Human Capital Stock = Quite Limited Without Plenty of Spare Energy
@Jardinero1,
1) you forget to consider OECDs developed their "better" human capital structure based on excess energy available to their society at one point or another.
You would agree education, manufacturing and infrastructure in America has languished or declined in the past 40yrs. Have you considered it may have to do with petrol production peaking in the U.S. in the late 1960s?
Some suggest U.S. needs a spare Saudi Arabia (at ~$40 less / barrel) only for maintaining its infrastructure. How many Saudi Arabias would we need to go back to hop on the Moon? If only "better human capital" is enough to make our dreams come true, how come we're not back hopping on it?
2) your understanding of the evolution of commodity usage does not follow. Nanotech, unlike flint wood carbon iron , needs a bloated oil-dependent infrastructure --along with its myriad social benefits such as AC-controlled university labs and plenty of food for the bellies of its 'better' human capital to do research-- to come to fruition. Same with nuclear.
No spare oil-dependent-infrastructure = not much nano, nor much nuclear.
Look up Liebig's Law, as a "jardinero" is in your interest. Besides being very enlightening, is much easier to tackle than Law of Entropy. The same one hitting us upside the head now that we lack cheap energy to patch the cracks.
