, 5 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
I’ve often thought that the most fundamental way to price things might be in joules.

How much energy did it take to assemble this phone, to pull the materials out of the ground and shape them into that configuration?
Imagine something like this, but tracked for every product over time.

Knowing the joules required to build something would give us a ratio-scale measure of the cost of production.

And it would be comparable across different countries and time periods.
answers.google.com/answers/thread…
Conceptual precedents for this include MIT’s Billion Prices Project and the Kardashev scale.

If it worked, this “true” price system would let us disentangle factors like inflation and subsidies from the physical cost of manufacture.
Also, if it cost 1000 joules to produce something in 1950s America but 100 joules today, you could get into the guts of the manufacturing to find the exact spot where the improvement occurred.

Big jumps would be due to something like the Haber process. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_pro…
The trickiest part may be pricing human labor. Two people may both consume a sandwich’s worth of energy, but have different skills.

So you might start with joule-based prices for already automated “steady state” manufacture of physical goods at scale.
Missing some Tweet in this thread?
You can try to force a refresh.

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to Balaji S. Srinivasan
Profile picture

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

This content may be removed anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!