Resources are Unlimited w/ Robert Zubrin #43

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the Age of Infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which have in turn led to the renaming of periods into ages. You've personally just lived through an amazing experience, the information age, and what a ride it's been.

Now that consider just for a moment that we might be living through another transitional age, the age of infinite, An age that is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefining lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and resources. The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that has come to life as together we can explore and create new definitions of our future.

The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hut Foundation, where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a moon hut, we were named by NASA, through the accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem, then to use the endeavors, the paradigm shifting thinking, and the innovations and turn them back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. Today, we're going to be exploring an amazing topic.

The topic is resources are unlimited, and we have with us today Robert Zubrin. How are you, Robert? I'm fine. Thanks for inviting me. You're welcome. I I've got to share in this one moment that of the over 250 interviews have been recorded and over, 25100 that I've done, you are the first person who's come up with a title that even after working through it, we have stuck with that same title. So you've got an honorary degree. It doesn't take you far, but it's there.

So, just a little bit about Robert. We don't go into much detail as most people do know. He is the founder of the Mars Society, which was founded in 1998. He's been the driving force between behind Mars Direct. He wrote the book, The Case for Mars. He's been in many leadership positions, including, in the space industry. And what's interesting, I'm not far. I'm in about an hour from where he went to school, the University of Rochester.

He got a degree in mathematics, then nuclear engineering in MS. He's, astronautics. He's got a PhD in nuclear engineering. Fascinating just to read your background, Robert. So do you have an outline for us to follow? Well, more or less. Okay. We'll take them more or less. Okay. I assert there's no such thing as a natural resource, that there are only natural raw materials. I assert that it is human thought that transforms materials into resources.

I assert that, despite all the resources that we use, the amount of resources in the world have been growing exponentially, since the dawn of civilization and are growing explosively exponentially today. I assert that, the reason why the standard of living, has gone up over time is not despite the increase in population, but because of the increase in population. And I assert that, that this process, is going to continue, indefinitely. I have I will be honest with you.

I have shared with few people that I was fascinated by your your angle and considering we're called the age of infinite infinite possibilities and infinite resources, You're nailing it with the topic. So let's start with number 1, that you, you claim you you believe that there is no such thing as natural resources. So let's start with the first one. Yeah. Sure. There there are no such thing as natural resources.

The, you know, if you take human beings in the state of nature, then to the this most primitive of of human beings, land, which is, the item most generally, listed as a natural resource, was not a natural resource. Natural land was not a natural resource until we invented agriculture. And then all of a sudden, land as such became a value. And the value of the land has increased, enormously as advance of agricultural technology has increased.

Oil, okay, to take another famous natural resource, was not a natural resource 200 years ago. It was not a natural resource until people invented oil drilling and refining and machines that could run on the product. Until that time, oil was just some stuff that sometimes poured out of the ground and ruined your farm.

You know, if Napoleon and Bonaparte and his generals had been contemplating invading some country and they were listing its natural resources, they would not have listed oil, nor would they have listed aluminum, which was unknown to science until, shortly after the Napoleonic period and unknown to consumers until 20th century. I mean, aluminum was there.

It's, I think the 3rd most common element in the Earth's crust, but it was unknown, and it was certainly unknown as any kind of resource other than, as dirt. You know? Aluminum did not become a resource until there was electricity that could separate aluminum from oxygen and aluminum oxide, and all of a sudden, this dirt became a metal.

And not only that, a very, interesting metal that was lighter than iron or steel, and, doesn't corrode and and conducts electricity and heat quite well and so forth. Uranium, of course, was not a resource until we invented nuclear power. And, deuterium is not a resource today. You know, if you hold up a bottle, a can rather, a v 8, v 8 comes in cans. Yep. And I'm holding right now. I can't see it, but I've got it. I can't see it, but I can understand you holding it.

Yes. Okay. An 11 and a half fluid ounce can of v 8 that I drank this morning. Okay? And it says on it, it contains 60 calories of energy, which is about a quarter of a megajoule. Wow. Okay. That's what was in the v 8. In the water that the that that was part of the v 8, in there was deuterium atoms, and they contained 4,500 megajoules, not a quarter of a megajoule, 4,500 megajoules of energy if they had been used in a fusion reactor.

But, okay, we we don't recognize that this, little can of v 8 contains 4,500 megajoules, which is 18,000 times as much energy as is in the fruit juice. It's, 350 times as much energy as this can would contain if I filled it with gasoline, was in the deuterium in the water in the VA. But we don't give it we don't get we're we're not giving it a value because it has no value as a as a human substrate. Does it not have, why isn't it listed? Why would that not be something?

We don't currently have the technology that would release that energy. But does the human body also not release the energy? No. The human body doesn't release that. That would have to be released by nuclear fusion. Okay. I didn't know if there was any type of reaction that could happen with it. So it just passes through us. That's right. And so you're taking that much energy, 350 cans of v eights worth of of gasoline energy. And what let's see. So this is a 3rd of a quart.

So, about a 100 gallons of gasoline. You're just pissing it away. The literally. Yes. I I completely get it. And because it's it's not seen. But it is in other words, it's the technology that creates the resource, whether it's land, oil, aluminum, uranium, or deuterium. Then the I I don't know if you've ever looked into this. The word natural resource, do you have you ever looked into where that came from?

Well, it was assumed by people that somehow it was there in the state of nature, but it's a, an incorrect concept. It it's simply not, you know, in our there there was no aluminum metal on this planet until till the early 1800. That, you know, that because until that time, there wasn't the technology to create it. The resources are created by resourceful people. That's where the resource comes from.

The the irony of you using aluminum was the first day that I had been involved and classify this space industry is the I was asked, do you know the story of aluminum?

And or and where can and I knew some of it from my chemistry and my biology background, but he they went into how it's it was $900 an ounce and kings and queens used to use it for their silverware that instead of the gold and silver that the Washington Monument's cap is made of aluminum because it was so valuable at the time, and now we use it as aluminum foil. We use it in our laptops. We use it all over as a as a product or a means to create products and services.

So it's interesting that you went right to that one. Thanks. Yeah. No. It's a natural example to use. So the when you talk about land, and we had spoken about this just a few minutes or, on our call to set up this program, you had said that the same thing happened with land soon as it became agriculture before that around the world or any no one ever even considered it. And I think you used the American Indian or you used some other populations who just never even considered it to be a resource.

Right. Okay. You know, we read about Peter Minuet buying Manhattan from the Indians for $24 worth of of, trade goods. And, you know, people look at that and they say, oh, boy. He really took them for a ride. The Indians must have thought they were taking Peter Minguitt for a ride. He's giving us $24 worth of good stuff for nothing for nothing. And, because to them, it was nothing.

So I I I wonder when this transformation of natural resources or resources itself, having a scarcity mentality came about? Was it was it the development of economics? Was it not just agriculture? Was it there had to be more than just farming. Well, I I don't know. I don't know the history of that, but I believe certainly farming made people think about, land as a resource. Now, of course, farmland as such is a human creation. Okay?

Because it is one from nature, from weeds, from trees, from all sorts of things that want to use it. You know, the first farms in America were created, through a great deal of labor by pioneers, and they turned prairie into farmland. But I guess, though, traditionally, in Europe, which is where economics was invented. Mhmm. By the time economics was invented, which would be the 1600 or so, the land had been tamed long ago, and so it was there.

And either you owned it or someone else owned it, and you could get it by invading another country, and taking their land. But in fact, originally, it had the land had been created as as farmland. But but even so, the very concept of of of land, of being worth something, depends upon the existence of agriculture. Well, the I I just looked it up just to see what the Google definition of. I think this is Google.

It said materials or substances such as minerals, forest, water, and fertile land that can occur in nature and can be used for economic gain. The economic gain was the the end end of it. So, yes, it, it probably coincided with the economic value trade, but even, bartering systems would have had something to do with resources or natural resources. Interesting. I never had thought about it in that way. So how do you when you you obvious when I asked you the question, what did you want to speak?

What are we going to talk about in the beginning? You came up resources are unlimited. Why is this so important to you? What was what was top of mind that this was the topic you thought we should speak about? Well, this is is the question. You see, you know, people talk about the dangers facing humanity. What is the existential dangers facing the human race today? And certainly, the most fashionable answer to that is global warming, followed by resource exhaustion.

And then there are some people still talking about the population explosion. And then there's various people that have some other ideas. But the, but I don't think that these are the existential dangers to humanity. I think climate change is quite real, but I do not think it is remotely as dangerous as something else. And what that something else is is the idea that resources are limited. Therefore, there's only so much to go around.

It is this idea that caused the great disasters in the 20th century. The great disasters in 20th century certainly were not caused by climate change, nor were they caused by, resource exhaustion, because resources were not exhausted in the 20th century, nor was it caused by overpopulation. The world's population at the time of, say, World War 2 was less than a third of what it is today. The the the they were caused by the idea of finite resources.

The idea of finite resources is what made Europe in 1914, when it was more prosperous than it ever had been before in human history, tear itself to pieces. Okay? Made them kill each other. You know? And then again, in the second World War, you know, here's Hitler saying the laws of existence require uninterrupted killings that the better may live. Germany needs living space. It was total nonsense. Total nonsense. Germany never needed any living space.

Germany today has less space than it had in the 3rd Reich, a larger population, and a vastly higher standard of living, which was achieved not by killing other people to steal their land and their cows. They did that. It did not contribute to their, prosperity, and in fact, ultimately, they were unsuccessful in that.

The the reason why Germany's standard a little today is higher than it was in the Third Reich is because of the advance of technology, globe, which has been a global project to which Germans have made some contributions, but which, much more have been made by people all over the world, including notably people they were trying to exterminate. And had they been successful, truly successful, they would have been much poorer today than they are.

Much poorer, be because they would have eliminated people who were creating the new arrays of resources that became available to them and everyone else. And, so this it it you know, look. I I happen to know for a fact, because I've spoken to them, that there are people in the American National Security Establishment in positions of high responsibility who believe that war with China is inevitable. I've spoken to them too. Yeah. And why do they believe that?

Well, because there's only so much stuff in the world. There's only so much oil, for example. And if the Chinese start consuming oil per capita at the same rate that we do, if they all had cars and start driving around like Americans, Europeans, well, there won't be enough oil. So we have to stop them.

And you could bet your bottom dollar that there are people in Beijing who in comparable positions who look at this problem from the opposite side of the chessboard who think exactly the same thing, except they've got a different party in mind that needs to be eliminated. K? And if this kind of thinking is allowed to prevail, there will be war, and it will be far more devastating than the wars of the 20th century because our weaponry is much more capable today. And and so, this is the problem.

This is the idea that must be defeated for humanity to survive. I I have to I I have a smile on my face because I I want to know when you the name of our podcast is the Age of Infinite, and inside of it, we're saying there's infinite possibilities and infinite resources that is part of the podcast. So as you're outlining this to some degree, we're we're in parallel, a lot. We're in alignment in this.

And at the same time, you're coming at it from a semantics point of view that the the terminology, the expression, the belief system behind these words are more dangerous than the than the reality of them themselves. That's right. We're not in danger of there being too many people. We're in danger from people who think there are too many people. How how did you stumble, find, discover, identify this construct?

Because you you're articulating some of what, we've spoken about as as our Project Moon Hut Foundation and what we're working on. But how did you discover it? What was your path? Well, k. You know, a lot of different we came from a number of different angles. My family is, of Jewish heritage, and, half of them were wiped out in the Holocaust, except for my aunt Yolan who survived Auschwitz. And so this question of what would drive people to this has always been of of considerable interest to me.

And, and I researched the war and, quite thoroughly, even as a kid. And I learned a lot about it, and, you know, a lot of Jewish people have a incomplete idea of the Holocaust because they're focused on, the part of it that happened to them. But in fact, it was much bigger. Yes, 6,000,000 Jews, but 3,000,000 Poles, 20,000,000 Russians, half a 1000000 Greeks, 2,000,000 Serbs. You could go on and on.

And and then I started reading into the Nazi documents and their their own concepts, and they had this thing they called the hunger plan, and they literally intended to exterminate over a 100,000,000 people, the the by taking away the food of whole regions. The the you know, we only know about the holocaust that actually happened, not the one that was planned to happen. And it was, enormous. And and then I I started looking at the roots of this ideology. And, and it goes back.

