Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Operating Limits

The electrical analogy of an economy potentially may provide some insight into how to use an economy to meet my requirements for an ideal world (or at least learn the reasons why it can’t).

Assume that each person is equivalent to an electrical component, and that happiness or wellbeing is proportional to life expectancy (basically, the amount of time available to reach and stay within one’s “comfort zone”). Then the optimum situation, which also maximizes longevity, one of my ideal world’s other goals, is equivalent to an electrical component’s most efficient range of operating conditions.

Each person has something like minimum and maximum power limits (how much energy per unit of time can be handled), temperature limits (randomness in the environment that can be tolerated), and input and output impedances (the range of resistance to signal magnitude and variability that the person can work with among those that supply resources and those that consume the person’s “products”). If these limits are exceeded, then damage results, manifested as health problems.

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