For a high standard of living, we mostly need energy and some gadgets.

We are sitting on a big ball of matter, so at long as we have the energy, we can make all the gadget we need. (You can even make food underground in multiple levels, if you have enough energy to burn on lighting.)

So the real problem is energy. Luckily, renewable are currently getting a lot cheaper. And we also still have nuclear, if we really want to go that route. Fission works, and fusion is in the works.

I've come to believe that having enough energy (assuming enough raw materials to kickstart the process) solves a ton of society-level problems. For example, the supply of potable water is nigh endless if we have the energy available to run desalination plants. Or, if we never end up figuring out an alternative fuel for planes, the carbon emissions they produce don't really matter if we can just expend energy sequestering it afterwards using energy from a more sustainable source.

I've heard it put this way: energy is the only resource. If we have enough energy almost anything can be recycled or turned into anything. Wastewater and saltwater can be turned back into fresh water. Trash can be separated and recycled. With sufficient and sufficiently cheap energy vertical farming is even an option.

That is absurd. If you only have energy, you have nothing that is worth transforming. It is more appropriate to say that land(including the atmosphere surrounding it) is the most important source of wealth, as you can both extract energy and elements from it.

The land on the moon is worth very little as there is almost no water on it. If we could extract rocket fuels from there we would already be sending people to mars. People don't seem to understand how valuable our planet is.

> The land on the moon is worth very little as there is almost no water on it.

For water, the moon mostly lacks hydrogen. There's lots of oxygen in the rocks up there.

In general, I have sympathy for your position.

I think the person you replied to meant that being on earth, all you need is electricity. The rest falls into place.

Yes, the earth is extremely convenient.

Well, it's not so much energy by itself, but an energy gradient.

In simple terms, having electricity is great. In contrast, oceans full of water at a balmy 20C have lots of heat energy, but you can't really use it, if there's no gradient.

See the second law of thermodynamics.

Or in other terms: you want electricity and a way to get rid of waste heat, like being able to radiate into outer space.

> energy is the only resource

Hum... It's the only one we have to consume. But we still need the others, even if on fixed amounts.

The real problem is wealth. A lucky few will be able to hole up, but that'll only be the ones that can afford it; the rest will die from starvation.

I mean there was already alarm bells from UNESCO today or yesterday that the food program is at risk due to rising food costs due to the conflict in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, which in turn puts a lot of people that depend on that food program at risk.

And it's closer to home as well; the amount of people that start to rely on food banks has gone up sharply with the high inflation.

I mean it's dumb IMO; while all companies are eager to raise prices with inflation as soon as it happens, wages lag behind.

Are you willing to make any predictions firm enough to bet on?

Productivity increases at the same time. It's not free, there'd need to be complementary expansion of resource gathering and development of more efficient technology, but naively plugging in the values for life in developed nations won't get you the right result. In reality, this translates to a slower climb to developed nations status, not resource shortages (barring unrelated issues).

Couldn't it also translate into a falling standard of living in developed countries as large populations of increasingly affluent people compete for the same limited resources?

It could also translate into an increased rate of extraction/depletion of natural resources, as the economic incentive grows stronger.

It ultimately needs to reach an equilibrium where a developed nation lifestyle for the entire world population would only consume natural resources at the rate that they can be replenished.

> Couldn't it also translate into a falling standard of living in developed countries as large populations of increasingly affluent people compete for the same limited resources?

This certainly isn't impossible! You could construct scenarios where exactly that happens. But in real life, developed nations have an absolute advantage in producing just about everything. Some things are cheaper in developing nations, but only because of the opportunity costs (as in, steel would be cheaper in America, but the difference is even bigger in planes or whatever so that's what gets made there). If tomorrow the entire world was developed there would obviously be huge issues, but a continuous change would work out just fine.

Now that's not to say that there wouldn't be a higher fraction of people working in jobs which today in developed nations are seen as lesser. Some tasks are simply most efficient with a human at the helm. But if you wander around the rust belt, you'll find plenty of people that wish it made economic sense to employ them in manufacturing or mining. The shift wouldn't be a bad one.

> It could also translate into an increased rate of extraction/depletion of natural resources, as the economic incentive grows stronger.

That is absolutely true, but people overestimate the effect of resource use compared to pollution and the like. We will probably never run out of oil, metal, or any other nonrenewable resource. There's plenty there, and productivity growth will likely ensure that it is cost effective to extract pretty much indefinitely. Land is another story, as we're using a greater fraction of it than most other resources, but it's not by enough to make a huge difference.

The issue is pollution and other public bads. We can feed the world on very little land, but all the nitrogen runoff could cause other issues. We could go centuries without ever hitting peak oil, but dumping that much carbon into the atmosphere is problematic for obvious reasons. But that's no reason to fear production specifically! With greater productivity, we'd find it far easier to roll out nuclear worldwide. And while wasteful food production wouldn't go away without government regulation (or worldwide shifts in consumer preferences I won't hold my breath for), we can make those regulations and it's a small price to pay to increase the global standard of living.