It was certainly not original with Hitler. It goes back to Malthus and, the belief that, there's only so much resources in the world, that population is always gonna outrun production.

And the the but then the variant on that given to people taking, a a somewhat distorted version of Darwinism on this that, well, yes, there's only so much to go around, but the silver lining is, that means that the inferior people will be eliminated because they won't be able to get in or else they will be outcompeted by the better people. And, you know, so this this ideology, you know, you you might actually call Nazism National Social Darwinism. That is the the Mhmm.

There's only so much to go around, but this means that the strong, must and should eliminate the weak. And who is strong and who is weak is basically determined by who eliminates who. Mhmm. Yes. That's that's how that matter is resolved. And, you know, you take it from there. And then I see this in various forms today. I see this ideology continuing today that this was not put to rest on May 8, 1945, and that in in other forms with some different specifics.

But with the fundamentals being the same, this is still around. And, and the effects of it could be absolutely catastrophic as they have been, so far. I I come I I'm gonna say I completely follow you of what based upon what you've said. I I would possibly believe that some of your chemistry background, some of your scientific studies also demonstrated some transformational changes that tied to this construct. Well well, no. Here's the thing about that.

That that enabled me to see the falsity of the idea. Okay. Okay? That is That's what I meant is you that's right. You saw through a different lens what an an average individual who hasn't taken these disciplines or studied them. You saw an angle that said it doesn't make sense. Right. Well, yes. In other words, look. That almost anyone well, most people will react viscerally to these ideas and say these are evil. These are wrong. Okay? Right?

You you you don't need a PhD to see that they are evil. K? But the Nazis, would respond to such people saying, well, you're just not facing the facts. You need to harden your heart. There isn't enough to go around. Right? There isn't enough to go around. And, you know, you know, you can say, up yours, Adolf. But they they they they they they they they were quite effective. It was a it was great. Yeah. They they they were quite effective.

In other words, the Nazis would say that people who denied this ethos of survival of the fittest were denying the fossil record. What are you? Some kind of of of know nothing bible thumper that you don't think that this is how the world works? And in fact, Hitler was quite explicit in saying that the idea that there can be perpetual plenty through science and invention, was a, a a a a Jewish conspiracy to deny the necessity for war. Okay?

So in other words, they they they they they they, They're tying multiple constructs together simultaneously to create an an emotional reaction to scarcity, an emotional reaction to a population, as a a means by which, you're ignorant because you're religious. Therefore, you don't understand the basics of facts. So the it's actually a multiplicative construct that boils down to resources are limited.

And in doing so, you you create a visceral reaction that says, I've gotta keep what I've got because somebody else might take it or I Right. I could run out. But it also you see, this idea that resources are limited and therefore some people must be crushed. Okay. Well, what does it do? It means someone must be empowered to do the crushing. Okay? Therefore, tyranny is necessary. Oppression is necessary. And and this is why intellectuals who expound this will never lack for sponsors.

And it's also a popular ideology among those who would make a living as the enforcers, okay, themselves. Okay. This is why this was very popular with German militarists. K? In other words, if you say humanity progresses by superior races eliminating inferior races, then you say, well, then we have a moral purpose because we are the best at it. And the we are the principle of progress, where is necessary because it eliminates the weak, and so forth and so on.

And and so that's why those those kinds of thinking go go together. They provide justification. Once again, it is this idea of in other words, those who would do evil would like it justified as being necessary. It it's, and I think you probably have already guessed I am Jewish too. So I'm Yeah. I'm going back in time and I'm saying, okay. So this was a a weaponization of a construct.

If we go back in time, I've got to believe the same weaponization happen happened whether it be Alexander the Great, it be the the Mongolian Empire. I've, the the Egyptians. Is is this a historic, cycle that we're in? A a a theme that's easily used, therefore, easily leveraged, and a means by which to to promote a certain belief structure? And is the was Nazism just one of those? Well, yes. But, look, the larger theme is that, you know, what we're doing is necessary. Okay?

Now prior to the modern age, people might find necessity in theological terms. They're doing it on God's behalf. Okay? Mhmm. Things like this. But if you take the modern world in which people are secular, basically, in terms of their effective motivations, at least within the advanced countries, then you have to pose this these sorts of motivations, the the higher good, as it were, in secular terms. You're not exterminating people because they're unbelievers.

You're exterminating them because they're useless eaters, and and and and and so forth. So, the the so the this scientific anti humanism, if you will, or pseudo scientific, but in any case, secular. Well, there may have been some, prior writers. I'm sure there were. But the one who really made a splash with this was, Malthus. And he wrote circa 1800. Oh, okay. I didn't realize it's that early.

Yeah. Sure. And so Malthus, you know, Malthus himself was a professor at the, British East India Company, College that was used to train the administrators of the British Empire. And, so his theory initially was basically starvation that the British were creating in India through excessive taxation, rack renting, the suppression of manufacturers, so forth. K? In other words, this this poverty is inevitable. See, we're we're not doing this.

And and and Malthus himself, I mean, said the Irish must be swept from the land. There's too many of them. And Malthus' own students, and by his students, I mean people who actually sat in his classes, not people who just read his book Mhmm. Administered the mass death that occurred in Ireland in the 18 forties. And, and and people today, many represent that as a famine. Well, actually, it wasn't. The potato crop failed, to be sure, but Ireland was exporting grain and beef the entire time.

Irish didn't starve because there was no food in Ireland. They starved because they had no money. The your your next point had to be with thought transforms, which I we're we're we're we're touching on the fringes of it. There's the transforme and the transform more. I don't know if those are the proper terms. That you're saying that this construct, this development, this theory, this promise, this propaganda created this environment for the Irish.

But at the same time, somebody had to believe that the famine was due to potatoes. And Look. The the potatoes look. These people were incredibly poor, and the only food they could afford to buy were potatoes. Potatoes grow with incredible density of caloric value per per acre. And but the the thing is I mean, we're talking about Ireland in the 18 forties. We're talking about a world of steamships, railroads, and telegraphs, and mass circulation newspapers. We're not talking about the bronze age.

Right. Okay? We're we're we're talking about a world in which if you have money, you can get food. It's that simple. Alright? That's how it goes. So, I mean, look. I don't grow any food. No. Okay. But I have plenty to eat because I have a job that pays a salary. And, you know, the vast majority of people in our world today don't grow their own food, or at least, you know, in in our part of the world, United States, Europe, so forth. They they they manage to eat because they have a salary.

I don't worry about the fact that, you know, the food in my refrigerator will keep me alive for a week or so. But I'm not here terrified about that imminent starvation when my refrigerator runs out because I know I can buy more. Right? Yep. So this isn't an issue for me. And, actually, it wasn't that different in Ireland in the 18 forties, except up till the failure of the potato crop, whether you had money or not, you could get food. Okay? But now, at least in the form of potatoes.

But but then the crop failed. And the fact they had no cash because, once again, taxation, rack renting, and the, British forbid, the setting up of factories in Ireland. So they wanted all the the, you know, this was the industrial revolution and they wanted all these textile factories to be in England. Mhmm. So if there had been factories, then they could have found work and and bought food. But no. So the the the yeah.

Someone could starve to death in the presence of food if their hands and feet are tied and they can't get to the food. And so that's it. Now, so so where are we? So this this ideology Go ahead. This ideology was created for the purpose of justifying oppression. And, in fact, you know, Henry George, the American reformer of the 18 seventies, critiqued Malthus on exactly that basis, saying, this is saying that, you know, poverty is not a a function of of oppression.

It's simply a law of nature of which it would be as useless to protest against as the law of gravitation. But you're you're articulating exactly the the the what I'm seeing is that this this belief structure, this thought was put into place and weaponized. Yet at the same time, the messaging that came out of these experiences was not the one that you're promoting, that resources are unlimited. What what is not a where has the mess where did why hasn't this come out?

Why is this not the ubiquitous overarching theme that people are talking about? Well, because it it pays intellectuals to promote the opposite point of view. The the the I mean, just look at this. Okay? When Malthus wrote his book in 1800, the world had a population of 1,000,000,000 people and the average per capita income in today's money was about $200 a year. K?

That's the world discussed in the novels of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo in which people in London and Paris are worried about whether they are going to starve to death in the capitals of the leading nations of the earth. Okay? Now here we are 200 years later. The world population is 7,000,000,000 people. And far from the amount per person having gone down, the average per capita income in the world is $10,000 per year. In the United States, 50,000, but worldwide, it's 10. K?

That's comparable to standard of living in places like Mexico and Brazil. K. Not the poorest countries, which are Africa, but not as rich as us here. But still, 10,000, a year. So that's 50 times as much as it was in 1800. So the the the world population has gone up 7 times. The per capita income has gone up 50 times. K. Which by the way means the total product has gone up 350 times.

And if you think about it, it's even more than that because those people down there in Mexico are not only not starving as the people in the slums of Paris and London were in 1800, but they have things like televisions. They have the extras. It's above and beyond the needs of of meeting the daily grind of being able to feed yourself. Right. Right. They have things that the people who live then didn't even dream of. Right.

This is the excess, the abundance, or the infinite possibilities of resources. By by exploding the opportunities, by exploding the knowledge base, or by exploding this construct, you now see that there's a value to more. Because there's a there's a threshold. Once you've fed yourself, everything else is extra. Once you've got security around your home, to have a bigger house is extra. Right. But it's not just a bigger house.

I mean, just think of all the things that you and I have that John d Rockefeller never had. So when and you might cover it later, but, Mike, the question that's in my head and and how would you solve for x today to get people to understand? Besides, you're on the podcast. We have the age of infinite is part of our what we are promoting.

So aside from that, if you were to solve it on a 7,500,000,000 person, whatever the actual number is, scale, and you were to to make this, only thing I can think of, I I don't know. The the the only thing I can think of I mean, there's 2 things. 1 is through, you know, words, that is whether podcast, in print, television, any way to convey the message you try to teach people. And the other is through action. In other words, to introduce technologies that refute this idea of limited resources.

And this includes things that actually address perceived, resource shortages like new technologies for producing energy, fusion power, and so forth. But also so this is one reason why I'm very interested in opening up the exploration and settlement of Mars. Because if people can see that you know, if you think that humanity is limited to the earth, it seems self evident, although it's not true, that resources must be limited because there's only so much here. Mhmm. K?

I think that's a false position, by the way, but it appears to many people to be true. But if you can show that we are not limited to here, then it's manifestly clear that resources are unlimited. It's like look. You know, how many points are there in a line segment? Well, you've gone to college, and so you know there's an infinite number. Infinite. Yes. Okay. But and that's the same with the infinity of the Earth.

But it is not evident to a person who is mathematically unsophisticated that there's an infinite number of points in a line segment. K? That's that's not that clear. It's true, but it's not clear. K? On the other hand, if you talk about a line which extends infinitely in both directions, then anyone can see that it's infinite.

Yes. Yeah. So, Xi, your it's interesting your approach because it is baked into somewhat what we've spoken about in in our dialogue is that by proving and you've not heard these terms, you and I have not had these conversations. We call it moon and earth Mearth. I don't know if you know Burton Lee from and I were talking in so in, in San Francisco. We came up with this term Mearth.

Is that if people can see that between Mearth, there are infinite possibilities and infinite resources that there is a beyond earth, then what it does and it's positive oriented. It's not reductive. The world is very much today about you can't eat this. You can't do this. You shouldn't do that. You're going to destroy this.

But if we could show that the landscape, the place in which we live is bigger, the whole is bigger, and we can keep on growing that whole, then therefore, there will be infinite opportunities. And so you're you're outlining it with Mars as your which is in in parallel again, I would say, with the way in which I had viewed it, which is fascinating that you have you're very much articulating this better than I would have.

Yet it's right in line as if you can demonstrate the success of it, that there is more, then it's hard to argue that there isn't. Exactly. So the, your your second one was health, human thought transforms. How, going backwards into that, it transforms. What's your take on how human for a I I've gotta believe that you just have more than that sentence. When you say that, what what do you mean? Well, here's how it works. Okay. Technology progresses through 2 fundamental mechanisms.

1, and this has received a lot of comment, and for instance, people like Matt Ridley wrote a recent book, which is a pretty good book, called How Innovation Works, in which he says that technological progress occurs through technologies having sex. That is through combination and recombination. And this is unquestionably one important mechanism by which technology progresses. They are combined. Okay?

