>The idea of energy=money is an important development that, while people today seem to refuse to try and get their heads around, will ultimately change the world.
If you really believe this, it would help if you could spare the time to refute people, like me, who currently believe it's a huge step backwards, even more than that, a kind of self-sustaining cancer, the vanguard of the "grey goo scenario" people talk about.
The Landauer limit is supposed to be a lower bound on the energy that has to be dissipated to flip a single bit. It's something like 1e-26 watt hours. That (minus a few powers of 10) what you fundamentally have to use to write down a number that you call money, whether it's $1 or $1 trillion. It's not an easy thing to ensure that writing those numbers down is regulated, but it's clearly doable and in no way requires overhead on the order of the money supply.
With Bitcoin, though, creating $1 trillion will always cost $1 trillion even in the far future where we perhaps run computers at the Landauer limit or harness entire galaxies for power. If a galaxy costs $1 trillion, then you have to destroy a galaxy to represent the abstract value of the other one.
It appears, to me, to be a recreation of the disadvantages of mining precious metal for money, in such a way as to potentially consume the entire universe (insofar as humans ever get access to it). The more advanced energy production is, the more will be consumed to make the same amount of money.
This is not just bad, it's existentially horrifying (for some people) and it's more disturbing to see advocates of PoW ignore this. Because, what is it that you're thinking? Something being an algorithm doesn't mean it's a good algorithm. Even if there is a clever argument for why it's good in some abstract sense. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_algorithm
There's a passage in a book by Douglas Adams that I'm reminded of, even though it isn't quite the same:
"“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces
anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.”
“If you would allow me to continue.. .”
Ford nodded dejectedly.
“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal
tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”
Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at
this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits
were stuffed.
“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small
inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which
means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three
deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut."
Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them
down.
“So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue
the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. .
.er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible
move under the circumstances."
The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until
someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in
their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the
management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked
forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from
the crowd.”"
You might say "oh, this is a story of fiat currency" and perhaps it was intended that way, as the story predated cryptocurrency. But the "burn the forests down" is what strikes a chord with me.