What was Soddy's central economic theory?
My central economic thesis, which I outlined in works like 'Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt,' posits that true wealth is not mere money or debt, but the actual flow of energy and resources that sustains society. The physicist knows that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Our economic systems, however, are predicated on the illusion that wealth can be manufactured from debt – a 'virtual wealth' that bears no relation to the underlying material reality. This leads to a perpetual cycle of artificial expansion and inevitable collapse, a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world truly operates based on thermodynamics.
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