They they and there's an infinite number of combinations that can occur of existing technologies. You combine, you know, steel with wheels and and and rubber tires and and chain links and gears, and you can create a bicycle. You can combine, a bicycle with a combustion engine and with oil, and you have a motorcycle. You know, you can go on like this. Right? The the the the and as, an earlier writer put it, the more inventions there are, the more there is to invent with.

Okay. So that's one form of technological innovation, and it should be clear that that is an exponential process. Yep. Okay. But there's another. Okay? And this, I I think, is something that Ridley kinda missed because he goes into this whole thing about that that it's therefore the tinkerers who create technological progress. Tinkerers and I'm a tinkerer. I'm not a theoretical scientist, and I've made some inventions. Tinkerers are certainly responsible for a lot of technological progress.

But, really, what we are doing is we are applying the science that is known. Okay? I'm an applied scientist. That's what I am. Okay? And but, eventually, the tinkerers create enough inventions that it opens up new science. And new science then opens up all sorts of new possibilities. Okay? The the tinkerers of the pre industrial age who developed the means to exploit, well, obviously, animal and plant husbandry, the production of metals, the use of wind and water power.

They advanced a set of capabilities until the point when people could build steam engines and exploit and discover and then fully exploit the laws of thermodynamics. And that society based on, now, on coal, steel, and steam was able to create instruments that allowed it to penetrate deeper mysteries and understand the laws of electricity and chemistry. And so you have the second industrial revolution.

Now once the laws of electromagnetism, for example, are understood, and that understanding came in about the 100 years between 17/70/18/70 or so. Now you get all sorts of inventions, like telegraphs, and telephones, and electric light bulbs, and essentially generating electrical power, and and all sorts of things. They get elaborated within the context of that scientific foundation. Okay?

And so this is a whole new world of inventions that are literally inconceivable to a tinkerer of the middle ages. Okay? Yeah. Absolutely. Become possible. Okay? They they could there wasn't enough of an ecosystem for them to be able to draw upon to create any of this by themselves. So you needed the random collisions of innovation. You needed one idea put in front of somebody who had never thought of something.

And by seeing it, they say, oh, I never thought of doing it that way, but now I can solve for x. Right. Now if you then take this world of of fully, orchestrated, electromagnetism and also chemistry, the 2 great advances of the 19th century, That puts people in a position to discover, both nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. Okay?

And, well, actually, quantum mechanics has been elaborated in, many ways quite well in the late 20th century in in technological forms, including computers and and all of that. The whole information age is based on quantum mechanics. Right? Mhmm. Nuclear physics gets you to nuclear power and, that has been partially elaborated. I don't think it's thoroughly, for various reasons. But those two fields okay.

And now with quantum mechanics and and well, yes, nuclear physics because electron microscopes are based on nuclear physics, as well as previous knowledge, you you can We're opening up a new field of biotechnology, molecular biology, which will lead to biotechnology, of which we're seeing a little bit of right now, but which I think is gonna be one of the profound, areas of the 21st century.

And tinkerers will take these new laws and understandings of biology and make all sorts of things, programmed organisms that will produce, all sorts of things, essentially nanotechnology. Mhmm. And the the but this is thought, okay, that is science is an understanding of a realm of phenomena. Okay? And someone who practices or explores science does not have to be someone with a PhD who works in a university. K? And, obviously, in general, they were not until at least second half of the 1890.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. But an awful lot of science was discovered before there were such people. The the but no. It's that first neolithic girl who discovered the regularity that if you took the seeds from a berry bush and put them in the ground, it would produce identical berry bushes of exactly that desirable type. And therefore, she, if she did this, she could have them all growing right next to the village instead of having to wander all over the hills to find them. Alright?

Yeah. So that's an important regularity in nature, that the seeds of a plant produce exactly that plant and no other type. K? So you can create groves of blueberry bushes, if you will, if you exploit your knowledge of that phenomenon. It's amazing. What you just said is fascinating in that. Before that before that was known, it was unknown. That's right. Before it was known, it was unknown. And it was not a ubiquitous thought before this I mean, it had to spread.

And even that in and of itself is a a probably an amazing story. I don't know if there is one, but how it got to be a known theory. And I wonder how because you're talking about thought transforms. I wonder how these mechanisms how to accelerate them. Well, see, here's the thing. I mean, obviously, I think that I mean, systems of communication are required. I think to communicate that theory adequately, language was required. K? Language is a technology. K? Yes. Right?

But an organized language that can actually convey complex thoughts, was required. So to make that kind of invasion and then to transmit it, to explain it, to report it, okay, to promote it, that required language. The and then that that that thought packaged as language becomes transmittable, all around the world. Right? Now, of course, there are weaknesses to non written communication. It's subject to entropy. Yeah. That is, inaccurate reportage.

Thoughts can be lost when they're, people who fully understand them are are die. So written communication is the next step beyond that. Right? And it allows for much more complicated ideas to be set forth also, frankly, in some cases worked out in the 1st place. It helps out if you can write down the first thought and then you write down the second thought, and the first thought is still there right in front of you on the piece of paper. You work something out. Right?

And then you can also convey it as an organized argument on a page. So written communication. The the reason I the reason I say it, and I and I understand the progression you're going through, I'm not trying to cut you off, I'm trying to point in a direction, is I can see that a series of technologies, whether it be language, whether it be the ability to draw a picture, whether it be to communicate through, another means, whether it be a smoke signal, doesn't matter what it is.

Those technologies were used. And this idea of the seed propagated. It transferred. It went. Yet the the resources are limited, has superseded the resources are unlimited, narrative. Yeah. But think about this for yeah. Okay. But you see, it it it's a historic because while someone living in that time before she made that discovery may have thought that there's only one berry grove, and either we get it or the other tribe gets it.

Mhmm. Okay. With the help of this discovery, the number of berry groves there can be becomes unlimited, and furthermore, they can be much more conveniently located. Mhmm. Okay? The the the so this thought created expanded resources. Yes. K. And and and and we don't have to kill each other over who gets the berry growth. Yet why isn't that the predominant thought?

What happened is is kind of my question is you have this so far brilliant brilliantly articulated, message, and I and I love it because it not only agrees, I I see it. It makes logical sense. Why has this message 500 years ago, 800 years ago? Why does the one that has the negative, the the scarcity versus abundance theory as compared to the infinite. That's what we argue here is that you need scarcity to have abundance. There is a a minimalism to have that.

In this case, I'm saying, why didn't this one win? Why didn't Resources Unlimited win? Well, of course, this is a continual struggle. I don't think it's lost either. But it's a continual struggle because there are those who profit from the idea of scarcity. And as someone, I don't know, was it Mark Twain or I I forget who, said it's very difficult to teach someone something when they profit by not knowing it.

And, so if you have well, frankly, the dominant cast in our society is the warrior cast. K? There there, you know, that is the greatest respect you can gain in any profession is to have been a successful warrior. K? That that that that is true. K? Mhmm. And, and the warrior cast existence is justified by belief in scarcity.

It's fascinating to me that it's just fascinating that in the in the dominant in in the human species, it is more an alignment with the survival to be a resources are limited than it is to be resources are unlimited. And it the argument is there. There's there's evidence that being unlimited has happened through history, yet it's never taught. Not never. That's a bad word to say. It is infrequently shared as a construct within any society that I know of on Earth. Right.

Now the the the resources are limited. People also have an advantage in that it appears to be intuitively true. Yes. Okay? The the the and it's has a limited truth in the sense that at any one moment, the resources are limited. K? Yes. So that it's at one point in time, yes. So much food in my refrigerator. Okay? And the season ended, so therefore, the crops are gone. Look into the fields. There's no more corn. We are out of corn until next year.

So we have to be careful because we've run out of corn. Right. Now during I believe technological progress has been going on through all of human history. I see some books that people write, and they say there was no technological progress until the industrial revolution. And that's just nonsense. Okay? Really? You you really read these things?

Okay. I assure this is a a and therefore, they they claim that, Malthus was right up till the time when he lived, when in fact he was actually writing at the time when human technological progress was visibly taking off exponentially. But it is true that through most of human history, technological progress was so slow as to generally not be visible within a single human lifetime. K? Now you might see one innovation. You might well see one innovation.

Many people across history saw a particular innovation happen, but they didn't see the whole world change as a result of that one innovation. So these innovations would have to pile on separately here and there over the generations and gradually the world changed, but not within one person's lifetime for the most part. Now this does start to accelerate.

I believe that this acceleration is visible starting in the 1500, because now with the advent of long distance sailing ships, innovations made anywhere in the world can become known anywhere else within a couple of years instead of centuries. And so that, you have much more people contributing to technological progress because the technology of your society is not just being developed to by its own efforts, but through that of people all over the world.

But then, yes, then much faster starting in the 1800. And, you know, once telegraphs exist and ideas could be transmitted around the world within a day or 2, and then, of course, now essentially instantaneously. So the world gets linked. There's also more energy. There's also more population. The more people there are, the faster the rate of technological progress because people are the inventors. The more inventors, the more inventions.

And, of course, with the development of of certain innovations like the printing press, more people, have access to background. In other words, the more inventions there are, the more there is to invent with provided you know about those inventions. You can learn about whatever's happening so that you can iterate on the iterations. Right. You find out what what's available. I I don't remember I don't remember the book that it came out of.

I think it was called civilizations, but they talked about in the dark ages, one reason the Europeans had become masters at military and especially ship fighting was during that time because Europe had been broken up into pieces, the fiefdoms and and groups that they were fighting so often that they had to iterate new weaponry quickly to fight against another adversary who created another weapon for somebody else, who learned it from somebody else.

And one reason they argue the argument of the east versus west and the, being Europe against Asia was that there was so much fighting going on that the innovations were coming at such a rapid clip that they created, for example, the ship that turned sideways with all the cannons on the side. That was because of rapid innovation through the dark ages. So it's amazing that individuals will not can it's difficult, as you're saying it, to bring it all the way up to the industrial revolution.

There was a lot going on prior to the industrial revolution. Oh, certainly. Certainly, a person living in the 1700 was living in a very different world from a person living in the Roman Empire. Yes. Completely different. So going going back, and I and I can understand. I'm I think you're a solutions oriented person. So at the back of my mind as I'm trying to pull from your head, where is the reliever kind of doing the same thing that we're talking about?

What do you know that I don't know that can create a random collision of innovation between the 2 of us? Where there's a spark that goes off where I say, ah, I've not done that. Not the traditional, but I, David, have not done that to help the knowledge of the age of infinite, to help the knowledge that there is possibilities to solve these challenges, and that we are on the cusp. We're not 5 g and what is it? 5 g and IoT, everybody calls the 4th industrial revolution.

It's the information age just faster to me. But the age of infinite is when we cross that precipice and we say, oh my. We can have everything and everything simultaneously. We will not run out. Yeah. Well, that's the key thing. We're not gonna run out unless we decide to kill each other over an imaginary shortage. Some of the the the third one you had tossed out, we use an amount has been growing exponentially. You've thrown a few of them out there.

What are some what are some others that were growing at an exponential clip that Well, I mean, you can take things as mundane as oil and gas. American oil and gas reserves today are triple what they were 20 years ago. Why? Well, Frankie, the the the the, you know, and and and so forth. I mean, what was the oil and gas reserves of the world in 1858? 0. Yes. The the the the the that we started getting in when colonel Drake drilled the first well in 18 59.

You know, the resources are growing just exponentially. There's just no question about do you know that well, cheers. 1932, Franklin Roosevelt's running for president. Slogan, a chicken in every pot. Could you imagine someone trying to run for president today on that slogan? Vote for me and you will be able to eat chicken. I mean, ridiculous. Right? The the you can go to the supermarket right now here and you can buy chicken for a dollar a pound.

The the minimum wage in the United States is $7 an hour. So that means that in 9 minutes work, someone working at minimum wage, not the average wage, but the minimum wage can buy a pound of chicken. 9 minutes. The the it it's it this is incredible. The the counterfactual nature of this assertion that the growing population is gonna impoverish all. It things have radically changed. You know, in in before World War 2, a substantial number of Americans did not own shoes.

But if you think about that, they didn't own a pair of shoes. It's the, my friends in Moscow would often share with me how when they were growing up, they would watch someone run down the street and it didn't matter what they were running for. They would immediately run out the door, their parents or somebody and start following them because typically, something was for sale.

