Economaton

The three economic primitives are:

• energy
• time
• intelligence

At some level closer to metaphysics, energy and time perhaps consist of the same substrate; energy is merely highly concentrated time. In practical terms, in the context of Earthly economics, their properties are functionally different enough that it is reasonable at this level to use different terms to label them.

Energy, time, and intelligence are, as far as is known, all derived from extrinsic sources beyond the human ability to manipulate (e.g. energy comes from fossil fuels, sunlight, nuclear power; time simply appears in our experience; intelligence can be honed and refined, but not drastically altered.) The ultimate origin of value is thus unknown.

All people are allocated time at the same rate (so far as we know). This is the only economic element that all people receive equally.

Value is a measure of how different aggregations of these three primitives may be exchanged for one another. An economic process refers generally to both the act of combining the primitives and to the interchange of value through the exchange of processes. Processes are usually primarily either energy- or time-oriented. This is not a hard and fast division; all processes require both, but most require one much more than the other.

Output of primarily time-processes scales according to additional time added. Energy or intelligence may additionally be necessary, but they are not sufficient. Adding additional energy and intelligence may help, but value gains quickly plateau at a relatively low level. Only addition of time will increase value beyond that plateu. For example, the act of going to medical school is a time-process. The student acquires significant economic value after long study. Intelligence and energy are both prerequisites (a stupid medical student will quickly flunk out, and even a smart student will do poorly if he doesn’t have enough energy available (in the form of food) to effectively study), but beyond a certain threshold of diminishing return, adding more intelligence or energy into the equation doesn’t help much as far as adding more value. The only way to increase value then is to add more time; i.e. spend years in medical school, residency, etc. (Note that after graduation, once the doctor is established, the process transforms: intelligence becomes much more important; but before this point, even the smartest medical student won’t gain much value unless copious time is also used.)

Other examples of time-processes are the creation of high-end handcrafted furniture, and early automobile manufacture.

Conversely, the output of energy-processes scales according to additional energy addition. Some upfront time is necessary to orchestrate production, and some ongoing time is necessary to maintain the system, but in general, energy is far more important. Examples include automation and mass production generally; self-operating factories and robot butlers fall into this category.

Among other things, intelligence sometimes allows one to transform a time-process into an energy-process (e.g. automation.) Intelligence is (in the context of this metaeconomic theory) an arrangement of matter into some complex and internally consistent and comprehensible fashion according to self-prescribed rules, and the ability to propagate such rules onto time and energy effectively for the creation of value.

Economic value is, then, fundamentally an abstraction of time, energy, and intelligence. It is the output of an economic process. The inputs of a process are some combination of the three primitive types, depending on the particular process.

For example, a tree is energy (in the form of matter) plus a small amount of intelligence (the matter is arranged in an internally consistent way according to some self-defined ruleset embedded in the tree’s DNA.) Chopping the tree down and sawing it into lumber is an economic process involving the application of time and energy to the tree. In the general case, the lumber is thus more valuable than the tree was before the process was applied to it. Building a table out of lumber requires still further time, energy, and intelligence, and thus further increases the material’s value.

That currently practical forms of energy are derived from economically extrinsic sources (e.g. oil wells, coal and uranium deposits, etc., all “found” sources rather than sources devised by intelligence) has the important implication that it allows those who control these sources, the mechanisms by which extrinsic energy enters the human economy, to essentially “cheat” on economic production - they can be economically efficient and productive to a much higher degree than those without similar access, because they can inject extrinsic concentrated value into the system. Even though they are intrinsically receiving time at the same rate as anyone else, they can be more productive than that time ought to otherwise permit them to be by channelling extrinsic energy.

Raw energy is not inherently useful for much except blowing things up. In order to increase its value, it must be shaped, through the application of time and intelligence to the creation of machines. Machines are economic processes that are used to create other economic processes.