Ray thanks for our time spent in the last climate celebration meeting, it was cool to put some faces to names, but we didn't have much time to discuss backgrounds. Mine is very relevant to your topic here.
My path into what I write about now, the global energy problem, was from a PhD candidate project on VR technology, coupled with UAV technology. The full title of my project is "The possibilities of first person view interactions between the users of virtual worlds, and unmanned aerial vehicles".
The research I did so far on that project opened my eyes to a whole new world of human possibilities. But in addition, it opened my eyes to a fundamental problem, affecting all stakeholders, in a way that none of the possible human benefits could ever be achievable, due to the same problem as is affecting the real, non virtual, physical world.
That was around 2017. My efforts now have shifted emphasis, to 100% addressing the energy problem affecting the real world, because what is impossible in a virtual world, is impossible in the real world.
Sustained financial viability of a virtual world is impossible at profit.
A virtual world is simply a simulation of the real world with some virtual additions.
A single solution exists, to create a truly sustainable virtual world.
The solution, is to remove the energy dependence of the platform itself, from its users, to an external free donor source.
In other words, users can't supply the energy needs of a platform forever, of the energy sources the users are dependent on, come from limited supplies.
As we see, extracted energy is from limited supplies, and the medium used to transport that energy to the platform owners from the platform users; money-as-debt, via profit, is unsustainable. It is a physical impossibility.
This affects the real world in exactly the same way.
Those effectively "Owning" Earth and humanity depend on humanity and Earth for their energy. It is transported to them / us by money-as-debt, by way of profit, and the whole process is dependent on energy extracted from Earth.
The net flow of Joules, is from Earth to Humanity, just like the energy from a mother to its child.
Since the process is destructive, removing the net number of Joules put to valuable use on Earth, we have do define it as mathematically negative.
This is not creation, nothing is truly created by it, we never have increased the net number of Joules put to use on Earth, it has always been negative, when all is honestly weighed up.
That is, unless we are born. Of course after birth, is when anything begins to add value; creation.
This is what I mean when I say the real Ponzi is not just money, it's energy, and our global financial debt is actually an indicator of the actual energy deficit between us and our planet.
The only way it can be paid back down, is by using the only mathematically positive source of energy, which involves no extraction per Joule, therefore is truly free, but can't be represented or ennumeratated by money-as-debt, so it is not transported to humanity, until money is issued for free, representing it, in the same way as nutrients in a plant are issued for free, in response to the Joules received by its leaves.
That child has to be born, by moving its dependence from the energy of its mother, to the energy of the environment. Otherwise both it, and its mother die, when the mother's energy is exhausted.
If it wasn't for virtual worlds, I wouldn't know about any of this, which hopefully you are learning about too.
To me, humanity is potentially much richer already, by what VR technology has done so far, but it has only scratched the surface, and will never do more than that, at profit.
The requirement for profit seems for the moment, to humanity, like the urge to suck (Extract) . We can't resist it, seemingly until there is no more left to suck.
But if we let it get that far, it's too late.
Hence why my effort is now 100% towards short-circuiting this death spiral.
If it wins, there won't be any VR, or any real world, period.