From Surplus Energy Economics, January 30 (this is #318):
The Surplus Energy Economy, part one
LIFE AFTER TRUTH
Foreword
It might be fair to say that visitors to this site divide into two broad categories – those who are interested in economic and financial theory itself, and those more concerned with the explanation of current events and the anticipation of outcomes.
It also needs to be borne in mind that, whilst some readers have long been familiar with surplus energy theory, there are others to whom these concepts are new.
If this first article in a planned series has one message, it is that it’s perfectly possible for us to make sense of economics and finance on our own behalf.
We’re not dependent on what anyone – the authorities, orthodox economists, propagandists, wild optimists or prophets of doom – tries to tell us.
1
It doesn’t help anyone’s search for clarity, of course, that the world of today is subject to extraordinary levels of messaging, very little of which is truly objective.
On the one hand, we are frequently informed about new technological breakthroughs, perhaps in the field of energy supply, that will liberate us from the constraints of material economic finality.
On the other, we are warned about imminent financial collapse, sometimes resulting from left-field events not recognised in the generality of analysis.
Two realisations can act as beacons to light our way through this fog of mystification.
The first is that meaningful growth has ended, and that the economy is starting to shrink. We’ll look a little later at how this conclusion can be reached.
The second is that nobody, in any position of authority or influence, can possibly afford to admit that this is happening.
This is how Life After Growth becomes Life After Truth.
Put another way, the idea that “when it gets serious, you have to lie” has graduated from the aside of a single individual to the governing leitmotif of an age.
This situation calls for heightened self-reliance, not in the sense of stockpiling canned food and bottled water, but in deciding for ourselves what we do and do not believe about current and future economic conditions.
What we’re going to do here is to start from some basic principles and then apply these to the economy of today and tomorrow.
2
The first of these fundamentals is the principle of money as claim.
This principle recognises that money has no intrinsic worth – we can’t eat fiat currencies, power our cars with cryptos, or plant our fields with precious metals.
Rather, money commands value only in terms of those physical things for which it can be exchanged. Anyone having money has, in effect, an exercisable claim on material products and services. This money may be spent in the present (flow), or set aside for use in the future (stock), but in both cases retains the essential characteristic of claim.
That’s exactly why monetary systems tend to be based on credit.
Acceptance of this principle of claim immediately distances us from an economics orthodoxy which asserts that everything can be explained in terms of money alone, and that we need not take account of the material.
On this fallacious basis have been erected the so-called “laws” of economics, but these are in no way analogous to the laws of science.
Rather, they are merely behavioural observations about the human artefact of money....
....MUCH MORE
Also:
December 21, 2025 - #316: The class of ‘26January 11 - #317: The triumph of the material
FACT, SCARCITY & THE DE-THRONING OF MONEY
ON THE EDGE OF CHANGE
And many, many more.
