The Evaporation of Everything
The age of superabundance
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The competitive forces of the agora have transformed the whole of humanity into one giant problem-solving machine, a global supercomputer of unlimited potential. Paradoxically, the growing population and wealth of this new world is on a path to consuming fewer and fewer of the Earth’s finite resources. Progress, it seems, is beginning to evaporate the material world itself.
Malthusian Fallacies
I have talked a bit about Malthusianism in the context of food production. But the basic idea, that we humans could exhaust the Earth’s finite resources is pervasive. There is a long history of well-educated thinkers prophesying resource depletion, claiming that we will imminently run out of food, oil, helium, water…you name it. Malthusians always arrive at the same conclusion; the only way to save ourselves is to reduce our numbers or “degrow.” But as we have seen, the nature of progress is paradoxical. Malthusians forget that while matter and energy are finite in this universe, knowledge is…
