{"id":2290,"date":"2016-03-23T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=2290"},"modified":"2016-03-22T22:11:36","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T05:11:36","slug":"jeff-bezoss-economic-prophecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2016\/03\/23\/jeff-bezoss-economic-prophecy\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos’s Economic Prophecy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, Jeff Bezos (of amazon.com<\/a>\u00a0fame) invited reporters to tour his space venture “Blue Origin.” The company has existed in some form or another since the early 2000’s, but this was the first time that Blue Origin held a formal press event. The New York Times put together a great article <\/a>on the event, written by Kenneth\u00a0Chang. While much of the proceedings focused on the business plans and technological achievements of the firm, Bezos also took a little time to extoll his vision for the future of humanity (as you might\u00a0expect from a billionaire who privately bankrolled a multimillion dollar rocketry firm). Here’s how Chang lays out\u00a0Bezos’s prophecy for humanity:<\/p>\n

Like Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos talks about Blue Origin less as a business than as part of a glorious future for humanity, with millions of people living and working off the planet. It is also a path, he asserted, that humanity must pursue if it is to continue to prosper.
\nHis argument was simple: Energy consumption has been rising at 2 or 3 percent a year. Even at that modest rate, within a few centuries, the energy usage would be equal to the energy produced by high-efficiency solar cells covering the entire surface of the planet. \u201cWe\u2019ll be using all of the solar energy that impacts the Earth,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s an actual limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there is much energy and raw materials to use elsewhere in the solar system, and eventually, he prophesies, there will be the \u201cgreat inversion.\u201d Instead of factories on Earth manufacturing sophisticated components that go into tiny machines that go into space, the heavy manufacturing will all be done elsewhere, and Earth, he joked, would be zoned for residential and light industrial use, allowing much of Earth to return to a more natural state. \u201cIt\u2019ll be universities and houses and so on,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bezos’s vision reminded me of the predictions of Malthus and\u00a0the theory of peak oil, both of which predict\u00a0the economic future using arguments based on physical constraints. Happily, both of these dire\u00a0prophecies\u00a0have not\u00a0(yet) manifested. Many economists are rightly\u00a0skeptical of these types of predictions, which they argue\u00a0underestimate the ingenuity of humanity.\u00a0Bezos’s predictions, on the other hand, place good confidence in our collective ingenuity and paint\u00a0a rather rosier vision than the others. Whether they will end up holding any water is anyone’s guess, but, at the very least, they’re an interesting thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, Jeff Bezos (of amazon.com\u00a0fame) invited reporters to tour his space venture “Blue Origin.” The company has existed in some form or another since the early 2000’s, but this was the first time that Blue Origin held a formal press event. The New York Times put together a great article on the event, written by Kenneth\u00a0Chang. While much of the proceedings focused on the business plans and technological achievements of the firm, Bezos also took a little time to extoll his vision for the future of humanity (as you might\u00a0expect from a billionaire who privately bankrolled a Continue reading Jeff Bezos’s Economic Prophecy<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[410,409,35],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-economic-predictions","tag-resource-contraint","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2293,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}