Jim Hlavac
Economic Theory
Economic Theory
It is said in economics that there are scare resources which must be
allocated.  And the entire discussion is about who then should control
that allocation, and of course the accompanying belief that the state
must step in to make sure that the allocation is fair.  Resources are
always expressed in a way that makes it seems as if there is one set of
resources. In fact there are two sets of resources.

     There is of course the finate set of physical resources on the
planet.  There is just so much land, so much oil and so much gold.  
There is, in a plain physics sense, a finite amount of resources in the
world.  This is what most people talk about when they talk about
finite, or scarce resources.  And in this sense, there is a finite amount
of resources, some rarer than others, distributed unevenly across the
planet.  

     However, there is a second resource: the combination of the
finite resources.  And this second resource is not only inexhaustable,
but is growing. The combinations of things which are finite has
created an ever growing set of things. And if a set of thing is ever
growing it can not be finite.  This combination is a resource in the
sense that these things are used for human survival.  The combination
of finite resources is infinite.  

     To give a simple example -- there is finite number of primary
colors -- but an infinite amount of combinations.  To argue that the
finite number of primary colors means we will run out of colors is to
deny the existence of combination.

     There might be a finite amount of oil  But there is not a finite
amount of power.  Because power resides not in oil, but in the
fundamental mathematics of power.  The power we currently derive
from oil can be derived from some other thing, not yet discovered or
perfected.  For instance solar power, which when perfected, as it
will be, will simply obviate oil -- and thus the finite state of oil might
therefore become irrelevant.  There would be a infinite amount of
solar power, and thus there is an infinite amount of power.

     There is also an infinite amount of resource derived from the
conservation of consumption of power.  As every thing that uses
power uses it more efficiently the amount of power resource
increases -- even though the actual amount of physical resource, oil,
stays the same.  

     There is a finite amount of many things that simply became
irrelevant as the technology created substitutes, or even negated the
need for the finite resource.  At the point of substitution or negation
the finite resource is merely a part of an infinite resource.  

     Because it is fairly simple to grasp finite resources, and to
quantify them, we are lulled into the belief that all resources are
finite.  So we argue for the government to get involved in allocating
these finite resources, or we argue for the "market" to allocate the
scarce resources.  This belief actually works against the combination
of finites into infinites.  

     And it is admittedly hard for most people to grasp something
infinite coming from a set of finites.  Yet this is the mathematical
reality of finites.  All things can be combined, whether we know how
to right now or not.  Many things which were combined in the past,
mostly due to mistakes or happenstance, and then languished unused
until the surrounding technology caught up, and then all of a sudden
we had an infinite amount of some new thing.  

     Another example of finites becoming infinite is with recycling.  
The finite resources are used up in their first use.  But all things can
be recycled.  This is always done through some sort of combining --
and the finite works its way to becoming infinite as they are used
over and over again, even if in different forms.

     Another so-called finite is wood, yet new trees planted makes this
really an infinite resource, because new trees will grow.  Food is also
not a finite resource, because new food is grown.