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Wind Lowers Prices: New Scientist | 33 comments (33 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Not with you here..... (none / 0)
BruceMcF:
Adopting energy units as a commodity-money would lead under current circumstances to a constantly deflating monetary unit, which would be destabilizing precisely in those periods of real resource constraints when financial side instability would be particularly unwelcome. They would be far more useful as an asset than as a form of money.

There is a difference between an Energy Standard - which is a Unit of measure of Value - and a Unit of currency, which is what I prefer to think of as 'money's worth'.

A Value Standard cannot deflate, any more than a kilogramme or a metre - it is, by definition, an absolute.

A Unit of currency, on the other hand can deflate or inflate by reference to a Value Standard.

Why do you say energy currency units must necessarily deflate?

There is a virtually infinite amount of renewable energy - not to mention energy savings - available to be monetised/unitised in the course of financing the transition from carbon.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Mon Aug 2nd, 2010 at 08:32:59 PM EST
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Re: Not with you here..... (none / 1)
There is a difference between an Energy Standard - which is a Unit of measure of Value - and a Unit of currency, which is what I prefer to think of as 'money's worth'.

A Value Standard cannot deflate, any more than a kilogramme or a metre - it is, by definition, an absolute.

A "Unit Measure of Value" implies that value is commensurate with a scalar, which is one of the empirical flaws of the utility maximizing theory of behavior ... since "Value" is a reification of the process of valuing.

You are of course free to make up existing words to mean anything you wish them to mean, but you cannot impute your definitions when someone is using a more common sense of the word. I mean standard of value in the more common sense of standard of value.

What matters for Energy units as a standard of value is the terms of trade of the energy harvest with all other produced goods and services, and part of the transition to a sustainable economy will be an increase in those terms of trade.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon Aug 2nd, 2010 at 08:47:46 PM EST
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Wind Lowers Prices: New Scientist | 33 comments (33 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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