It could be, a shoes shoes, it could be a hat or something, and they would buy it no matter what it was because they had the ability to sell it. Right. Well, that, of course, those shortages are due to the communist system Yeah. Which wouldn't let supply meet demand and and therefore, it was always creating shortages. But, I I mean, there were certainly shoes in America in the 19 twenties for anyone who had the money to buy them, but not everyone did.

And in fact, and especially among, Negroes and poor whites in the American South. And the and the pea they traveled barefoot. And so they would get hookworms in their feet, and it would sap their energy. And this is is one place where you get the stereotype of the slow, lethargic, southerner, especially black southerners, of that period. You know, general Patton didn't believe that Negroes should be allowed to drive tanks.

And not because he was a racist, although perhaps he was, but that's not why he thought they shouldn't drive tanks. So he thought their reflexes were too slow. Now you think about that, because obviously, black people dominate basketball, which requires very fast reflexes. Mhmm. Okay? So this but there was a popular stereotype of black people as being slow and lethargic at that time. And that is because a lot of them had hookworms because they didn't own shoes. So if let's not go past.

Let's go future. Yeah. When you are thinking about going forward from this point forward, and you have expressed some fears of the dominating rule saying there is this, the challenge that could cause global annihilation, or at least a lot of challenges for a lot of people for a very long time. How when you look forward, what do you see are some of those exponentials that are required today to get to a point of the age of infinite? Well, the exponential is ongoing.

I think one very important one right now is nuclear power. I think, well, frankly, Malthusians have launched a war against nuclear power. When the Sierra Club you know, in in the sixties, environmentalists were for nuclear power because it didn't create smoke like fossil fuels. Mhmm. Global warming wasn't a thing, but conventional pollution was, certainly.

And, so the but in 1974, following the publication by the Club of Rome of their magnum opus, the limits to growth, which claimed we've been run out of everything by the year 2000 because of limited resources, the Sierra Club came out against nuclear power, reversing its position based on not fear of radiation, but that and and I quote, you can see this in their document, that it could cause unnecessary economic growth. Really? Really. Okay?

And so the Malthusians launched a war against nuclear power because it solved the problem they need to have. Because at that time also, the critique of fossil fuels was that they were going to run out. With the yes. The, peak oil and everything else that has been proper over the years. Okay. Now since global warming became a thing, the critique of fossil fuels has shifted to the problem is they're not going to run. I I I I just I was just sharing this morning with somebody in in the UK.

We're talking, and I said, there's this one event I went to that had to do a lot with power and energy in the future. And and they were every speaker got up on stage and talked about how there is now going to be, there's this unlimited amount of oil. And I asked the people running the conference, I said, do you mind if I shake things up a little bit? And the woman looked at me kind of strange and she knew my history. And she said, I'm gonna let you do it, but be careful.

And I went up and I said, look, everybody in this audience has you're you're sucking in the information as if it's true. The speakers are here to give you their perspective. It doesn't mean it's true. So while you were listening, I was looking up every single projection by all the forecasters, futurists that were talking. And almost every one of them of 10 years ago or 15 years ago talked about peak oil. Mhmm. What happened? They found fracking.

I said, your job is to assess, figure out, determine if this is practical, including what I'm saying, and then say, is this going to continue on the way it is with and we talk about innovation and the challenges and the and the opportunities that come about. So, yes, this now, if global warming isn't we're not going to run out in in the near future, and that is 50 degrees Celsius or a 125 degrees in in Arizona, or Bangladesh or India having these heat waves, Germany, that are excessive.

That could mean that Saudi Arabia during the summer might be too hot for people to live. Right. Well, the thing is, nuclear power solves that problem. And the the problem with nuclear power in the west has been a political war against it. The tie I mean, the people say, oh, no. It's economics. It costs too much to build a nuclear power plant. That's nonsensical.

The reason why it costs so much to build a nuclear power plant right now is because a regulatory obstacle course has been created, which has obstacle course has been created, which has increased the time it takes to build a nuclear power plant from 4 years to 16 years, and even give interveners a chance to prevent the plant from opening after it's been built as happened with, for instance, the Shoreham nuclear power plant in New York where governor Mario Cuomo, the father of the current disaster, did that.

Yeah. The the the but in South Korea today, it still takes 4 years to build a nuclear power plant. And, and the problem's not safety. There's been over a 1000 pressurized water reactors operating on land or or sea since 60 years or more, and not a single person has ever been harmed by a radiation release from war. This is strictly a political problem.

And you have people like, particularly, the German greens, incredible, who will talk all day about global warming, and then you say nuclear power, they say no way. And and in fact, they're shutting down Germany's nuclear power plants and replacing it with burning lignite. Yeah. Didn't they just announce that recently? The the big news is that they're gonna shut them all down? And Yeah. Well, the this was not that recently. In the pretext was Fukushima, which is ridiculous.

They don't have tidal waves sweeping Germany. I mean, that's impossible. And And there were design flaws too with Fukushima, where it was Yes and no. But, I mean, frankly, there are 28,000 people killed in Fukushima from the tidal wave and earthquake and falling buildings and drowning and exposure. And the whole city was destroyed. Not one person in the city, outside of the plant gate was exposed to any significant radiation dose.

I mean, the and the fact that only 3 out of the 6 nuclear power plants there were destroyed when the whole rest of the city was swept away. Yeah. I mean, there were people killed in Fukushima from an exploding oil, facility be that was set off by the time. In other words, you know, it it's like somebody saying, what would happen to New York City if the Soviets hit the Indian Point power plant with a hydrogen bomb?

Well, if the Soviets hit the Indian power point with a hydrogen bomb, the people in New York City would have a lot more Right. There's a lot more that they have to worry about than that. There there's a guy I I don't know if you've heard the name Michael Schellenberger? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Shellenberger. He wrote a good book, apocalypse never. And he he said his whole life, he was anti anti nuclear. He was involved with solar panels. He was involved with wind.

And he did a TED talk, and he said, I am here to say I was wrong. That nuclear is the answer. That with all he showed a room, a picture of a room, and he said, this is like 60 years of waste as compared to what comes out of a coal burning plant or deforest Which is millions of tons of waste. Exactly. Correct. Which is And and by the way, and the toxic waste from coal fired power plants has infinite half life.

Yes. The the the the and it is so much that no one can even I mean, you can't have a repository for it. The thing No. This it would how would you do that? No. You can't. So it that that's a stick. And and fossil fuels in general, you can't store all that c o two. So so, again, we've got a prevailing economic reason for this group to be held or this construct I keep on calling the construct.

This construct being held underneath the water and drowned so that resources are unlimited cannot get a breath of air. Yeah. Well, it's true. We just gotta show we gotta make resources unlimited. I I don't I'm gonna have to go in 5 minutes. So Oh, you are? Oh, you're gonna you're destroying me here. This is great. Alright. But We we have we have two ways to do this. I I've only done this once with somebody else.

We could stop here and pick up at another time and continue with 45, or we can end it here. And I I really would like to explore winning. I I think we should go, okay. You know, 10 minutes tops, and then I mean, go as quick. How long can a podcast be and have anyone listen to it? Actually, our longest is 4 and a half hours, and we've had a lot of people listen to it. Well, I think we can go another 10 minutes, and then Okay. I I do have to close. So that that's fine.

So the challenge that I'm having with all of this is even if there's a proof of concept. So far, that proof of concept has not won. And the narrative is the the narrative we're using is the narrative that's not working. So it's storytelling. Robert Fulton didn't invent the steam engine. There was another guy who invented it. I can't remember his name off top of my head right now. 20 some odd years earlier, steamboat.

He went back and forth across a river near Boston, and he died in a poor brokenhearted derelict in the streets. He was a financier and a marketer, and that's how he got credited with the Steamboat. The question here is for with what you're saying is, how do we change that narrative so that it makes it over the top, over the hurdle so that it becomes bigger than life? Well, once again, by writing about it and doing it.

And to me, the clearest and most profound demonstration of this principle of unlimited resources would be opening up new worlds off planet because that makes it sensuous. That, you know, you can try to explain to people there's infinite number of points in a line segment or you can just show them here's a line. It's obviously infinite.

And yet at the same time, do you know how many conversations I've had to say and I am not a space person, yet I've been doing this for 7 years, is I've had this when people have argued, yes, but we're going to we're gonna use up all the resources on the moon. And I say, do you know how big the moon is? I mean and and I've had to have these conversations. So individuals, while we can travel around the world, the majority of people still don't travel that far.

Or if they do, they don't see the realities of the opportunities there. So I'm I'm not I I'm trying to figure out the so because we have a limited amount of time, I I will wanna talk with you at another time about this because I'd like to go further. Is if you were I don't even know what question to ask you in the short time is I'd like to what would you like to say? I mean, we've got 10 minutes. Where would you like to go? It's up to you.

Well, I just think that this is the most important issue, of our time is refuting this ideology. This ideology threatens humanity. And, and it's it's there's nothing more dangerous than this idea that there isn't enough for everyone. Okay? And, you know, people will stick with this with fanaticism.

You know, the Club of Rome, 1972, they published this book called The Limits to Growth in which, they said we're gonna run out of everything by the year 2000, and they proved it because they had a computer, which was a novelty in 1970 2, and they said, look. We put in the data here on all the coal reserves and the copper reserves and zinc reserves, then we put in the data on how fast it's being used. And voila. The copper's gone in 28 years. The coal is gone in 32 years. Whatever.

You know, it's all gone, and you can't argue with it because computers always do math correctly. And the and of course, they were wrong on all counts. But now here is the most amazing thing about this. About 10 years ago, they had a reunion. Club of Rome had a reunion. And they actually published the proceedings of their reunion as a book called The Limits to Growth Revisited. And they said the following.

They said, a lot of people think we were wrong because our predictions did not come true, But we were fundamentally right. We have to be right because there's only so much here. And so what? It didn't run out by the year 2000. It's gonna run out by the year 2030. Right. We were just off. We were off in our calculation by years, but we were not off by our premise. Our our theory was But in fact, they weren't just off by years.

They were fundamentally No. What I mean is that just what they're saying. We're just off by years, so don't worry about it. We we the we we're still right. Yeah. Okay. The the the the just like people who claim that, well, Malthus was fundamentally right. He just didn't realize that the world's food would be expanded by the development of the industrial, of the agricultural Midwest in the United States. So we were all Actually, Malthus was very familiar with the existence of North America.

And the the the the the, and and that was not the point. Because, actually, had all that been done was we opened up additional farmland in Ohio and Illinois, and they continued to produce at the same rate of crops elsewhere in the year 1800, it wouldn't change the result very much at all. K? But do you know last year, the state of Iowa produced more corn than the entire United States did in 1947. Okay. That's 1947, let alone 1807. Okay?

And the the the the and the United States was already an agricultural superpower in 1947. Okay? The you know, this is the thing. What they missed was that the product doesn't come from the land. It comes from thought. Okay? Land doesn't produce crops, farmers produce crops. And farmers produce crops based on the technology that is available to them, which is a product of human thought. I I agree.

There's, there's a number that I, a 1000000 years ago, there were a 1,000,000 there were a it was a 1000000 a 1000 1000000 years ago, there were a 1000 chickens, pigs, no, it's not a million. I can't remember. A 1,000, there was a 1000000 pigs, chickens and cows on this planet. And today, whether you believe in eating meat or not, there are 69,000,000,000 animals consumed every year. Right.

Yeah. Henry George, once again, in that very same reputation of Malthus that he wrote in 18/70, he said, what's the difference between men and jayhawks? Both men and jayhawks eat chickens. K? But the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens. The more men, the more chickens. Okay. Well, I'm gonna leave it with those chickens. I there's a lot of questions I'd like to pursue with you at another time. And what I'd like to do is I wanna thank you, for taking the time with us today.

I I truly appreciate it, and it's fascinating the direction you went as I think our guests know that I don't know what we're going to talk about prior to the time that we have the conversation. I wanna thank everybody out there for taking the time out of your day to listen in. I do hope that you've learned something today that makes a difference in your life and the lives of others.

And once again, the Project Moon Hunt Foundation, we are looking to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, the moon hut, to the accelerate development of an earth and space based ecosystem. Then to use those endeavors, the paradigm shifting thinking, the innovations, and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species. And, Robert, what is the single best way for someone to get in contact with you if they wanted to?

Well, I'm on Twitter, and, that's an easy way. Okay. For us, you could reach me at [email protected]. We are on Twitter at Project Moon Hut. We are on Facebook. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Instagram. And that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening. Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the Age of Infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which have in turn led to the renaming of periods into ages.

