[SGVLUG] You can't have your cake and eat it too... (was: Energycontent of human labor...)

[David Lawyer]

> > > > -----Original Message----- Of David Lawyer
> > > > > [...]
> > > > > > The only export from this community is ethanol
> > >           ^^^^
> > > [and]
> > > 
> > > > No.  There is "production" of all kinds of services one finds
> > > > in a city.  Medical services, entertainment services, [...]
> > > 
> > > So, which is it?
> > -----Original Message----- Of David Lawyer
> > Both.  Ethanol is exported but the production of services is 
> > all locally consumed in the community (not exported) by the 
> > production workers, service workers, spouses, children, 
> > retirees, parasites, thieves, and others that live in the town.
> 
On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 01:24:28PM -0700, Emerson, Tom (*IC) wrote:
> [tentatively...] "ok..."
> 
> > On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 09:25:39AM -0700, Emerson, Tom (*IC) wrote:
> > > If you're going to model and MEASURE the energy flow "to support 
> > > activity 'x'", you need to consider that "activity 'x'" 
> > isn't the only 
> > > thing going on, and [ultimately] it may be /impossible/ to separate 
> > > out "energy spent on 'x'" vs. "energy spent on 'x', 'y', 'z', 'p', 
> > > 'd', and 'q'".  If you DO consider energy spent on other aspects of 
> > > life /as part of/ the energy spent on activity 'x', you WILL be 
> > > overstating this value, perhaps drastically so...
> > 
> > Look at the fenced community.  The only energy flow out of 
> > the community is x.  Thus for the community not to be 
> > parasitic, it must have energy inflows less than x.  Thus the 
> > inflow of energy from the point of view of the outside world 
> > is the energy used to produce the only export x.  So the 
> > energy spent on y, z, p, d, and q (all supported by inflow 
> > energy) all must be somehow "needed" to support the outflow of x.
> 
> No -- p, d, q, etc. are NOT necessarily "needed" to support x, but can
> (and often will be) alternate "outflows" of energy that are not
> "consumed" by the community [such as, ahem, "methane", but then you've
> only stipulated a FENCE around the community, not a ceiling and walls to
> contain other energetic gasses...]

I didn't think of gas escaping as an export.  But suppose it's
minimal.
> 
> As you started this thread, you postulated the energy value of the
> output of "linux programmers" could be calculated and figured in a
> similar manner.  So with that in mind, you must count the "output" of
> the rest of the community members as potential and legal exports and
> calculate the "energy value" in such things as paintings & sculptures
> [from your artisans], movies and music [presuming such sub-industries
> exist within the community], inventions & programs ("thought" output),
> sports figures [how would you calculate the energy "cost" of the
> superbowl, I wonder? <don't forget the spectators, especially the ones
> eating chili dogs...>], etc.  You must either include this in the "total
> outflow of energy", or else reduce the measured "inflow" by the amount
> of energy it took to produce the alternate goods and services -- good
> luck on that one!

Movies are an export item so in my model they would be imported to the
Linux Community and part of the embodied energy content of the movie
charged to input energy to entertain the Linux programmers and their
dependents and servers (people, not computers).  All this local
entertainment and art would be done by and for people in the
community.  This community would only have the amount of entertainment
that is typical for Linux Programmers and their dependents and their
servers (and the servers of the servers, etc., etc).  For large
activities like the superbowl, you would have to substitute much
smaller activities like additional time at high school football games.

So once you divide up all the industries of the world into a very
large number of communities, the Linux Community in the US might only
get 0.1% of the superbowl activity which would get transformed into perhaps
just a little longer play at a high school football game (or perhaps
just a longer halftime).  There are likely a lot a similar situations.
The "company town analogy" which I'm presenting isn't an exact mapping
of real world economic activity into company towns but it does put a
boundary around the production of one good (such as ethanol or Linux
programs).  Such system boundaries are common in thermodynamics.

> Your "cake" in this scenario is "the output of ethanol", "eating it
> to" is the ability to presume the output of ALL humans within the
> community MUST support the production of ethanol.
> 
> > Sure, you can postulate an ideal community where there are no
> > thieves, parasites, and perhaps a bare minimum of art, 
> 
> The "there can be no crime" was only slightly tongue in cheek, but
> the real point is that being a criminal does NOT support the
> production of ethanol, so any "consumption" of resources or energy
> that you assign to the criminal element CANNOT be calculated as part
> of your input costs.

But all the workers, servers, children, and retirees in the town are a
random selection of people, and a very small percentage of such
people will involve themselves in non-trivial crime.  So if you want
to produce ethanol, you'll have to have workers, and a small percent
of them or their servers and dependents will become involved in crime.




			David Lawyer