3 Laws of Light Bulb Thermodynamics

I'm starting to come around on the newfangled lightbulbs. It's been an annoying transition. It used to be so easy to buy bulbs. There were a few different shapes, with a few different wattages. You picked the one that matched your burned-out bulb.

Now there is a slew of additional technological options. First were the CFL bulbs (the spirally tubes). I hate those. They don't look like normal light bulbs. Many of them light up slowly and are noisy. Worst of all, the light they emit is not very pleasant, and they burn out much more frequently than advertised.

Now we have the LED bulbs. They were expensive and emitted harsh light, but that has improved. Bulb prices have dropped significantly in just a couple years, and the soft white bulbs are hard to distinguish from incandescents. The great draw is they produce the same light as regular bulbs using only a fraction of the electricity. When you look at your bulb that only consumes 8 watts, you might think, "wow, I am being frugal which will free up money for other things." That's the right way to think about it. But another common reaction would be, "wow, I'm saving energy, which is good for the environment." That attitude has much more feels-good-man value, but is technically incorrect. Having thought about the effect of these bulbs a bit, I present the 3 Laws of Light Bulb Thermodynamics.

1 Energy cannot be saved, only re-allocated.

The simplistic view of energy efficiency is that increasing efficiency will lead to less energy use, thus reducing human impact on the environment, dependency on foreign energy, etc. In actuality, energy markets are complex and the available energy tends to be used one way or another. Efficiency gains can actually cause an increase in consumption. (the Jevons paradox)

Say you make an investment to improve your personal energy efficiency by buying a car with high fuel economy, or by insulating your home. You save $1000 a year in energy costs. What happens to that extra money? Likely, you'll spend it. You could buy a new TV, remodel your kitchen, or take that vacation to Europe. Whatever the money is spent on, it involves energy consumption that would not have been made without the investment in energy savings. Energy was never saved, it is merely used on something else. Being concerned with the environment, you might determine not to spend your savings at all. So you work less, letting your income fall by $1000 a year. What you've done is to lower energy demand overall. Great, but you've just freed up energy supply for someone else to use. The price of energy will drop, ever so slightly, and the other consumers will respond to the lower cost of energy by buying more of it.

2 Excess energy converts to complexity, which increases energy requirements

Complexity naturally increases whenever there is excess energy, which may occur by acquiring extra energy inputs, or by increasing efficiency. The LED bulbs are more complex than incandescent bulbs. They are more expensive and require high-tech manufacturing and rare-earth metals. Energy had to be allocated to develop and produce the bulbs. The overall energy savings they provide will allow for investment in other energy-saving domains.

While the light-bulb industry may be saving us energy overall, their own complexity increased as a result, and their own energy usage. It takes more energy to make an LED bulb. That's why they cost more. A complex system may be more energy-efficient than a primitive one, but its overall energy demands are higher and must be satisfied to stave off dangerous collapse spirals. If energy shortages make it impossible to continue producing LED bulbs, it is not a simple matter of reverting to incandescent bulbs. Factories and infrastructure would have to be retooled, and that takes energy - difficult to procure in a shortage. The example isn't perfect, but you can imagine your own scenario of reverting to old technology. Imagine having to revert to landline telephones (I've ripped most of the lines out in my house) or to horse transportation if gasoline became unavailable through some calamity. The hallmark of the collapse is that society can't even afford the energy costs of reverting to states of lower complexity.

3 Complexity that doesn't increase efficiency will generate entropy, which decreases efficiency

In physical systems, entropy (or disorder) tends to increase. The milk spills onto the floor, but never spontaneously organizes itself back into the cup. A boulder on top of a mountain has more potential energy than one at the bottom. There are many paths the boulder could take, but it seeks the path of lowest energy. Similarly, systems seek states of higher efficiency to obtain excess energy for investment in additional complexity. In a low-entropy environment there is a clear, compelling path towards those goals. One can observe the environment, note causal patterns, and move appropriately towards desired goals. In a high-entropy environment, the guiding forces are absent. The actor either cannot make proper assessments of the environment to determine proper action, or can but is prohibited from doing so.

Applying this to social systems, we'd take low-entropy to mean a system with high-trust, free-flow of accurate information, and liberty to act with minimal interference. A high-entropy environment would be the opposite. False information flows reduce the ability to assess the world, arbitrary results from corruption make pattern-finding moot, and imposed restrictions inhibit the introduction of optimal actions.

Consider the firm that creates light bulbs. They invest energy towards efficiency, which hopefully results in even more self-investment. As they start to really generate profitable returns, something else starts to happen. The firm begins to make investments that do not improve efficiency. Bureaucracies grow and productive ventures get wrapped up in red tape. Complexity - something introduced to solve problems - starts to be applied to problems that aren't really the company's problems. Suddenly there are HR initiatives to police morality, a director of diversity, and charitable ventures that don't really help anyone. The company has invested in solving society's problems (real or imagined). These are investments that can only be made if there are excess resources. Profits can be a double-edge sword. The complexity bought with profits can drive efficiency, or can derail the company entirely. Silicon Valley provides many examples of former tech companies that now seem more like political action alliances. (Their soon decline is all but assured.)  The same goes for government. Rather than providing an environment of stability and security, government is now a platform for enacting social agendas, which the various factions fight mightily to control. This is only possible because the government is so fattened from taxation and borrowing.

This useless complexity still demands additional energy inputs, but offers no efficiency improvements to justify it. From our perspective, mal-invested profits are not the second-best case (after productively invested profits). It would actually be preferable to not even generate enough profits for self-investment than to have windfall profits that are transformed into entropy-generating complexity. Running lean isn't just frugality; it protects the enterprise from internal decay.