The Productivity Trap
The Productivity Trap
Labor productivity has nothing to do with labor.
I get that this is collapse, but that was a ridiculously unsourced opinion piece.
Claiming renewable energy like solar is a dead end because it's currently manufactured using oil power is as silly as someone from 200 years ago claiming oil powered electric factories are impossible because they need to be built with steam powered factories.
It is an opinionated blog. But the core idea is reasonably easy to check, using a self replicating ISRU photovoltaics factory which uses its energetic output for everything as a model. Running an aluminium electrolysis cell is already difficult without buffering. It will already require mining and also transport, since offsite. Do make a list of raw materials and the entire supply chain for manufacturing. Write down the list of materials for those. At some point you might notice where the problems are.
Notice that green plants have no issues with ISRU self-rep, but we are quite far removed from that capability and we likely won't get there because we're already running out of fossil fuels and hence resource extractability.