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01 / 05
Knowledge Grows When We Consume It

Blog Post | Economic Growth

Knowledge Grows When We Consume It

We can't create more atoms, but we can create infinitely more knowledge that makes atoms valuable.

Summary: Our planet is abundant but finite—it only has so many atoms. However, that doesn’t mean we will ever run out of resources. This article argues that by expanding our knowledge, we can get infinite value from our finite atoms.


Thanos was right in that there are a finite number of atoms in the universe. But he was dead wrong about resources being finite. Resources are atoms that have been organized in a way that creates value. Resources are “intelligized” atoms. Knowledge is what makes atoms valuable. The number of atoms is finite, but the growth of knowledge is not. As the American economist George Gilder notes, “The difference between our age and the Stone Age is entirely due to the growth of knowledge.” Consuming knowledge creates knowledge. When we’re learning, we’re consuming and creating knowledge at the same time. 

Gilder offers three beautiful and simple principles: wealth is knowledge, growth is learning, and money is time. From these we can derive a theorem: The growth in knowledge can be measured with time. The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson recognized this theorem when he observed, “If you can produce the same amount in half the time, you’re twice as smart. You’ve doubled your knowledge.”

We found that the time price of 50 basic commodities fell by an average of 75.2 percent between 1980 and 2020. That means for the time required to earn the money to buy one item in 1980, you would get 4.03 in 2020. That’s a 303 percent increase in 40 years. Over that time period, personal resource abundance increased at a 3.55 percent compound annual rate, doubling every 20 years. That happened at the same time global population increased by 75.8 percent. More people mean more abundance because more people are discovering and sharing and consuming and growing knowledge. 

Knowledge is only limited by the number of humans that are free to act on their value-creating ideas. Economics is the study of how humans create value for one another by discovering and sharing valuable knowledge in free markets.

Some believe that our objective should be sustainability, but sustainability is thinking, like Thanos did, in terms of finite atoms. Creativity is thinking in knowledge. We can’t create more atoms, but we can create much more knowledge. Just as there are no limits to the number of songs you can create with 88 keys on a piano, there are really no limits to the growth in knowledge that’s needed for new ways of organizing of our planet’s abundant, but finite, number of atoms. 

You can learn more about these economic facts and ideas in our new book, Superabundance, which is available at Amazon. Harvard professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman writes that “Superabundance pulls off the remarkable feat of being both exhaustive and entertaining at the same time.” We hope that you too will enjoy it.

Wall Street Journal | Housing

California Ditches Environmental Law to Tackle Housing Crisis

“California lawmakers on Monday night rolled back one of the most stringent environmental laws in the country, after Gov. Gavin Newsom muscled through the effort in a dramatic move to combat the state’s affordability crisis.

The Democratic governor—widely viewed as a 2028 presidential contender—made passage of two bills addressing an acute housing shortage a condition of his signing the 2025-2026 budget. A cornerstone of the legislation reins in the California Environmental Quality Act, which for more than a half-century has been used by opponents to block almost any kind of development project…

The California Environmental Quality Act was signed into law in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, at a time when Republicans were at the forefront of the nation’s burgeoning green movement. President Richard Nixon also signed groundbreaking protections, including the Endangered Species Act.

CEQA, as it is known, requires state and local agencies to review environmental impacts of planned projects and to take action to avoid or lower any negative effects. Opponents of projects have used the law to delay them by years.”

From Wall Street Journal.

Axios | Infrastructure

NC Bill to Eliminate Parking Minimums Passes House

“The North Carolina House passed a bill unanimously Wednesday [6/26/25] that would block local governments from forcing developers to build parking.

Why it matters: An issue that has been controversial in Charlotte received bipartisan support in Raleigh.

The big picture: With a starting price tag of about $5,000 per space, parking mandates add to the rising costs of new construction. Those expenses are then passed on to residents and businesses as higher rent.”

From Axios.

New York Times | Energy Production

World Bank Ends Its Ban on Funding Nuclear Power Projects

“The world’s largest and most influential development bank said on Wednesday it would lift its longstanding ban on funding nuclear power projects.

The decision by the board of the World Bank could have profound implications for the ability of developing countries to industrialize without burning planet-warming fuels such as coal and oil.

The ban has been formally in place since 2013, but the last time the bank funded a nuclear power project was 1959 in Italy. In the decades since, a few of the bank’s major funders, particularly Germany, have opposed its involvement in nuclear energy, on the grounds that the risk of catastrophic accidents in poor countries with less expertise in nuclear technology was unacceptably high.

The bank’s policy shift, described in an email to employees late on Wednesday, comes as nuclear power is experiencing a global surge in support.

Casting nuclear power as an essential replacement for fossil fuels, more than 20 countries — including the United States, Canada, France and Ghana — signed a pledge to triple nuclear power by 2050 at the United Nations’ flagship climate conference two years ago.”

From New York Times.

The Verge | Food Production

Lab-Grown Salmon Gets FDA Approval

“The FDA has issued its first ever approval on a safety consultation for lab-grown fish. That makes Wildtype only the fourth company to get approval from the regulator to sell cell-cultivated animal products..

Wildtype salmon is now on the menu at Haitian restaurant Kann in Portland, Oregon, and the company has opened a waitlist for the next five restaurants to stock the fish. It joins Upside Foods and Good Meat, two companies with permission to sell cultivated chicken in the US, while Mission Barns has been cleared by the FDA but is awaiting USDA approval for its cultivated pork fat.”

From The Verge.