Economic theory has failed to incorporate the role of energy in production for two centuries since the Physiocrats. In this video I derive a production function that includes energy in an essential manner. It implies that economic growth has been driven by the increase in the energy throughput capabilities of machinery.

This lecture shows that the Physiocrats were the only school of thought to be consistent with the Laws of Thermodynamics in their model of production, and derives a production function in which energy plays an essential role.

This is the fifth of six lectures I recorded that I gave to the Exploring Economics Summer School (https://www.exploring-economics.org/e…) held just outside the city of Erfurt in southern Germany (I recorded all but the second lecture).

In 1945, Ruml made a famous speech to the ABA, asserting that since the end of the gold standard, “Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete”. The real purposes of taxes were: to “stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar”, to “express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income”, “in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups” and to “isolate and assess directly the costs of certain national benefits, such as highways and social security”. This is seen as a forerunner of functional finance or chartalism.

Howard Scott (April 1, 1890 – January 1, 1970) was an American engineer and founder of the Technocracy movement. He formed the Technical Alliance and Technocracy Incorporated.^[1]