On: Nobel Economist: Now Is No Time to Give Up on Markets

[anamax]

> you can not eliminate markets unless you invent a limitless supply of energy.

Even inventing a limitless supply of free energy would not eliminate markets because limitless free energy would not eliminate all scarcity.

[smanek → anamax]

Wouldn't it? Given limitless energy, you can literally create matter out of thin air (E=mc^2) ...

You could create new planets, replicas of anything, etc. Hell, you could even distort time to fit your needs.

Granted, it would take more energy than exists in the universe - and a little technology that we haven't tried outside the lab yet. But we already have the fundamental tech to make that happen - it would just take a bit more scaling up and fine tuning.

Hey, he did say limitless

[bd → smanek]

Non-material things like status or reputation can be still scarce even with limitless energy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity#Unavoidable_scarc...

[michaelneale → smanek]

Yes I think you are right. Solve energy, most other problems will the solved from that. (the only thing holding back would be the side effects or fear of the side effects of accessing that energy).

[anamax → smanek]

> You could create new planets, replicas of anything, etc.

On which of those planets is Jessica Alba going to get me a mojito?

[kiba → anamax]

I think cool air would become a scarcity pretty quick. Instead, we'll have meters that tell us how much heat we're paying for.