10. Infinite Wealth
The following is proposed as a mathematical definition for (physical) wealth:[1]
W = (R + L) I
Where W = Wealth, R = Natural Resources (energy and matter), L = Labor, and
I = Intangibles (vision, purpose, inspiration, intelligence, knowledge, information, creativity, tools and so on).[2]
Bread is wealth, especially to the hungry. To make it requires natural resources (land, seeds, water, sun energy, nutrients from the soil, fertilizer) + labor (to plant, weed, harvest, transport, process grain into flour, bake). Knowledge is also required. The smarter you are, the higher the yields per acre when growing grain, and the better the bread when processed and baked. An inspired baker can create an award-winning and delicious cinnamon raison bread while an uninspired (factory chef ) ends up with boring, tasteless Wonder™ bread.
In the 1950s it took 5,000 pounds of materials and many hours of labor to build a car that by today’s standards is slow, clumsy, inefficient, and unsafe. A modern car would weigh half as much, get twice the gas mileage, accelerate much faster, handle better than previous generation race cars, have modern safety equipment, a great stereo system and a cell phone, and emit one thousandth the amount of pollutants. Assembly using robotics has drastically decreased the labor required per car. Less materials are now required for more product. The difference is the intangibles (knowledge, skill, technology, design creativity) that are applied to making the modern car. This increases the amount of wealth – and is created out of thin air.
The NASA Apollo mission to the Moon in July, 1969 can serve as another example. Compare the relative significance of the resources (liquid oxygen and hydrogen as propellants, various metals, plastics) and the labor (an immense amount) to the intangibles – President John F. Kennedy’s inspirational and visionary 1961 proclamation which called for the United States to commit itself to “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” by the decade’s end, and the immense intelligence and skills of the scientists and engineers required for the mission’s success.
Basically, we got to the moon with water, dirt, and fire. Electrolysis of water, H2O, can provide the two components of rocket fuel which is burned, silicon from sand is used with other chemicals for electronic devices, various metals are refined from ore mined from the earth and heated with fire, plastics are ultimately made from hydorcarbon molecules derived from oil, and so on. Without “I”, the “R” and “L” would not have added up to much. This is why the intangible factor is an exponential, a little inspiration and know-how makes a huge difference in outcomes.
Do limits on wealth really exist?
Consider wealth as defined above. Natural resources include both matter and energy. If you rely on oil for energy, then you may run out of energy since oil is a finite commodity – eventually it will all be used up, although perhaps not for a hundred years. Now apply “I”, in the form of research to discover and develop other sources of energy – like fusion, antimatter, or who knows? Has everything has been discovered by science? Humankind’s knowledge so far is more likely 1% than 99% of the total available in the universe.
Let’s look at solar power. Our Sun is a little less than average size in comparison to other stars. Every second 600 million tons of hydrogen is converted to 596 million tons of helium in a nuclear fusion process, with the balance of 4 million tons converted to energy according to Einstein’s equation E=mc2. The total energy emitted per second is 3.9 X 1026 watts. This is enough energy for each of the Earth’s 6 billion people to have a 100 watt light bulb burning, 650 trillion times over!
Only a small fraction of the total energy emitted by the Sun reaches the Earth, which is about 93 million miles away. That amount of energy can be calculated as follows:
The area of a sphere with a radius of 93 million miles is:
A = 4πr2 = 4π(93 X 106 miles)2 = 1.09 X1017 miles2 X (5280 ft / mile)2 = 3.03 X1024 ft2.
The area of the spherical Earth is:
A = 4πr2 = 4π(3960 miles)2 = 1.97 X108 miles2 X (5280 ft / mile)2 = 5.49 X1015 ft2.
If one half of the spherical Earth intercepts the energy from the Sun, then the percent that reaches the Earth is:
1/2 X 5.49 X1015 ft2 / 3.03 X1024 ft2 = 9.06 X10-10 = 9.06 X10-8%.
This is just under one billionth of one percent! And yet it is enough energy to provide for all life on Earth, to evaporate water for all the rainfall that occurs, to create hurricanes, and so on.
If you look up on a sunny day, you can feel the intense heat from the (yet smaller) fraction of the energy that reaches your face. If a face has an area of say 1 square foot, then the portion of energy that reaches that face would be less than 1 part in 3 trillion trillion (25% of the sunlight is reflected by the atmosphere). And yet, this infinitesimally small portion of the Sun’s energy is enough to burn your face, or blind you if you stare directly at it, in minutes.
The Sun has been burning for about 5 billion years, and will continue to do so for another 10 billion. There are 100 billion Suns (stars) in our Milky Way galaxy. Some stars are one million times more intense than our Sun. There are 100 billion galaxies in the universe. That is a lot of energy – and remember, we have only considered solar energy so far.
