> I believe that waste should be stored until something useful can be done with it --- on a long enough timescale, everything gets recycled eventually.
What happens if we assume the statement is true (as a thought experiment) and explore the ramifications? I see three key follow-up questions?
1. What valuation is implied by the above statement?
2. What do we mean by "waste"?
3. What are the salient differences between _burying_, _storing_, and _burning_?
Some answers to each:
1. It requires the future value, for some unbounded `t`, to exceed the present value. For this to be sensible, the cost of storage cannot dominate.
2. What is waste now is a function of our current economics* and technological level. Storing something indefinitely is an implicit bet that future changes to economics and/or technology will make recovery of item worth it relative to the cumulative storage and opportunity costs (including compounding).
3. In a broad sense, entropy. This applies to both the item stored (its internal state) and the energy required to locate it (i.e. location indexing). Put another way: entropy maps to more concrete concepts such as: cost of recovery, expected degradation, and ability to locate later.
* I don't mean to imply a narrow view of economics. What I actually mean is closer to the considerations from _political economy_.
What happens if we assume the statement is true (as a thought experiment) and explore the ramifications? I see three key follow-up questions?
1. What valuation is implied by the above statement?
2. What do we mean by "waste"?
3. What are the salient differences between _burying_, _storing_, and _burning_?
Some answers to each:
1. It requires the future value, for some unbounded `t`, to exceed the present value. For this to be sensible, the cost of storage cannot dominate.
2. What is waste now is a function of our current economics* and technological level. Storing something indefinitely is an implicit bet that future changes to economics and/or technology will make recovery of item worth it relative to the cumulative storage and opportunity costs (including compounding).
3. In a broad sense, entropy. This applies to both the item stored (its internal state) and the energy required to locate it (i.e. location indexing). Put another way: entropy maps to more concrete concepts such as: cost of recovery, expected degradation, and ability to locate later.
* I don't mean to imply a narrow view of economics. What I actually mean is closer to the considerations from _political economy_.