You've personally just lived through an amazing experience, the information age, and what a ride it's been. Now that consider just for a moment that we might be living through another transitional age, the age of infinite, An age that is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefining lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and resources. The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that has come to life as together we can explore and create new definitions of our future.

The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hut Foundation, where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, a moon hut, we were named by NASA, through the accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem, then to use the endeavors, the paradigm shifting thinking, and the innovations and turn them back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. Today, we're going to be exploring an amazing topic.

The topic is resources are unlimited, and we have with us today Robert Zubrin. How are you, Robert? I'm fine. Thanks for inviting me. You're welcome. I I've got to share in this one moment that of the over 250 interviews have been recorded and over, 25100 that I've done, you are the first person who's come up with a title that even after working through it, we have stuck with that same title. So you've got an honorary degree. It doesn't take you far, but it's there.

So, just a little bit about Robert. We don't go into much detail as most people do know. He is the founder of the Mars Society, which was founded in 1998. He's been the driving force between behind Mars Direct. He wrote the book, The Case for Mars. He's been in many leadership positions, including, in the space industry. And what's interesting, I'm not far. I'm in about an hour from where he went to school, the University of Rochester.

He got a degree in mathematics, then nuclear engineering in MS. He's, astronautics. He's got a PhD in nuclear engineering. Fascinating just to read your background, Robert. So do you have an outline for us to follow? Well, more or less. Okay. We'll take them more or less. Okay. I assert there's no such thing as a natural resource, that there are only natural raw materials. I assert that it is human thought that transforms materials into resources.

I assert that, despite all the resources that we use, the amount of resources in the world have been growing exponentially, since the dawn of civilization and are growing explosively exponentially today. I assert that, the reason why the standard of living, has gone up over time is not despite the increase in population, but because of the increase in population. And I assert that, that this process, is going to continue, indefinitely. I have I will be honest with you.

I have shared with few people that I was fascinated by your your angle and considering we're called the age of infinite infinite possibilities and infinite resources, You're nailing it with the topic. So let's start with number 1, that you, you claim you you believe that there is no such thing as natural resources. So let's start with the first one. Yeah. Sure. There there are no such thing as natural resources.

The, you know, if you take human beings in the state of nature, then to the this most primitive of of human beings, land, which is, the item most generally, listed as a natural resource, was not a natural resource. Natural land was not a natural resource until we invented agriculture. And then all of a sudden, land as such became a value. And the value of the land has increased, enormously as advance of agricultural technology has increased.

Oil, okay, to take another famous natural resource, was not a natural resource 200 years ago. It was not a natural resource until people invented oil drilling and refining and machines that could run on the product. Until that time, oil was just some stuff that sometimes poured out of the ground and ruined your farm.

You know, if Napoleon and Bonaparte and his generals had been contemplating invading some country and they were listing its natural resources, they would not have listed oil, nor would they have listed aluminum, which was unknown to science until, shortly after the Napoleonic period and unknown to consumers until 20th century. I mean, aluminum was there.

It's, I think the 3rd most common element in the Earth's crust, but it was unknown, and it was certainly unknown as any kind of resource other than, as dirt. You know? Aluminum did not become a resource until there was electricity that could separate aluminum from oxygen and aluminum oxide, and all of a sudden, this dirt became a metal.

And not only that, a very, interesting metal that was lighter than iron or steel, and, doesn't corrode and and conducts electricity and heat quite well and so forth. Uranium, of course, was not a resource until we invented nuclear power. And, deuterium is not a resource today. You know, if you hold up a bottle, a can rather, a v 8, v 8 comes in cans. Yep. And I'm holding right now. I can't see it, but I've got it. I can't see it, but I can understand you holding it.

Yes. Okay. An 11 and a half fluid ounce can of v 8 that I drank this morning. Okay? And it says on it, it contains 60 calories of energy, which is about a quarter of a megajoule. Wow. Okay. That's what was in the v 8. In the water that the that that was part of the v 8, in there was deuterium atoms, and they contained 4,500 megajoules, not a quarter of a megajoule, 4,500 megajoules of energy if they had been used in a fusion reactor.

But, okay, we we don't recognize that this, little can of v 8 contains 4,500 megajoules, which is 18,000 times as much energy as is in the fruit juice. It's, 350 times as much energy as this can would contain if I filled it with gasoline, was in the deuterium in the water in the VA. But we don't give it we don't get we're we're not giving it a value because it has no value as a as a human substrate. Does it not have, why isn't it listed? Why would that not be something?

We don't currently have the technology that would release that energy. But does the human body also not release the energy? No. The human body doesn't release that. That would have to be released by nuclear fusion. Okay. I didn't know if there was any type of reaction that could happen with it. So it just passes through us. That's right. And so you're taking that much energy, 350 cans of v eights worth of of gasoline energy. And what let's see. So this is a 3rd of a quart.

So, about a 100 gallons of gasoline. You're just pissing it away. The literally. Yes. I I completely get it. And because it's it's not seen. But it is in other words, it's the technology that creates the resource, whether it's land, oil, aluminum, uranium, or deuterium. Then the I I don't know if you've ever looked into this. The word natural resource, do you have you ever looked into where that came from?

Well, it was assumed by people that somehow it was there in the state of nature, but it's a, an incorrect concept. It it's simply not, you know, in our there there was no aluminum metal on this planet until till the early 1800. That, you know, that because until that time, there wasn't the technology to create it. The resources are created by resourceful people. That's where the resource comes from.

The the irony of you using aluminum was the first day that I had been involved and classify this space industry is the I was asked, do you know the story of aluminum?

And or and where can and I knew some of it from my chemistry and my biology background, but he they went into how it's it was $900 an ounce and kings and queens used to use it for their silverware that instead of the gold and silver that the Washington Monument's cap is made of aluminum because it was so valuable at the time, and now we use it as aluminum foil. We use it in our laptops. We use it all over as a as a product or a means to create products and services.

So it's interesting that you went right to that one. Thanks. Yeah. No. It's a natural example to use. So the when you talk about land, and we had spoken about this just a few minutes or, on our call to set up this program, you had said that the same thing happened with land soon as it became agriculture before that around the world or any no one ever even considered it. And I think you used the American Indian or you used some other populations who just never even considered it to be a resource.

Right. Okay. You know, we read about Peter Minuet buying Manhattan from the Indians for $24 worth of of, trade goods. And, you know, people look at that and they say, oh, boy. He really took them for a ride. The Indians must have thought they were taking Peter Minguitt for a ride. He's giving us $24 worth of good stuff for nothing for nothing. And, because to them, it was nothing.

So I I I wonder when this transformation of natural resources or resources itself, having a scarcity mentality came about? Was it was it the development of economics? Was it not just agriculture? Was it there had to be more than just farming. Well, I I don't know. I don't know the history of that, but I believe certainly farming made people think about, land as a resource. Now, of course, farmland as such is a human creation. Okay?

Because it is one from nature, from weeds, from trees, from all sorts of things that want to use it. You know, the first farms in America were created, through a great deal of labor by pioneers, and they turned prairie into farmland. But I guess, though, traditionally, in Europe, which is where economics was invented. Mhmm. By the time economics was invented, which would be the 1600 or so, the land had been tamed long ago, and so it was there.

And either you owned it or someone else owned it, and you could get it by invading another country, and taking their land. But in fact, originally, it had the land had been created as as farmland. But but even so, the very concept of of of land, of being worth something, depends upon the existence of agriculture. Well, the I I just looked it up just to see what the Google definition of. I think this is Google.

It said materials or substances such as minerals, forest, water, and fertile land that can occur in nature and can be used for economic gain. The economic gain was the the end end of it. So, yes, it, it probably coincided with the economic value trade, but even, bartering systems would have had something to do with resources or natural resources. Interesting. I never had thought about it in that way. So how do you when you you obvious when I asked you the question, what did you want to speak?

What are we going to talk about in the beginning? You came up resources are unlimited. Why is this so important to you? What was what was top of mind that this was the topic you thought we should speak about? Well, this is is the question. You see, you know, people talk about the dangers facing humanity. What is the existential dangers facing the human race today? And certainly, the most fashionable answer to that is global warming, followed by resource exhaustion.

And then there are some people still talking about the population explosion. And then there's various people that have some other ideas. But the, but I don't think that these are the existential dangers to humanity. I think climate change is quite real, but I do not think it is remotely as dangerous as something else. And what that something else is is the idea that resources are limited. Therefore, there's only so much to go around.

It is this idea that caused the great disasters in the 20th century. The great disasters in 20th century certainly were not caused by climate change, nor were they caused by, resource exhaustion, because resources were not exhausted in the 20th century, nor was it caused by overpopulation. The world's population at the time of, say, World War 2 was less than a third of what it is today. The the the they were caused by the idea of finite resources.

The idea of finite resources is what made Europe in 1914, when it was more prosperous than it ever had been before in human history, tear itself to pieces. Okay? Made them kill each other. You know? And then again, in the second World War, you know, here's Hitler saying the laws of existence require uninterrupted killings that the better may live. Germany needs living space. It was total nonsense. Total nonsense. Germany never needed any living space.

Germany today has less space than it had in the 3rd Reich, a larger population, and a vastly higher standard of living, which was achieved not by killing other people to steal their land and their cows. They did that. It did not contribute to their, prosperity, and in fact, ultimately, they were unsuccessful in that.

The the reason why Germany's standard a little today is higher than it was in the Third Reich is because of the advance of technology, globe, which has been a global project to which Germans have made some contributions, but which, much more have been made by people all over the world, including notably people they were trying to exterminate. And had they been successful, truly successful, they would have been much poorer today than they are.

Much poorer, be because they would have eliminated people who were creating the new arrays of resources that became available to them and everyone else. And, so this it it you know, look. I I happen to know for a fact, because I've spoken to them, that there are people in the American National Security Establishment in positions of high responsibility who believe that war with China is inevitable. I've spoken to them too. Yeah. And why do they believe that?

Well, because there's only so much stuff in the world. There's only so much oil, for example. And if the Chinese start consuming oil per capita at the same rate that we do, if they all had cars and start driving around like Americans, Europeans, well, there won't be enough oil. So we have to stop them.

And you could bet your bottom dollar that there are people in Beijing who in comparable positions who look at this problem from the opposite side of the chessboard who think exactly the same thing, except they've got a different party in mind that needs to be eliminated. K? And if this kind of thinking is allowed to prevail, there will be war, and it will be far more devastating than the wars of the 20th century because our weaponry is much more capable today. And and so, this is the problem.

This is the idea that must be defeated for humanity to survive. I I have to I I have a smile on my face because I I want to know when you the name of our podcast is the Age of Infinite, and inside of it, we're saying there's infinite possibilities and infinite resources that is part of the podcast. So as you're outlining this to some degree, we're we're in parallel, a lot. We're in alignment in this.

And at the same time, you're coming at it from a semantics point of view that the the terminology, the expression, the belief system behind these words are more dangerous than the than the reality of them themselves. That's right. We're not in danger of there being too many people. We're in danger from people who think there are too many people. How how did you stumble, find, discover, identify this construct?

Because you you're articulating some of what, we've spoken about as as our Project Moon Hut Foundation and what we're working on. But how did you discover it? What was your path? Well, k. You know, a lot of different we came from a number of different angles. My family is, of Jewish heritage, and, half of them were wiped out in the Holocaust, except for my aunt Yolan who survived Auschwitz. And so this question of what would drive people to this has always been of of considerable interest to me.

And, and I researched the war and, quite thoroughly, even as a kid. And I learned a lot about it, and, you know, a lot of Jewish people have a incomplete idea of the Holocaust because they're focused on, the part of it that happened to them. But in fact, it was much bigger. Yes, 6,000,000 Jews, but 3,000,000 Poles, 20,000,000 Russians, half a 1000000 Greeks, 2,000,000 Serbs. You could go on and on.

And and then I started reading into the Nazi documents and their their own concepts, and they had this thing they called the hunger plan, and they literally intended to exterminate over a 100,000,000 people, the the by taking away the food of whole regions. The the you know, we only know about the holocaust that actually happened, not the one that was planned to happen. And it was, enormous. And and then I I started looking at the roots of this ideology. And, and it goes back.

It was certainly not original with Hitler. It goes back to Malthus and, the belief that, there's only so much resources in the world, that population is always gonna outrun production.

