[Book] The Wealth of Nature: Economics as If Survival Mattered

[jprussell]

I outlined this post back in December 2021, apparently, but I never got around to handling it. "Luckily" this week I was struck with no idea what to write, so I went looking in my drafts folder in desperation and decided this would work. It's my thoughts on JMG's The Wealth of Nature, which packs an exceptional amount of helpful, smart thinking into a pretty neat package. As always, I'd love to hear what you think.

Comments

[thinking_turtle]

1) After looking it up, the slow transformation of animal and plant matter into oil is called "biotic". The natural physical and chemical thermodynamic process involving just heat and pressure is called "abiotic".

I came across multiple claims that the "abiotic" theory is actually the consensus among Russian scientists. For example:

8. A Dissertation by J.F. Kenney(Joint Institute of the Physics of the Earth Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). Here is an extract:

ABSTRACT: For almost a century, various predictions have been made that the human race is imminently going to run out of available petroleum. The passing of time has proven all those predictions to have been utterly wrong. It is pointed out here how all predictions have depended fundamentally upon anarchaic hypothesis from the 18th century that petroleum somehow (miraculously) evolve from biological detritus, and is accordingly limited in abundance. That hypothesis has been replaced during the past forty years by the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins which has established that petroleum is a primordial material erupted from great depth. Therefore, petroleum abundances are limited by little more than the quantities of its constituents as were incorporated into the Earth at the time of its formation; and its availability depends upon technological development and exploration competence.

From https://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=278159.0

[jprussell]

::forehead slap:: Duh, abiotic, of course. I'm going to have to give back my Classics degree.

With that embarrassment out of the way, I did not know that about it being generally accepted by the Russians. I suppose time will tell.