For many millennia, ancient humans were no doubt startled by one of nature’s most dramatic and violent outbursts, lightning. This mysterious phenomenon had existed for billions of years on Earth but humans had no scientific understanding of it, instead explaining it as the expression of angry gods. It has only been within the last few hundred years that science developed an understanding of electricity. The same concept applies to the Sun, which is not burning, combustion is a chemical oxidation process and there is no oxygen in space to allow it. The energy from the Sun, as mentioned above, actually results from a continuous nuclear fusion process where hydrogen atoms are fused into helium atoms in an exothermic reaction. Nuclear energy has existed since the beginning of the Universe, long before Einstein was born and worked out the math.
Physicist Richard Feynman postulated the existence of “zero-point energy” in the (previously considered empty) vacuum of space itself, due to quantum fluctuations. A cupful of these fluctuations would have enough potential energy to boil all of the world’s oceans. [3]
As discussed previously, predicting the future without allowing for unforeseen major technological breakthroughs is to put it kindly, impractical.
Does this sound like an “energy crisis”?
Nikolai Kardascheva, a leading Cold War era Soviet radio astronomer, proposed a system to classify possible extraterrestrial civilizations by energy usage:
KARDASCHEV TYPES: A classification of possible civilizations after energy usage. Type I civilizations control all available energy on a single planet. Type II civilizations control all available energy in a solar system (for example, using Dyson spheres). Type III civilizations control use of all available energy in an entire galaxy. (Mitch Porter suggested that a Type IV civilization controls all available energy in the entire universe) We are currently moving towards a Type I civilization. [Nikolai Kardaschev, 1964].
DYSON SPHERE: A shell built around a star to collect as much energy as possible, originally proposed by Freeman Dyson (although he admits to have borrowed the concept from Olaf Stapledon’s novel Star Maker (1937)). In the original proposal the shell consists of many independent solar collectors and habitats in separate orbits (also known as a Type I Dyson Sphere), but later people have discussed rigid shells consisting of only one piece (called a Type II Dyson Sphere). The latter construction is unfortunately both unstable (since it will experience no net attraction of the star), requires super-strong materials and have no internal gravity. The Dyson Sphere is a classic example of mega-technology and common in Science Fiction.[4]
Well known physicist Michio Kaku also included this concept in his recent book Hyperspace. He further characterizes the civilization types as follows:
A Type I civilization is one that controls the energy resources of an entire planet. This civilization can control the weather, prevent earthquakes, mine deep in the earth’s crust, and harvest the oceans. This civilization has already completed the exploration of its solar system.
A Type II civilization is one that controls the power of the sun itself. This does not mean passively harnessing solar energy; this civilization mines the sun. The energy needs of this civilization are so large that it directly consumes the power of the sun to drive its machines. This civilization will begin the colonization of local star systems.
A Type III civilization is one that controls the power of an entire galaxy. For a power source, it harnesses the power of billions of star systems. It has probably mastered Einstein’s equations and can manipulate space-time at will.
Our civilization, by contrast, can be categorized as a Type 0 civilization, one that is just beginning to tap planetary resources, but does not have the technology and resources to control them. A Type 0 civilization like ours derives its energy from fossil fuels like oil and coal and, in much of the Third World, from raw human labor. Our largest computers cannot even predict the weather, let alone control it. Viewed from this larger perspective, we as a civilization are like a newborn infant.[5]
Kaku then takes the analysis one step further looking at the time required for civilizations to advance from one type to the next:
Although one might guess that the slow march from a Type 0 civilization to a Type III civilization might take millions of years, the extraordinary fact about this classification scheme is that this climb is an exponential one and hence proceeds much faster than we can readily conceive.
Given the rate at which our civilization is growing, we might expect to reach Type I status within a few centuries.
For example, the largest energy source available to our Type 0 civilization is the hydrogen bomb. Our technology is so primitive that we can unleash the power of hydrogen fusion only by detonating a bomb, rather than controlling it in a power generator. However, a simple hurricane generates the power of hundreds of hydrogen bombs. Thus, weather control, which is one feature of Type I civilizations, is at least a century away from today’s technology.
By contrast, the transition from a Type I to a Type II civilization may take only 1,000 years.
A typical example of a Type II civilization is tthe Federation of Planets portrayed in the “Star Trek” series. This civilization has just begun to master the gravitational force – that is, the art of warping space-time via wormholes – and hence, for the first time, has the capability of reaching nearby stars. It has evaded the limit placed by the speed of light by mastering Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Small colonies have been established on some of these systems, which the starship Enterprise is sworn to protect. The civilization’s starships are powered by the collision of matter and antimatter. The ability to create large concentrations of antimatter suitable for space travel places that civilization many centuries to a millenium away from ours.
