The Oil Drum

1. Lead into gold - a few billion well spent tax dollars shows that turning lead into gold is not a money making venture, and that it is surprisingly more esoteric than any alchemist ever imagined. And if it hadn't been for that alchemy fantasy, I doubt anyone would ever have bothered doing it.

2. Earth is round - you just take a well in Alexandria and one in Cyrene, wait for noon, do some geometry. Of course, you do actually have to be mathematically literate.

3. Everyone knows by the time you find a witch, it is time to have a bit of righteous public entertainment ending in the just punishment of the evildoers. Historically, this has been a very reliable form of entertainment among people - though it only had a minor run in North America (sort of like how Americans just don't get soccer).

I do think that there is a level beyond money - for example, staying warm in the winter isn't really about money, it is about survival. It is just that many people in North America can't imagine what it is like to live without any fuel in the wintertime, regardless of how much money they have. Check out the mass migrations of Germans from East to West in the winter of 1944-45 to escape the Russians to get a feel for what I mean - even if you were rich/powerful enough to have a vehicle, and fuel, it just meant the strafing fighters found you worth their time. For most Europeans who were alive before 1940 or so, such a concern with heat and survival is not theoretical, along with the awareness of how unimportant money is compared to staying alive.

I think part of the general confusion here is the difference between money as a source/representation of human motivation/activity, and the fact that reality is not the same as human motivation/activity. Just like turning lead into gold, it is conceivable that the Texas oil fields could go back to producing what they did in the early 1970s. It is just up until now, no one has figured out a way to replace what has been burnt. This can be thought of as finite (really huge to beyond human comprehension) and conceivable not being equal to infinite (never ending). After all, a few billion atoms of gold from lead sounds huge - until you do the math.