Energy Slaves

Buckminister Fuller and his Geodesic Dome

Many, many years ago (around 1971 as I remember) I had a chance to have a sit-down with the great Buckminster Fuller (see: Wikipedia Entry). I was demonstrating for him a piece of software that I had architected called MUSE®. MUSE, among many other things, had a mechanism for resolving units calculations such as BTUs to calories ... and all the more complex physics conversions. Mr. Fuller was quite impressed with this capability until I showed him that it also handled monetary units conversions (such as drachmas to dollars) at which point he bristled. Apparently he, being an outside-the-box thinker, felt that mixing the metaphysical (monetary units) with the physical units was anathema.

He then revealed to me his far-sighted solution to this dilemma – all national currencies should be based upon the cost of producing a quantity of work. He called this monetary unit an “energy slave” (see: Calculations) on the basis that it would be the same the world around and would not be susceptible to the political vagaries of national bank shenanigans and/or a particular country’s trade policies. And, if one thinks about it, the amount of energy that our world possesses is constantly being augmented by that grand and universal mint, the sun.  Therefore our global money supply would expand at a fairly predictable rate.

Upon reflection and given the current ultra-fluid nature of world currency markets, I hearken back to Mr. Fuller’s idea. Were we to adopt this notion for an international monetary base, China would not be able to artificially devalue its currency, the yuan, to capture world manufacturing; countries would not be able to inflate their way out of their profligate spending and borrowing ways; and gold might not be the Silas-Marner investment haven it has become. And, very possibly, this country might adopt more rational policies toward the development of our own energy resources. Wouldn’t that be special?