Advancing to a Type III civilization may take several thousand years or more. This is, in fact, the time scale predicted by Isaac Asimov in his classic Foundation series, which describes the rise, fall, and re-emergence of a galactic civilization. The time scale in each of these transitions involves thousands of years. This civilization has harnessed the energy source contained within the galaxy itself. To it, warp drive, instead of being an exotic form of travel to nearby stars, is the standard means of trade and commerce between sectors of the galaxy. Thus, although it took 2 million years for our species to leave the saftey of the forests and build a modern civilization, it may take only thousands of years to leave the saftey of the solar system and build a galactic civilization.[6]
Remember, Michio Kaku is a physicist. This is not science fiction! The classification system described above indicates that we, as a species, are at an early stage in our development, and should dissuade us from thinking we have reached, or indeed come close to, the limits of science.
The other half of our natural resources factor “R” is matter, material substances. Consider the vast potential mineral wealth in the unexplored and untapped depths of the oceans. This is in addition to the huge amount of resources already located on the land masses, with more yet to be discovered, perhaps under the ice of Antarctica – a whole continent untouched. Then of course there is the Moon, over 8,000 asteroids in a belt between Mars and Jupiter with some hundreds of miles in diameter, and the other 8 planets, with their numerous moons, all nearby in our solar system and reachable with existing technology. And what about the countless planets that are no doubt orbiting the majority of the ten billion trillion stars in the universe? Already, 28 large planets have been positively located by astronomers.[7] Eventually humankind will have access to more material resources than we could ever dream of utilizing.
It can thus be concluded that there is no shortage of natural resources – matter or energy.
Now lets look at the labor factor “L”. There are 6 billion people on the planet now. We will probably end up leveling off at 8 to 10 billion in 50 years, as was discussed earlier. Maybe Paul Ehrlich’s predictions will prove prescient after all. Maybe our population will somehow grow to 60,000,000,000,000,000 people (sixty million billion). But instead of having 100 people per square yard on the Earth, we will colonize some of the probably millions of habitable (or terraformable) planets (hopefully unoccupied) out there in space. Then we won’t be so crowded.
In either case, it doesn’t look like a labor shortage anytime soon!
How about the “I” factor? There are more scientists and engineers alive on Earth right now than were ever alive throughout history. They are working from a huge accumulated knowledge and information base. As Isaac Newton said, we are standing on the shoulders of giants.[8] Most of these scientists and engineers have great tools and access to lots of information. Many are creative and inspired to do great things in their careers. Technology is advancing exponentially, and thus so is the “I” exponential factor in our formula.
What this all adds up to is that wealth is for all practical purposes infinite. There are no limits or shortages built into the system. The only limits are self-imposed by our own ignorance, lack of imagination, laziness, or by succumbing to needless despair and negativity. Napolean Hill discovered the following to be true regarding our human potential: “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, It can achieve.”[9] This statement has been proven over and over again throughout human history. Whomever has bet against the long-term success of humankind, has always lost.
[1] Includes excerpts from the author’s paper Keys to Prosperity and Happiness , Paul G. Mush, submitted as a term paper for the course “An Exploration of Money, Love, and Livelihood,” Instructor: Rina Sircar, Ph.D., CIIS, November 9, 1999.
[2] Concept based on R. Buckminster Fuller’s formula “W=2E X I, where W=Wealth, E=Energy, I=Intellect,” Utopia or Oblivion , R. Buckminster Fuller, Bantam Books, 1969, p.194., and other writings.
[3] The Songs of a Distant Earth, Arthur C. Clarke, 1986
An admittedly naive calculation by Richard Feynman suggests that every cubic centimetre of vacuum contains enough energy to boil all the oceans of Earth. Another estimate by John Wheeler gives a value a mere seventy-nine orders of magnitude larger. When two of the world’s greatest physicists disagree by a little matter of seventy-nine zeros, the rest of us may be excused a certain scepticism; but it’s at least an interesting thought that the vacuum inside an ordinary light bulb contains enough energy to destroy the galaxy… and perhaps, with a little extra effort, the cosmos.
[4] Transhuman Terminology Sub-Page, from the Anders Sandberg Transhumanist Resources website (http://www.algonet.se/~aleph/Trans/Words/k.html).
[5] Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension, Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1995, pp. 277-8.
[6] Ibid., p. 278-80.
[7] New Planets Detected by Astronomers, Associated Press, November 30, 1999. There will no doubt be many more discovered by the time you are reading this.
[8] “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,” Sir Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke dated February 5, 1676. Also “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants,” Albert Einstein. The history of this quote has been said to go back to Bernard of Chartes in about 1130.
[9] Napolean Hill, Think and Grow Rich, 1937. Revised edition 1963, Fawcett Crest, p. 32.