, or N% of them? Why non N-1, or N+1; what changes from the current situation to the one in which N or N% people are in suspension?
The sorites game ends as soon as there are not enough willing buyers to buy all of the bonds that are being used as liquid assets. Those bonds would have been sold anyway- to the person who now wishes to buy them, if nobody else.
Still going on about that?
Wrong.
Long-term growth is maximized by spending as little as possible; this doesn’t change at any %, your attempt at the sorites notwithstanding. The usual explanation for why spending is not minimized relates to utility functions, discounting, and diminishing returns (which is not no returns, I say in advance to forestall one of your misunderstandings).
And on each margin, fewer bonds will be offered and fewer ventures launched, the point your ‘significantly’ glosses over entirely.
Consider the world in which some event magically safely placed every human being into suspension for a period of three years; 2009-2012; then removed them from suspension today. Maintenance was performed magically to the same degree it is in the real world, and whatever other incidental magic is performed as needed.
Does this world have a larger economy than it did in 2009? Is it larger than the real world equivalent?
I guess that’s part of ‘demand creates its own supply’ then; in both cases the number of people who want to buy bonds exceeds the number of bonds being offered; but if more of the buyers want to use bonds as liquid assets more bonds will be offered? The market doesn’t clear in either case- there are still buyers who want to buy bonds, but there are no more bonds offered. If there were more bonds being offered, then the people who would buy them on the secondary market would buy them on the primary market; there cannot be buyers with unmet demand on the secondary market and sellers with unsold bonds on the primary market.
Your hypothetical is irrelevant and would be irrelevant even if everyone in the world signed up for cryonics.
No, it’s just an observation that not every possible clearing market of bonds will maximize growth… See previous points about utility and discounting etc.