Energy as the currency of the universe

Our currencies used to be backed up by gold, a finite and scarce resource. Because the supply of gold would not fluctuate much over time, this meant that one could move value across time with relative ease. What a nice property, right? What if we could think those terms again?

Energy as a unit of “value”

Energy has a few nice properties. For starters, the supply is finite. The law of conservation of energy prevents us from disrupting valuations by “inventing” new energy. Hello sweet stability!

I also satisfies the broadest definition that we can come up for “value”… because it is needed for everything that involves life. In this sense, energy does better than gold, which is just a token with little inherent value of its own.

A problem with energy, however, is that it cannot be easily tokenized for general-purpose trade across time: energy storage is a notoriously complicated problem.

However, I am not convinced this is an absolutely bad thing. Perhaps there is value to limiting the amount of time one should be able to move “value” across? A finite amount of energy always has to map to a finite amount of goods, but the finite amount of goods available can fluctuate over time for reasons out of our control.

What is this useful for?

We are clearly not going to have “energy coins” and price bread in Joules anytime soon. But perhaps we can take inspiration? I can think some very crazy ideas, such as a version of money that expires unless you use it (yikes!?) to mitigate cross-generational imbalances.

But on a more practical level, thinking in terms of energy helps me undo some of my money-induced tunnel vision. After all, there are things that money cant buy, and even when it can… sometimes it does not track life value very well.