Comment by epistasis

5 days ago

I'm not sure if you're being serious, but I'm going to assume you are. Let's say energy costs 1/10th it does today. That's far cheaper than I see anybody predicting fusion will be, but I think renewables will get there. How much does cheap energy change in the economy? What is bottlenecked by expensive energy at the moment? It turns out that matter, people, people's wants, still have a huge impact.

Make all energy free. What does that change? It lowers operating costs for many things, but up front capital costs are still there. Land still matters. Food still matters.

Money will still matter. Allocation of time, of resources, all that still matters a lot. Energy is big for the economy, but if its free we shift our focus to other matters of logistics.

If energy was truly free, it would revolutionize the economy and would fundamentally change how money matters.