And the the but then the variant on that given to people taking, a a somewhat distorted version of Darwinism on this that, well, yes, there's only so much to go around, but the silver lining is, that means that the inferior people will be eliminated because they won't be able to get in or else they will be outcompeted by the better people. And, you know, so this this ideology, you know, you you might actually call Nazism National Social Darwinism. That is the the Mhmm.

There's only so much to go around, but this means that the strong, must and should eliminate the weak. And who is strong and who is weak is basically determined by who eliminates who. Mhmm. Yes. That's that's how that matter is resolved. And, you know, you take it from there. And then I see this in various forms today. I see this ideology continuing today that this was not put to rest on May 8, 1945, and that in in other forms with some different specifics.

But with the fundamentals being the same, this is still around. And, and the effects of it could be absolutely catastrophic as they have been, so far. I I come I I'm gonna say I completely follow you of what based upon what you've said. I I would possibly believe that some of your chemistry background, some of your scientific studies also demonstrated some transformational changes that tied to this construct. Well well, no. Here's the thing about that.

That that enabled me to see the falsity of the idea. Okay. Okay? That is That's what I meant is you that's right. You saw through a different lens what an an average individual who hasn't taken these disciplines or studied them. You saw an angle that said it doesn't make sense. Right. Well, yes. In other words, look. That almost anyone well, most people will react viscerally to these ideas and say these are evil. These are wrong. Okay? Right?

You you you don't need a PhD to see that they are evil. K? But the Nazis, would respond to such people saying, well, you're just not facing the facts. You need to harden your heart. There isn't enough to go around. Right? There isn't enough to go around. And, you know, you know, you can say, up yours, Adolf. But they they they they they they they they were quite effective. It was a it was great. Yeah. They they they were quite effective.

In other words, the Nazis would say that people who denied this ethos of survival of the fittest were denying the fossil record. What are you? Some kind of of of know nothing bible thumper that you don't think that this is how the world works? And in fact, Hitler was quite explicit in saying that the idea that there can be perpetual plenty through science and invention, was a, a a a a Jewish conspiracy to deny the necessity for war. Okay?

So in other words, they they they they they they, They're tying multiple constructs together simultaneously to create an an emotional reaction to scarcity, an emotional reaction to a population, as a a means by which, you're ignorant because you're religious. Therefore, you don't understand the basics of facts. So the it's actually a multiplicative construct that boils down to resources are limited.

And in doing so, you you create a visceral reaction that says, I've gotta keep what I've got because somebody else might take it or I Right. I could run out. But it also you see, this idea that resources are limited and therefore some people must be crushed. Okay. Well, what does it do? It means someone must be empowered to do the crushing. Okay? Therefore, tyranny is necessary. Oppression is necessary. And and this is why intellectuals who expound this will never lack for sponsors.

And it's also a popular ideology among those who would make a living as the enforcers, okay, themselves. Okay. This is why this was very popular with German militarists. K? In other words, if you say humanity progresses by superior races eliminating inferior races, then you say, well, then we have a moral purpose because we are the best at it. And the we are the principle of progress, where is necessary because it eliminates the weak, and so forth and so on.

And and so that's why those those kinds of thinking go go together. They provide justification. Once again, it is this idea of in other words, those who would do evil would like it justified as being necessary. It it's, and I think you probably have already guessed I am Jewish too. So I'm Yeah. I'm going back in time and I'm saying, okay. So this was a a weaponization of a construct.

If we go back in time, I've got to believe the same weaponization happen happened whether it be Alexander the Great, it be the the Mongolian Empire. I've, the the Egyptians. Is is this a historic, cycle that we're in? A a a theme that's easily used, therefore, easily leveraged, and a means by which to to promote a certain belief structure? And is the was Nazism just one of those? Well, yes. But, look, the larger theme is that, you know, what we're doing is necessary. Okay?

Now prior to the modern age, people might find necessity in theological terms. They're doing it on God's behalf. Okay? Mhmm. Things like this. But if you take the modern world in which people are secular, basically, in terms of their effective motivations, at least within the advanced countries, then you have to pose this these sorts of motivations, the the higher good, as it were, in secular terms. You're not exterminating people because they're unbelievers.

You're exterminating them because they're useless eaters, and and and and and so forth. So, the the so the this scientific anti humanism, if you will, or pseudo scientific, but in any case, secular. Well, there may have been some, prior writers. I'm sure there were. But the one who really made a splash with this was, Malthus. And he wrote circa 1800. Oh, okay. I didn't realize it's that early.

Yeah. Sure. And so Malthus, you know, Malthus himself was a professor at the, British East India Company, College that was used to train the administrators of the British Empire. And, so his theory initially was basically starvation that the British were creating in India through excessive taxation, rack renting, the suppression of manufacturers, so forth. K? In other words, this this poverty is inevitable. See, we're we're not doing this.

And and and Malthus himself, I mean, said the Irish must be swept from the land. There's too many of them. And Malthus' own students, and by his students, I mean people who actually sat in his classes, not people who just read his book Mhmm. Administered the mass death that occurred in Ireland in the 18 forties. And, and and people today, many represent that as a famine. Well, actually, it wasn't. The potato crop failed, to be sure, but Ireland was exporting grain and beef the entire time.

Irish didn't starve because there was no food in Ireland. They starved because they had no money. The your your next point had to be with thought transforms, which I we're we're we're we're touching on the fringes of it. There's the transforme and the transform more. I don't know if those are the proper terms. That you're saying that this construct, this development, this theory, this promise, this propaganda created this environment for the Irish.

But at the same time, somebody had to believe that the famine was due to potatoes. And Look. The the potatoes look. These people were incredibly poor, and the only food they could afford to buy were potatoes. Potatoes grow with incredible density of caloric value per per acre. And but the the thing is I mean, we're talking about Ireland in the 18 forties. We're talking about a world of steamships, railroads, and telegraphs, and mass circulation newspapers. We're not talking about the bronze age.

Right. Okay? We're we're we're talking about a world in which if you have money, you can get food. It's that simple. Alright? That's how it goes. So, I mean, look. I don't grow any food. No. Okay. But I have plenty to eat because I have a job that pays a salary. And, you know, the vast majority of people in our world today don't grow their own food, or at least, you know, in in our part of the world, United States, Europe, so forth. They they they manage to eat because they have a salary.

I don't worry about the fact that, you know, the food in my refrigerator will keep me alive for a week or so. But I'm not here terrified about that imminent starvation when my refrigerator runs out because I know I can buy more. Right? Yep. So this isn't an issue for me. And, actually, it wasn't that different in Ireland in the 18 forties, except up till the failure of the potato crop, whether you had money or not, you could get food. Okay? But now, at least in the form of potatoes.

But but then the crop failed. And the fact they had no cash because, once again, taxation, rack renting, and the, British forbid, the setting up of factories in Ireland. So they wanted all the the, you know, this was the industrial revolution and they wanted all these textile factories to be in England. Mhmm. So if there had been factories, then they could have found work and and bought food. But no. So the the the yeah.

Someone could starve to death in the presence of food if their hands and feet are tied and they can't get to the food. And so that's it. Now, so so where are we? So this this ideology Go ahead. This ideology was created for the purpose of justifying oppression. And, in fact, you know, Henry George, the American reformer of the 18 seventies, critiqued Malthus on exactly that basis, saying, this is saying that, you know, poverty is not a a function of of oppression.

It's simply a law of nature of which it would be as useless to protest against as the law of gravitation. But you're you're articulating exactly the the the what I'm seeing is that this this belief structure, this thought was put into place and weaponized. Yet at the same time, the messaging that came out of these experiences was not the one that you're promoting, that resources are unlimited. What what is not a where has the mess where did why hasn't this come out?

Why is this not the ubiquitous overarching theme that people are talking about? Well, because it it pays intellectuals to promote the opposite point of view. The the the I mean, just look at this. Okay? When Malthus wrote his book in 1800, the world had a population of 1,000,000,000 people and the average per capita income in today's money was about $200 a year. K?

That's the world discussed in the novels of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo in which people in London and Paris are worried about whether they are going to starve to death in the capitals of the leading nations of the earth. Okay? Now here we are 200 years later. The world population is 7,000,000,000 people. And far from the amount per person having gone down, the average per capita income in the world is $10,000 per year. In the United States, 50,000, but worldwide, it's 10. K?

That's comparable to standard of living in places like Mexico and Brazil. K. Not the poorest countries, which are Africa, but not as rich as us here. But still, 10,000, a year. So that's 50 times as much as it was in 1800. So the the the world population has gone up 7 times. The per capita income has gone up 50 times. K. Which by the way means the total product has gone up 350 times.

And if you think about it, it's even more than that because those people down there in Mexico are not only not starving as the people in the slums of Paris and London were in 1800, but they have things like televisions. They have the extras. It's above and beyond the needs of of meeting the daily grind of being able to feed yourself. Right. Right. They have things that the people who live then didn't even dream of. Right.

This is the excess, the abundance, or the infinite possibilities of resources. By by exploding the opportunities, by exploding the knowledge base, or by exploding this construct, you now see that there's a value to more. Because there's a there's a threshold. Once you've fed yourself, everything else is extra. Once you've got security around your home, to have a bigger house is extra. Right. But it's not just a bigger house.

I mean, just think of all the things that you and I have that John d Rockefeller never had. So when and you might cover it later, but, Mike, the question that's in my head and and how would you solve for x today to get people to understand? Besides, you're on the podcast. We have the age of infinite is part of our what we are promoting.

So aside from that, if you were to solve it on a 7,500,000,000 person, whatever the actual number is, scale, and you were to to make this, only thing I can think of, I I don't know. The the the only thing I can think of I mean, there's 2 things. 1 is through, you know, words, that is whether podcast, in print, television, any way to convey the message you try to teach people. And the other is through action. In other words, to introduce technologies that refute this idea of limited resources.

And this includes things that actually address perceived, resource shortages like new technologies for producing energy, fusion power, and so forth. But also so this is one reason why I'm very interested in opening up the exploration and settlement of Mars. Because if people can see that you know, if you think that humanity is limited to the earth, it seems self evident, although it's not true, that resources must be limited because there's only so much here. Mhmm. K?

I think that's a false position, by the way, but it appears to many people to be true. But if you can show that we are not limited to here, then it's manifestly clear that resources are unlimited. It's like look. You know, how many points are there in a line segment? Well, you've gone to college, and so you know there's an infinite number. Infinite. Yes. Okay. But and that's the same with the infinity of the Earth.

But it is not evident to a person who is mathematically unsophisticated that there's an infinite number of points in a line segment. K? That's that's not that clear. It's true, but it's not clear. K? On the other hand, if you talk about a line which extends infinitely in both directions, then anyone can see that it's infinite.

Yes. Yeah. So, Xi, your it's interesting your approach because it is baked into somewhat what we've spoken about in in our dialogue is that by proving and you've not heard these terms, you and I have not had these conversations. We call it moon and earth Mearth. I don't know if you know Burton Lee from and I were talking in so in, in San Francisco. We came up with this term Mearth.

Is that if people can see that between Mearth, there are infinite possibilities and infinite resources that there is a beyond earth, then what it does and it's positive oriented. It's not reductive. The world is very much today about you can't eat this. You can't do this. You shouldn't do that. You're going to destroy this.

But if we could show that the landscape, the place in which we live is bigger, the whole is bigger, and we can keep on growing that whole, then therefore, there will be infinite opportunities. And so you're you're outlining it with Mars as your which is in in parallel again, I would say, with the way in which I had viewed it, which is fascinating that you have you're very much articulating this better than I would have.

Yet it's right in line as if you can demonstrate the success of it, that there is more, then it's hard to argue that there isn't. Exactly. So the, your your second one was health, human thought transforms. How, going backwards into that, it transforms. What's your take on how human for a I I've gotta believe that you just have more than that sentence. When you say that, what what do you mean? Well, here's how it works. Okay. Technology progresses through 2 fundamental mechanisms.

1, and this has received a lot of comment, and for instance, people like Matt Ridley wrote a recent book, which is a pretty good book, called How Innovation Works, in which he says that technological progress occurs through technologies having sex. That is through combination and recombination. And this is unquestionably one important mechanism by which technology progresses. They are combined. Okay?

