[BoiledCabbage]

This formula which I haven't gone through in detail enough to see if I completely agree, directly support the point of waste.

As society lowers the cost of energy, we would expect even more energy to be wasted with all other variables remaining equal.

Halve the cost of energy and now you've doubled the amount of energy spent.

If the cost all energy worldwide improved dropped by a factor of 100, society should explode with new technology. Instead this formula says we'll just spend 100x as much of it mining.

At least with mining gold as technology improves, you gain efficiency in gold extracted per joule. Crypto mining works exactly reverse. The better technology gets, the more wasteful it has to become to compensate.

[jasonlingx]

Would you then say that all that energy from the millions of stars burning in our night sky is wasted?