Entropy increases

"'Entropy increase,' as my old friend Huxley used to say, and I've never heard a truer word spoken." ~ Dr. Who (Tom Baker, I think in the episode "Logopolis", 1981)

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"Second law of Thermodynamics: The second law of thermodynamics states that the efficiency of a heat engine is always less than 100% and that the entropy of a closed system must always increase."

Every time I think about the rallying cry that the economy will turn around once millions of "green jobs" start popping up, I think of entropy.

Basically, physics says that things will settle into the lowest energy state, and continue to decline--entropy increases. In order to get something into a higher energy state, you have to put in more energy than you will ever get out.

Economic energy flows into the most-efficient means of production. Successful companies maximize their outputs and minimize their inputs--becoming more efficient. Unsuccessful ones will go under and disappear.

The "green jobs" movement's claims go against the laws of thermodynamics. Basically, they say that companies will gladly sign onto what are currently--and will be for the foreseeable future--less-efficient and more-expensive means of production.

Until the green technologies evolve to the point that they offer better efficiency than current forms, adaptation simply can't happen without government force in the form of either laws or subsidies. In the absence of subsidies, the companies that adapt "green" technologies will pay a premium for doing so--will be inherently less efficient and will collapse in favor of more-efficient non-green competitors. If instead of subsidies, the government enacts laws, they then run into the problem that we don't live in a closed domestic market. Non-green competition from abroad would wipe out the less-efficient, but piously green, domestic companies.

But, in an open international marketplace, funding non-efficient technologies through subsidies puts your whole economy at a disadvantage against companies that allow companies to thrive on their own merits.

Companies will gladly adapt green technologies when it gives them a competitive advantage. They currently can not offer that, despite all the hype.