They they and there's an infinite number of combinations that can occur of existing technologies. You combine, you know, steel with wheels and and and rubber tires and and chain links and gears, and you can create a bicycle. You can combine, a bicycle with a combustion engine and with oil, and you have a motorcycle. You know, you can go on like this. Right? The the the the and as, an earlier writer put it, the more inventions there are, the more there is to invent with.

Okay. So that's one form of technological innovation, and it should be clear that that is an exponential process. Yep. Okay. But there's another. Okay? And this, I I think, is something that Ridley kinda missed because he goes into this whole thing about that that it's therefore the tinkerers who create technological progress. Tinkerers and I'm a tinkerer. I'm not a theoretical scientist, and I've made some inventions. Tinkerers are certainly responsible for a lot of technological progress.

But, really, what we are doing is we are applying the science that is known. Okay? I'm an applied scientist. That's what I am. Okay? And but, eventually, the tinkerers create enough inventions that it opens up new science. And new science then opens up all sorts of new possibilities. Okay? The the tinkerers of the pre industrial age who developed the means to exploit, well, obviously, animal and plant husbandry, the production of metals, the use of wind and water power.

They advanced a set of capabilities until the point when people could build steam engines and exploit and discover and then fully exploit the laws of thermodynamics. And that society based on, now, on coal, steel, and steam was able to create instruments that allowed it to penetrate deeper mysteries and understand the laws of electricity and chemistry. And so you have the second industrial revolution.

Now once the laws of electromagnetism, for example, are understood, and that understanding came in about the 100 years between 17/70/18/70 or so. Now you get all sorts of inventions, like telegraphs, and telephones, and electric light bulbs, and essentially generating electrical power, and and all sorts of things. They get elaborated within the context of that scientific foundation. Okay?

And so this is a whole new world of inventions that are literally inconceivable to a tinkerer of the middle ages. Okay? Yeah. Absolutely. Become possible. Okay? They they could there wasn't enough of an ecosystem for them to be able to draw upon to create any of this by themselves. So you needed the random collisions of innovation. You needed one idea put in front of somebody who had never thought of something.

And by seeing it, they say, oh, I never thought of doing it that way, but now I can solve for x. Right. Now if you then take this world of of fully, orchestrated, electromagnetism and also chemistry, the 2 great advances of the 19th century, That puts people in a position to discover, both nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. Okay?

And, well, actually, quantum mechanics has been elaborated in, many ways quite well in the late 20th century in in technological forms, including computers and and all of that. The whole information age is based on quantum mechanics. Right? Mhmm. Nuclear physics gets you to nuclear power and, that has been partially elaborated. I don't think it's thoroughly, for various reasons. But those two fields okay.

And now with quantum mechanics and and well, yes, nuclear physics because electron microscopes are based on nuclear physics, as well as previous knowledge, you you can We're opening up a new field of biotechnology, molecular biology, which will lead to biotechnology, of which we're seeing a little bit of right now, but which I think is gonna be one of the profound, areas of the 21st century.

And tinkerers will take these new laws and understandings of biology and make all sorts of things, programmed organisms that will produce, all sorts of things, essentially nanotechnology. Mhmm. And the the but this is thought, okay, that is science is an understanding of a realm of phenomena. Okay? And someone who practices or explores science does not have to be someone with a PhD who works in a university. K? And, obviously, in general, they were not until at least second half of the 1890.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. But an awful lot of science was discovered before there were such people. The the but no. It's that first neolithic girl who discovered the regularity that if you took the seeds from a berry bush and put them in the ground, it would produce identical berry bushes of exactly that desirable type. And therefore, she, if she did this, she could have them all growing right next to the village instead of having to wander all over the hills to find them. Alright?

Yeah. So that's an important regularity in nature, that the seeds of a plant produce exactly that plant and no other type. K? So you can create groves of blueberry bushes, if you will, if you exploit your knowledge of that phenomenon. It's amazing. What you just said is fascinating in that. Before that before that was known, it was unknown. That's right. Before it was known, it was unknown. And it was not a ubiquitous thought before this I mean, it had to spread.

And even that in and of itself is a a probably an amazing story. I don't know if there is one, but how it got to be a known theory. And I wonder how because you're talking about thought transforms. I wonder how these mechanisms how to accelerate them. Well, see, here's the thing. I mean, obviously, I think that I mean, systems of communication are required. I think to communicate that theory adequately, language was required. K? Language is a technology. K? Yes. Right?

But an organized language that can actually convey complex thoughts, was required. So to make that kind of invasion and then to transmit it, to explain it, to report it, okay, to promote it, that required language. The and then that that that thought packaged as language becomes transmittable, all around the world. Right? Now, of course, there are weaknesses to non written communication. It's subject to entropy. Yeah. That is, inaccurate reportage.

Thoughts can be lost when they're, people who fully understand them are are die. So written communication is the next step beyond that. Right? And it allows for much more complicated ideas to be set forth also, frankly, in some cases worked out in the 1st place. It helps out if you can write down the first thought and then you write down the second thought, and the first thought is still there right in front of you on the piece of paper. You work something out. Right?

And then you can also convey it as an organized argument on a page. So written communication. The the reason I the reason I say it, and I and I understand the progression you're going through, I'm not trying to cut you off, I'm trying to point in a direction, is I can see that a series of technologies, whether it be language, whether it be the ability to draw a picture, whether it be to communicate through, another means, whether it be a smoke signal, doesn't matter what it is.

Those technologies were used. And this idea of the seed propagated. It transferred. It went. Yet the the resources are limited, has superseded the resources are unlimited, narrative. Yeah. But think about this for yeah. Okay. But you see, it it it's a historic because while someone living in that time before she made that discovery may have thought that there's only one berry grove, and either we get it or the other tribe gets it.

Mhmm. Okay. With the help of this discovery, the number of berry groves there can be becomes unlimited, and furthermore, they can be much more conveniently located. Mhmm. Okay? The the the so this thought created expanded resources. Yes. K. And and and and we don't have to kill each other over who gets the berry growth. Yet why isn't that the predominant thought?

What happened is is kind of my question is you have this so far brilliant brilliantly articulated, message, and I and I love it because it not only agrees, I I see it. It makes logical sense. Why has this message 500 years ago, 800 years ago? Why does the one that has the negative, the the scarcity versus abundance theory as compared to the infinite. That's what we argue here is that you need scarcity to have abundance. There is a a minimalism to have that.

In this case, I'm saying, why didn't this one win? Why didn't Resources Unlimited win? Well, of course, this is a continual struggle. I don't think it's lost either. But it's a continual struggle because there are those who profit from the idea of scarcity. And as someone, I don't know, was it Mark Twain or I I forget who, said it's very difficult to teach someone something when they profit by not knowing it.

And, so if you have well, frankly, the dominant cast in our society is the warrior cast. K? There there, you know, that is the greatest respect you can gain in any profession is to have been a successful warrior. K? That that that that is true. K? Mhmm. And, and the warrior cast existence is justified by belief in scarcity.

It's fascinating to me that it's just fascinating that in the in the dominant in in the human species, it is more an alignment with the survival to be a resources are limited than it is to be resources are unlimited. And it the argument is there. There's there's evidence that being unlimited has happened through history, yet it's never taught. Not never. That's a bad word to say. It is infrequently shared as a construct within any society that I know of on Earth. Right.

Now the the the resources are limited. People also have an advantage in that it appears to be intuitively true. Yes. Okay? The the the and it's has a limited truth in the sense that at any one moment, the resources are limited. K? Yes. So that it's at one point in time, yes. So much food in my refrigerator. Okay? And the season ended, so therefore, the crops are gone. Look into the fields. There's no more corn. We are out of corn until next year.

So we have to be careful because we've run out of corn. Right. Now during I believe technological progress has been going on through all of human history. I see some books that people write, and they say there was no technological progress until the industrial revolution. And that's just nonsense. Okay? Really? You you really read these things?

Okay. I assure this is a a and therefore, they they claim that, Malthus was right up till the time when he lived, when in fact he was actually writing at the time when human technological progress was visibly taking off exponentially. But it is true that through most of human history, technological progress was so slow as to generally not be visible within a single human lifetime. K? Now you might see one innovation. You might well see one innovation.

Many people across history saw a particular innovation happen, but they didn't see the whole world change as a result of that one innovation. So these innovations would have to pile on separately here and there over the generations and gradually the world changed, but not within one person's lifetime for the most part. Now this does start to accelerate.

I believe that this acceleration is visible starting in the 1500, because now with the advent of long distance sailing ships, innovations made anywhere in the world can become known anywhere else within a couple of years instead of centuries. And so that, you have much more people contributing to technological progress because the technology of your society is not just being developed to by its own efforts, but through that of people all over the world.

But then, yes, then much faster starting in the 1800. And, you know, once telegraphs exist and ideas could be transmitted around the world within a day or 2, and then, of course, now essentially instantaneously. So the world gets linked. There's also more energy. There's also more population. The more people there are, the faster the rate of technological progress because people are the inventors. The more inventors, the more inventions.

And, of course, with the development of of certain innovations like the printing press, more people, have access to background. In other words, the more inventions there are, the more there is to invent with provided you know about those inventions. You can learn about whatever's happening so that you can iterate on the iterations. Right. You find out what what's available. I I don't remember I don't remember the book that it came out of.

I think it was called civilizations, but they talked about in the dark ages, one reason the Europeans had become masters at military and especially ship fighting was during that time because Europe had been broken up into pieces, the fiefdoms and and groups that they were fighting so often that they had to iterate new weaponry quickly to fight against another adversary who created another weapon for somebody else, who learned it from somebody else.

And one reason they argue the argument of the east versus west and the, being Europe against Asia was that there was so much fighting going on that the innovations were coming at such a rapid clip that they created, for example, the ship that turned sideways with all the cannons on the side. That was because of rapid innovation through the dark ages. So it's amazing that individuals will not can it's difficult, as you're saying it, to bring it all the way up to the industrial revolution.

There was a lot going on prior to the industrial revolution. Oh, certainly. Certainly, a person living in the 1700 was living in a very different world from a person living in the Roman Empire. Yes. Completely different. So going going back, and I and I can understand. I'm I think you're a solutions oriented person. So at the back of my mind as I'm trying to pull from your head, where is the reliever kind of doing the same thing that we're talking about?

What do you know that I don't know that can create a random collision of innovation between the 2 of us? Where there's a spark that goes off where I say, ah, I've not done that. Not the traditional, but I, David, have not done that to help the knowledge of the age of infinite, to help the knowledge that there is possibilities to solve these challenges, and that we are on the cusp. We're not 5 g and what is it? 5 g and IoT, everybody calls the 4th industrial revolution.

It's the information age just faster to me. But the age of infinite is when we cross that precipice and we say, oh my. We can have everything and everything simultaneously. We will not run out. Yeah. Well, that's the key thing. We're not gonna run out unless we decide to kill each other over an imaginary shortage. Some of the the the third one you had tossed out, we use an amount has been growing exponentially. You've thrown a few of them out there.

What are some what are some others that were growing at an exponential clip that Well, I mean, you can take things as mundane as oil and gas. American oil and gas reserves today are triple what they were 20 years ago. Why? Well, Frankie, the the the the, you know, and and and so forth. I mean, what was the oil and gas reserves of the world in 1858? 0. Yes. The the the the the that we started getting in when colonel Drake drilled the first well in 18 59.

You know, the resources are growing just exponentially. There's just no question about do you know that well, cheers. 1932, Franklin Roosevelt's running for president. Slogan, a chicken in every pot. Could you imagine someone trying to run for president today on that slogan? Vote for me and you will be able to eat chicken. I mean, ridiculous. Right? The the you can go to the supermarket right now here and you can buy chicken for a dollar a pound.

The the minimum wage in the United States is $7 an hour. So that means that in 9 minutes work, someone working at minimum wage, not the average wage, but the minimum wage can buy a pound of chicken. 9 minutes. The the it it's it this is incredible. The the counterfactual nature of this assertion that the growing population is gonna impoverish all. It things have radically changed. You know, in in before World War 2, a substantial number of Americans did not own shoes.

But if you think about that, they didn't own a pair of shoes. It's the, my friends in Moscow would often share with me how when they were growing up, they would watch someone run down the street and it didn't matter what they were running for. They would immediately run out the door, their parents or somebody and start following them because typically, something was for sale.

