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Getting started on Fuller. He seems to equate the economic growth from 1810 to present with technology and intellect but it is entirely impossible without the near 1:1:1 increase in population, GDP, and therefore, energy consumption, that was available after the discovery of fossil fuel. Although he does illude to it here:
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In 1810 the U.S.A. Treasury found there were one million U.S.A. families and one million human
slaves, or an average of one per family, with no steam engines, motors or any other work producing
machines than the one slave per family could provide. Now only hundred and fifty years later we have
over 1,000 inanimate energy slaves per each family, and no human slaves, with the inanimate energy slaves
being utterly tireless and able to work 24 hours a day, year around, under physical conditions intolerable to
humans
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Each person in the USA currently has the equivilent in human labor of 300 fossil slaves standing behind them. World average is 60 fossil slaves per person. And they will very shortly be asking for a big pay raise. Which will upend the current debt bubble growth based economy. There is no feasible way to replace the 17TW we are currently consuming with rebuildables.
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