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Credit Bubble Stocks: Review of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization

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Ed Conway is a journalist who has gotten interested, in Vaclav Smil fashion, in the materials that underlie our civilization and world. Hence his new book, just published in November: Material World. While Vaclav Smil has argued that the "four pillars of modern civilization" are cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia, Conway focuses on six raw materials that he thinks are underrated: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. It's not entirely clear that "underrated" is Conway's organizing concept for choosing these six, and one thing we quickly see is that he is not as logically organized, thorough, or data driven as Smil. But his argument seems to be that these are underrated and overlooked since on the one hand they are so important, but on the other hand they are cheap relative to the value they create (copper is under $4 per pound), they are used in enormous volumes (big, bulky, yet overlooked flows), and because they are bulky, producing them requires displacing even more enormous

Credit Bubble Stocks: Review of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization skip to main | skip to sidebar Credit Bubble Stocks Wednesday, January 10, 2024 Review of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization Ed Conway is a journalist who has gotten interested, in Vaclav Smil fashion, in the materials that underlie our civilization and world. Hence his new book, just published in November: Material World . While Vaclav Smil has argued that the "four pillars of modern civilization" are cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia, Conway focuses on six

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