It could be, a shoes shoes, it could be a hat or something, and they would buy it no matter what it was because they had the ability to sell it. Right. Well, that, of course, those shortages are due to the communist system Yeah. Which wouldn't let supply meet demand and and therefore, it was always creating shortages. But, I I mean, there were certainly shoes in America in the 19 twenties for anyone who had the money to buy them, but not everyone did.

And in fact, and especially among, Negroes and poor whites in the American South. And the and the pea they traveled barefoot. And so they would get hookworms in their feet, and it would sap their energy. And this is is one place where you get the stereotype of the slow, lethargic, southerner, especially black southerners, of that period. You know, general Patton didn't believe that Negroes should be allowed to drive tanks.

And not because he was a racist, although perhaps he was, but that's not why he thought they shouldn't drive tanks. So he thought their reflexes were too slow. Now you think about that, because obviously, black people dominate basketball, which requires very fast reflexes. Mhmm. Okay? So this but there was a popular stereotype of black people as being slow and lethargic at that time. And that is because a lot of them had hookworms because they didn't own shoes. So if let's not go past.

Let's go future. Yeah. When you are thinking about going forward from this point forward, and you have expressed some fears of the dominating rule saying there is this, the challenge that could cause global annihilation, or at least a lot of challenges for a lot of people for a very long time. How when you look forward, what do you see are some of those exponentials that are required today to get to a point of the age of infinite? Well, the exponential is ongoing.

I think one very important one right now is nuclear power. I think, well, frankly, Malthusians have launched a war against nuclear power. When the Sierra Club you know, in in the sixties, environmentalists were for nuclear power because it didn't create smoke like fossil fuels. Mhmm. Global warming wasn't a thing, but conventional pollution was, certainly.

And, so the but in 1974, following the publication by the Club of Rome of their magnum opus, the limits to growth, which claimed we've been run out of everything by the year 2000 because of limited resources, the Sierra Club came out against nuclear power, reversing its position based on not fear of radiation, but that and and I quote, you can see this in their document, that it could cause unnecessary economic growth. Really? Really. Okay?

And so the Malthusians launched a war against nuclear power because it solved the problem they need to have. Because at that time also, the critique of fossil fuels was that they were going to run out. With the yes. The, peak oil and everything else that has been proper over the years. Okay. Now since global warming became a thing, the critique of fossil fuels has shifted to the problem is they're not going to run. I I I I just I was just sharing this morning with somebody in in the UK.

We're talking, and I said, there's this one event I went to that had to do a lot with power and energy in the future. And and they were every speaker got up on stage and talked about how there is now going to be, there's this unlimited amount of oil. And I asked the people running the conference, I said, do you mind if I shake things up a little bit? And the woman looked at me kind of strange and she knew my history. And she said, I'm gonna let you do it, but be careful.

And I went up and I said, look, everybody in this audience has you're you're sucking in the information as if it's true. The speakers are here to give you their perspective. It doesn't mean it's true. So while you were listening, I was looking up every single projection by all the forecasters, futurists that were talking. And almost every one of them of 10 years ago or 15 years ago talked about peak oil. Mhmm. What happened? They found fracking.

I said, your job is to assess, figure out, determine if this is practical, including what I'm saying, and then say, is this going to continue on the way it is with and we talk about innovation and the challenges and the and the opportunities that come about. So, yes, this now, if global warming isn't we're not going to run out in in the near future, and that is 50 degrees Celsius or a 125 degrees in in Arizona, or Bangladesh or India having these heat waves, Germany, that are excessive.

That could mean that Saudi Arabia during the summer might be too hot for people to live. Right. Well, the thing is, nuclear power solves that problem. And the the problem with nuclear power in the west has been a political war against it. The tie I mean, the people say, oh, no. It's economics. It costs too much to build a nuclear power plant. That's nonsensical.

The reason why it costs so much to build a nuclear power plant right now is because a regulatory obstacle course has been created, which has obstacle course has been created, which has increased the time it takes to build a nuclear power plant from 4 years to 16 years, and even give interveners a chance to prevent the plant from opening after it's been built as happened with, for instance, the Shoreham nuclear power plant in New York where governor Mario Cuomo, the father of the current disaster, did that.

Yeah. The the the but in South Korea today, it still takes 4 years to build a nuclear power plant. And, and the problem's not safety. There's been over a 1000 pressurized water reactors operating on land or or sea since 60 years or more, and not a single person has ever been harmed by a radiation release from war. This is strictly a political problem.

And you have people like, particularly, the German greens, incredible, who will talk all day about global warming, and then you say nuclear power, they say no way. And and in fact, they're shutting down Germany's nuclear power plants and replacing it with burning lignite. Yeah. Didn't they just announce that recently? The the big news is that they're gonna shut them all down? And Yeah. Well, the this was not that recently. In the pretext was Fukushima, which is ridiculous.

They don't have tidal waves sweeping Germany. I mean, that's impossible. And And there were design flaws too with Fukushima, where it was Yes and no. But, I mean, frankly, there are 28,000 people killed in Fukushima from the tidal wave and earthquake and falling buildings and drowning and exposure. And the whole city was destroyed. Not one person in the city, outside of the plant gate was exposed to any significant radiation dose.

I mean, the and the fact that only 3 out of the 6 nuclear power plants there were destroyed when the whole rest of the city was swept away. Yeah. I mean, there were people killed in Fukushima from an exploding oil, facility be that was set off by the time. In other words, you know, it it's like somebody saying, what would happen to New York City if the Soviets hit the Indian Point power plant with a hydrogen bomb?

Well, if the Soviets hit the Indian power point with a hydrogen bomb, the people in New York City would have a lot more Right. There's a lot more that they have to worry about than that. There there's a guy I I don't know if you've heard the name Michael Schellenberger? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Shellenberger. He wrote a good book, apocalypse never. And he he said his whole life, he was anti anti nuclear. He was involved with solar panels. He was involved with wind.

And he did a TED talk, and he said, I am here to say I was wrong. That nuclear is the answer. That with all he showed a room, a picture of a room, and he said, this is like 60 years of waste as compared to what comes out of a coal burning plant or deforest Which is millions of tons of waste. Exactly. Correct. Which is And and by the way, and the toxic waste from coal fired power plants has infinite half life.

Yes. The the the the and it is so much that no one can even I mean, you can't have a repository for it. The thing No. This it would how would you do that? No. You can't. So it that that's a stick. And and fossil fuels in general, you can't store all that c o two. So so, again, we've got a prevailing economic reason for this group to be held or this construct I keep on calling the construct.

This construct being held underneath the water and drowned so that resources are unlimited cannot get a breath of air. Yeah. Well, it's true. We just gotta show we gotta make resources unlimited. I I don't I'm gonna have to go in 5 minutes. So Oh, you are? Oh, you're gonna you're destroying me here. This is great. Alright. But We we have we have two ways to do this. I I've only done this once with somebody else.

We could stop here and pick up at another time and continue with 45, or we can end it here. And I I really would like to explore winning. I I think we should go, okay. You know, 10 minutes tops, and then I mean, go as quick. How long can a podcast be and have anyone listen to it? Actually, our longest is 4 and a half hours, and we've had a lot of people listen to it. Well, I think we can go another 10 minutes, and then Okay. I I do have to close. So that that's fine.

So the challenge that I'm having with all of this is even if there's a proof of concept. So far, that proof of concept has not won. And the narrative is the the narrative we're using is the narrative that's not working. So it's storytelling. Robert Fulton didn't invent the steam engine. There was another guy who invented it. I can't remember his name off top of my head right now. 20 some odd years earlier, steamboat.

He went back and forth across a river near Boston, and he died in a poor brokenhearted derelict in the streets. He was a financier and a marketer, and that's how he got credited with the Steamboat. The question here is for with what you're saying is, how do we change that narrative so that it makes it over the top, over the hurdle so that it becomes bigger than life? Well, once again, by writing about it and doing it.

And to me, the clearest and most profound demonstration of this principle of unlimited resources would be opening up new worlds off planet because that makes it sensuous. That, you know, you can try to explain to people there's infinite number of points in a line segment or you can just show them here's a line. It's obviously infinite.

And yet at the same time, do you know how many conversations I've had to say and I am not a space person, yet I've been doing this for 7 years, is I've had this when people have argued, yes, but we're going to we're gonna use up all the resources on the moon. And I say, do you know how big the moon is? I mean and and I've had to have these conversations. So individuals, while we can travel around the world, the majority of people still don't travel that far.

Or if they do, they don't see the realities of the opportunities there. So I'm I'm not I I'm trying to figure out the so because we have a limited amount of time, I I will wanna talk with you at another time about this because I'd like to go further. Is if you were I don't even know what question to ask you in the short time is I'd like to what would you like to say? I mean, we've got 10 minutes. Where would you like to go? It's up to you.

Well, I just think that this is the most important issue, of our time is refuting this ideology. This ideology threatens humanity. And, and it's it's there's nothing more dangerous than this idea that there isn't enough for everyone. Okay? And, you know, people will stick with this with fanaticism.

You know, the Club of Rome, 1972, they published this book called The Limits to Growth in which, they said we're gonna run out of everything by the year 2000, and they proved it because they had a computer, which was a novelty in 1970 2, and they said, look. We put in the data here on all the coal reserves and the copper reserves and zinc reserves, then we put in the data on how fast it's being used. And voila. The copper's gone in 28 years. The coal is gone in 32 years. Whatever.

You know, it's all gone, and you can't argue with it because computers always do math correctly. And the and of course, they were wrong on all counts. But now here is the most amazing thing about this. About 10 years ago, they had a reunion. Club of Rome had a reunion. And they actually published the proceedings of their reunion as a book called The Limits to Growth Revisited. And they said the following.

They said, a lot of people think we were wrong because our predictions did not come true, But we were fundamentally right. We have to be right because there's only so much here. And so what? It didn't run out by the year 2000. It's gonna run out by the year 2030. Right. We were just off. We were off in our calculation by years, but we were not off by our premise. Our our theory was But in fact, they weren't just off by years.

They were fundamentally No. What I mean is that just what they're saying. We're just off by years, so don't worry about it. We we the we we're still right. Yeah. Okay. The the the the just like people who claim that, well, Malthus was fundamentally right. He just didn't realize that the world's food would be expanded by the development of the industrial, of the agricultural Midwest in the United States. So we were all Actually, Malthus was very familiar with the existence of North America.

And the the the the the, and and that was not the point. Because, actually, had all that been done was we opened up additional farmland in Ohio and Illinois, and they continued to produce at the same rate of crops elsewhere in the year 1800, it wouldn't change the result very much at all. K? But do you know last year, the state of Iowa produced more corn than the entire United States did in 1947. Okay. That's 1947, let alone 1807. Okay?

And the the the the and the United States was already an agricultural superpower in 1947. Okay? The you know, this is the thing. What they missed was that the product doesn't come from the land. It comes from thought. Okay? Land doesn't produce crops, farmers produce crops. And farmers produce crops based on the technology that is available to them, which is a product of human thought. I I agree.

There's, there's a number that I, a 1000000 years ago, there were a 1,000,000 there were a it was a 1000000 a 1000 1000000 years ago, there were a 1000 chickens, pigs, no, it's not a million. I can't remember. A 1,000, there was a 1000000 pigs, chickens and cows on this planet. And today, whether you believe in eating meat or not, there are 69,000,000,000 animals consumed every year. Right.

Yeah. Henry George, once again, in that very same reputation of Malthus that he wrote in 18/70, he said, what's the difference between men and jayhawks? Both men and jayhawks eat chickens. K? But the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens. The more men, the more chickens. Okay. Well, I'm gonna leave it with those chickens. I there's a lot of questions I'd like to pursue with you at another time. And what I'd like to do is I wanna thank you, for taking the time with us today.

I I truly appreciate it, and it's fascinating the direction you went as I think our guests know that I don't know what we're going to talk about prior to the time that we have the conversation. I wanna thank everybody out there for taking the time out of your day to listen in. I do hope that you've learned something today that makes a difference in your life and the lives of others.

And once again, the Project Moon Hunt Foundation, we are looking to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon, the moon hut, to the accelerate development of an earth and space based ecosystem. Then to use those endeavors, the paradigm shifting thinking, the innovations, and turn them back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species. And, Robert, what is the single best way for someone to get in contact with you if they wanted to?

Well, I'm on Twitter, and, that's an easy way. Okay. For us, you could reach me at [email protected]. We are on Twitter at Project Moon Hut. We are on Facebook. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Instagram. And that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening.