Yuri Tarnopolsky

ESSAY 56.  OUT OF ONE, MANY

         MOLECULES AND PEOPLE   

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER). The most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken also reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. (Source)

In USA , in 2000,  top1% owned  between 36 and 38% of wealth (from full report)

In purchasing power parity terms (PPP), the Gini coefficient of inequality was 0.80, the same as in the entire world. 

This Essay adds another related topic to the three preceding Essays about power, growth, and money: inequality. Wealth distributes over the population from zero to indefinitely high values in the same way as energy of molecules in chemistry. 

Illustrations of the peculiar similarity between molecules and people, well recognized by econophysics, were given in Appendix 1 to Essay 55, The Chemistry of Money. I repeat in Figure 1 only two plots.

                        Figure 1.   People (A) and molecules (B): similarity 

In the physical picture of the world, unequal distribution of a system parameter over space usually creates forces and flows that move the system toward a new state. This happens when the system possesses a sufficient degree of internal chaotic motion, which can be called in common language mixing or fluidity, and in the language of abstract systems fluctuations and temperature. 

When we talk about most fundamental properties of the world, a lot of subtleties unexpectedly arise. Simplification is unavoidable. The most fundamental properties do not have even more fundamental properties to be used for explanation. Physics simply accepts  them, as long as  the foundation does not buckle, and then simply moves to a new and better foundation.

Two states of a cylinder with gas and a piston in Figure 2, A and B,  have the same number of gas molecules, but in Figure 2B the inequality of pressure creates a force that returns the piston into its central position C, same as A.

    

                            Figure 2. Molecules (A to C) and people (D to F): difference.

It appears that the principles, not to say laws, are exactly opposite in the socio-economic picture. In those stable societies that have the starting position as in Figure 2D, any attempt to establish equality by moving the piston to position E creates a force that restores the inequality. The final state of historical evolution, however, is not the initial D, but rather something like F, which is a curious combination of equality and inequality: equal rights and unequal results.

Society does not know anything like physical equilibrium, but only a steady state maintained by consumption and dissipation of energy. The type F equality of the market means a somewhat (not much) porous structure of the partitions between social strata. This equality of buyers and sellers, however, for some reason results in a great and growing inequality. What is that reason? To say, with Georg Simmel, that small money and big money are qualitatively different is not enough. There must be some mechanism behind the famous verse of Matthew :

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath (Matthew, 25:29).

I am curious not about the inequality itself, all the more, not about its moral interpretations, but about the forces that tend to restore it. The best illustration that I know is the collapse of the Russian brand of socialism built on egalitarian ideas. It managed to last for 70 years because of the extremely low social temperature, never exactly egalitarian, however,

If the ramifications of Figure 2 be trusted, this alone should warn against a too close parallel between people and molecules and raise doubts about the mainstream of econophysics. But physics has always had powerful instincts of self-correction which it bestows on science in general, and we may expect substantial progress. The problem with econophysics, however, is that it is fully accessible only to a narrow circle of professionals: the partition between them and the rest of us is not porous. Other problems were touched upon in Essay 55.

Physics to me looks like the analysis of simple things by complex means. Chemistry, on the contrary, deals with complex things by simple means. The difference between the two is the matter of convention: there is only one science. The much simpler approach of chemistry to complexity through simplicity can potentially contribute to understanding the world of the twenty-first century, without many equations, but with funny pictures instead.

I want to look at the idea of inequality and phenomena behind it from the chemical—not economical, political, or even physical—point of view. I am looking for simplicity.

Chemical reactions can run and chemists can do their job only because of the natural inequality of otherwise identical molecules. Energy is a kind of “wealth” in the world of molecules, as wealth is a kind of energy in the world of people. The energy of molecules in fluids is distributed as unequally as human wealth and only a small part of molecules are “wealthy” enough (i.e., exceed the activation energy, Figure 1B) to engage into chemical transformations. Moreover, different types of possible reaction products grow with dramatically different speed. Chemistry is driven by elites, quite close to how Vilfredo Pareto saw society.

Life is based on all sorts of inequality of molecules, cells, tissues, and organisms, while equality comes with death. 

The distribution of molecules by energy, Figure 1B, follows from the multiple exchanges between numerous “particles.”  Thus, we can imagine a rare coincidence of collisions between molecules that results in an especially high energy of some of them. This is how a molecule can be accelerated well above the average.

The big difference is that  the human particles retain and multiply their monetary “energy,” while individual molecules lose energy as easy as they gain it. The phenomenon of individuality exemplifies the radical difference between people and molecules, often overlooked. The usual yearly statistical tables of income and wealth do not contain names and they are completely silent on the subject whether the wealthy and the poor families are the same as the previous year. They all advance or retreat, but on average rather slowly. 

The half-serious explanation of wealth inequality, therefore, is that the inequality exists because it existed a year ago on personal basis. The billiard balls of real life are of different size and shape and they even have unique ball-prints. This indicates that the ability of wealth to grow has something to do with the design of the individual owner. An idea like this is very chemical. For a chemist the world consists of individual chemical structures. For a physicist the molecular world, as well as the markets, consists of large crowds of clones of a few basic types. 

However natural inequality is for a chemist, I am instinctively troubled by human inequality. But what are its dangers? Instability, of course, but not so much the instability of the transition state as the familiar specter of the fight for equality.

The perception of equality as justice and inequality as injustice has a history as long as the entire intellectual history of humanity, but, probably, somewhat shorter than its opposite: inequality as justice.

In 1917 Russia had started a large scale equality experiment on the one sixth of the entire global landmass, but seventy years later the self-contradictory empire of equality collapsed and embraced a sharp inequality. The same has been happening with the Communist China. The word communism, i.e., the doctrine of economic equality, became synonymous with Medieval heresy in the Joseph McCarthy years. Nevertheless, more intellectuals, i.e., people in possession of extraordinary wealth of intellect, begin to feel the striking inequality of the twenty-first century America as a kind of a growing tumor. 

My own experience with Communism leaves no doubt that regardless of whether equality is good or bad, it is impossible.

Figure 3 presents two images of inequality, in which Figure 3A was the popular propaganda tool of the proponents of equality in early twentieth century. In the Russian version of the pyramid the czar was on the top. 

The pyramid represents the idea of society as a mechanical system in which the weight of power pushes in the  single direction (3B) and compresses an invisible spring which is supposed to unwind as revolution. In the czarist Russia the internal pressure was released in a sequence of revolutions. In the Communist Russia the pressure of power resulted in the massive loss of interest in work, drop of productivity, steady decline, and, finally, the senility of the aggressive war in Afghanistan. Indeed, what is the historically traditional way to assert power? War, of course. 

              Figure 3. Apotheosis of inequality

The modern criticism of wealth concentration (for example, by Gretchen Morgenson under the ad hominem title Hedge Funds and the Little People ) points to the new for America pattern of using the power of money for making more money instead of investing in material or educational progress, as the robber barons of the past did. I am afraid that the consequences of this evolutionary novelty cannot be fully comprehended at this point. I interpret the phenomenon exemplified by hedge funds and private equity as the takeover of the energy function of money by its information function, see Essay 55 on both. My purely intuitive expectation associates with the word bubble. Concentration of energy without dissipation is explosive. This, by the way, is the thermodynamics of suicide bombers in seven words.

There could be other explanations of the obese infertility of wealth. Like the value of the new car after purchase, the wealth immediately drops if large chunks of it are dumped on the market for realization and the price falls. Georg Simmel noted that money makes sense only in exchange. 

In this sense, huge wealth is a social tumor and an attraction for quack surgeons, as well as observes like myself. 

If the type D inequality (Figures 2D and 3) looks like slavery, the type F inequality, which follows from equal opportunities, is socially acceptable, at least for now. The taxation seems to squeeze the wealthy more than the poor, although this is also illusory. It looks like even most common words split their meaning in two when applied to rich and poor. I would call it disequality, a kind of social schizophrenia around inequality.  One can only wonder where the social evolution leads us and whether the authoritarian pyramidal structure will be back somewhere along the way, called, of course, perfect democracy. 

The word revolution has recently boomed loud as Republican and Islamic Revolutions, both in the name of the higher authority. It is said that historic tragedies repeat as farce, but none of the two recent revolutions looks like farce to me, especially with the prospects of shrinking global resources of all kinds, including, for the first time, the inhabitable land. The next American war will certainly bring to power a Napoleonic president running under the slogan Power or Defeat. 

I am wholeheartedly for powerful America armed with all kinds of weaponry, but in this Essay I am intrigued not by the power of nukes, lasers, and bullets. It is the  humble, invisible, and omnipotent power which,  humming day and night,  keeps the rich and the poor apart, as electrodes under voltage, following the Gospel’s dictum. I am far from judging it because we owe our entire civilization and the best of its culture to inequality, for better or worse, and because I do not see any alternative.

All balls roll down on the inclined plane, but a mysterious power pushes some of humans up, knocking some others down. That the intellectual elite does not coincide with the wealth elite, let alone with the power elite, tells me that the inequality has something to do with the fundamental laws of nature and not just with the personal abilities.

               INEQUALITY MACHINES

The pump in Figure 4 maintains a big difference in the levels of the two connected water tanks. Taking energy from the power line, it pumps water left to right until the pressure it creates equals the back pressure of the water on the right. If the pump without a back valve stops, the water in both tanks will level out. This unpretentious picture is, in my eyes, the ideogram of life, economy, culture, science, technology, society, mind, politics, and all other evolving complex systems. Ideogram is a simple mundane image representing a very abstract pattern.

                       Figure  4. Inequality pump and its power supply

I believe that some socio-economic device works like a pump and maintains the unequal distribution of wealth. I believe that this device employs the same pattern not only as the pump, but also as the power station in the background.  I would call the pattern  the inequality pump because it consumes energy and uses it for maintaining the inequality that without it would collapse and reverse to equality. Equalization, better known as equilibrium, happens in typical physical and chemical systems, but not in evolving complex systems (X-systems, better pronounced as “exystems”), at least not for long periods of time. Economy is such an “exystem.”  

There is no such pump in the world of colliding molecules (Maxwell’s demon came close) because they are in a constant exchange of energy through collisions. Each marked molecule passes the whole range of values. It does not discriminate between gain and loss. Not so for individuals in society for whom gain is good and loss is bad. The institution of private property is not yet invented for molecules, although we could think about molecules that accumulate energy in personalized manner. Genes are molecules and they do it in a very peculiar way.

The following two examples will illustrate the concept of inequality pump.

EXAMPLE 1.  HEAT ENGINE   

The heat engine consumes the chaotic thermal energy that cannot be used for any work unless converted in an appropriate form such as electricity, mechanical displacement against a force, high energy chemical bonds, light, sound, and not too many other forms.  This kind of energy is called in physics and chemistry free energy, i.e., available for performing work. This term free energy, as well as its surrogate useful energy,  sounds extremely misleading outside physics and chemistry and I will avoid it. Officially, it now can be used only as Gibbs free energy or, better, Gibbs energy.  

I believe it is better to call a spade a spade and refer to thermal energy as heat, while by energy I will mean energy in general, including what is available for work. This is not satisfactory either, but less awkward than free energy. 

Regarding economics, I suspect that the term free energy, which had spread after around 1920,  was a reflection of a relative indifference of scientists to matters of economy and, however hard to believe, personal finance.

Figure 5 presents the qualitative balance sheet of heat engine.  The power station consumes fuel, water, and oxygen from air. It burns the fuel, boils water, ejects carbon dioxide (CO₂), and directs the hot high pressure steam into the engine. The steam expands in the heat engine, the engine extracts the mechanical energy that can perform work, and the generator converts it into electricity, which is used for driving the loaded escalator against the force of gravity.

The engine splits the flow of energy into (1) the residual heat, irreversibly lost to atmosphere with low pressure steam and (2) mechanical energy.

Figure 5.  Work from heat.  Heat is chaotic movement of particles. The escalator moves in one direction against the force of gravity.

Heat engines can be designed in many very different ways, such as, for example, turbine and various internal combustion engines. In terms of abstract patterns, the design will not tell us anything unless we look at it closer before stepping far back.

The heat engine that launched the Industrial Revolution consists of a cylinder and a piston, Figure  6A.  In most general terms, this simple contraption imposes a stern constraint on the chaotic behavior of the molecules of steam: they can expand in only one of indefinite number of possible directions: out of many, one. The forceful displacement of the piston in a preferred direction can perform work. The useful energy can be diverted and separated from the remaining chaos of the lower pressure steam which has to be ejected.  In this way chaos is partially converted into order. The productive social order of America would be impossible without OUT OF MANY, ONE.  Of course, the excess of steam should be let out and freedom of expression serves as the safety valve.

                                     Figure 6. Chaos into order (A) and order into chaos (B).

The opposite process is illustrated in Figure 6B. This picture shows that the high order of the running automobile ends up in the partial chaos of the junk yard, the symbol of the final output of economy.

But what happens with all that energy produced by power stations? What is not used for economic activity,  for example, the connection of various parts into more ordered assemblies, turns into heat: the organized energy is dissipated like the energy of the ejected steam of the heat engine. The beautiful assemblies of parts made of metals, plastics, ceramics, and many other expensive man-made things fall apart, rust, burn, or fuse together, returning to chaos.

The same sad thing happens to living organisms. Economy, meanwhile, flourishes. So does life.

NOTE.  In  The Rusty Bolts of Complexity: Ideograms For Evolving Complex Systems  I described (not claiming originality) a  brushmobile, a simple mechanical device that transforms a chaotic shaking into climbing up the inclined plane. It employs the same pattern as the steam engine.

EXAMPLE 2.  LIFE

Again, without going into details of the biochemical design of life, which is much more complicated that any engine, let us look at the most general properties of living cells.

Production of work from heat is not a natural phenomenon, the reverse process is. Somebody has to invent and make the device that applies constraints on chaos. The process can be compared with taming the wild horse and making it move in the direction desired by man, usually, along a road track and not as the horse wants. Some kind of equipment and training time is needed for that. The horse, however,  performs work not by its body heat, but by splitting its energy into the part that goes to the horse and keeps it alive and well, and the part that is used by man.  The energy is supplied by an internal power station which does not use steam, but still burns fuel.  

The living organism splits energy like the heat engine. The difference is that the consumed energy is not heat and large part of it goes for maintaining a precarious existence of the living organism pushed by the laws of physics to give up life and return to dead matter. The rest of energy is lost to the environment. 

The domesticated horse spends part of energy for performing work for the master. I believe that was the core idea of Karl Marx regarding der Mehrwert , surplus value. By using the horse rather than man I try to overcome my allergy to Marxism that I developed during my Soviet schooling.

However grudgingly, I must acknowledge that Marx was prophetic on many points. The exchange of national identity and sovereignty for money was one of them.   

The horse feeds on the chemical energy in the fodder and uses it not only for maintaining the body temperature and performing physical work, but also for many intricate biochemical and biophysical purposes that life implies. In this regard the difference between horses, cows, us, and our economy is not so big—if we step back far enough. 

Figure 7 presents the workings of the cow in the same manner as Figure 5 does for heat engine. If it looks like the cow is an engine of internal combustion, so it is. The cow even exhales (surprise!) carbon dioxide, like our cars and, by the way, we ourselves. It is a much more efficient machine, however.

In Figure 7, pathway 1 (red) supplies energy in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), pathway 2 (green) assembles atoms of nutrients into tissues of the cow (similarly to the assembly of automobiles, see Essay 55), and pathway 3 (yellow) ejects the extra atoms to the junkyard, where the remnants of the cow, too, will find its final place. 

Figure 8 presents in the same manner the grass that the cow eats alive. By waste I mean the rejected dead parts of the organism, the counterparts of our car tires, but probably edible for other organisms.

                                 Figure 7 .  The qualitative balance sheet of cow

                            Figure 8.  The qualitative balance sheet of grass 

One important component of the balance is omitted in Figures 7 and 8. Which one? We will come to it soon.

                         ECONOMY AND CHEMISTRY

The relation between life and chemistry is obvious: life is a complex network of chemical reactions.

In order to discover the deep kinship of economy with chemistry (it was a small revelation for myself), as well as with life, we need to notice the elephant in the Great Hall of Economics.  Here it is:

                Figure 9. The elephant of econochemistry. No, it is not white.

Economy is assembly, separation, and rearrangement of atoms and molecules? So is chemistry. This automatically legitimizes a chemist’s authority (together with a physicist’s one) in the matters of economics. Growing corn, making computers, cutting hair, printing money, punching keys, pushing buttons, sewing buttons onto shirts, making buttons, even thinking about buttons—all that includes displacement of atoms and molecules, never happens on its own, requires energy, ends up in dissipation and destruction, and is up for sale.

Economy is an econochemical system in the same sense living organism is a biochemical system. It is in a constant process of change by creating, breaking up, and rearranging bonds between some numerous atomic entities, original atoms and molecules among them, but also bricks, bolts, nuts, walls, gears, humans, companies, ideas, and so on.  Note, however, that atoms are perfectly preserved in this turnover of matter, unless in nuclear industry.  

Of course, chemistry proper would be too much of a white elephant (or red herring?) for economics. But the chemical way of thinking is not. For in-depth understanding of this very abstract approach see works on Pattern Theory by Ulf Grenander and his expanding school of thought. 

Which leads us to the next tusk task:  there must be a powerful source of chaos, as well as a powerful constraint in the very design of the engine—better to say living body—of economy.

Having just claimed the chemist’s birthright to speak about economy, I must step back into the shadows. I am not the right chemist. My observations of American and world economy are too short and superficial and I did not think enough about it. Most importantly, I have no economic education and even much understanding of the subject. I can only try to draw attention to it.  But wait, oh yes, my daughter and son-in-law subscribed me to The Economist a year ago. I am already in the second year. And so I am stepping out of the shadows again.

              THE CASH ELEPHANT   (???)

My point is that the waste, dissipation, destruction, loss, wear, junk yard, dump, and yard sale are as essential for understanding economy as creation, design, inception, production, investment, gain, profit, triumph, etc. 

If we take all that into account, the thermodynamic balance sheet of economy looks the same as the balance of power station or cow.  Matter includes fuel and raw materials. Some organs of the econo-elephant are made of fertile land, some of humans. See Figure 10.

Figure 10.  Something is wrong with this cash elephant

No, something is wrong with Figure 10. What is money doing here?  Who owns it? Where does it go?

The answer is that money, of course, stays in the economy, unless this is a part of a larger economy. Money is a form of energy for exchange between autonomous parts or cells of economy. The parallel between ATP in living organisms and money in economic units is extremely close, although the functions of money are much more diverse. Money owes its existence to the granular (cellular or particulate) structure of human society with a human as the smallest atom (some say agent). The institute of private property with the seal of ownership is the most important distinction between molecules and people, which makes lasting inequality possible. But I cannot say anything original about money after Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money (See Essay 55) or even a textbook of economics.  Money has no value outside exchange. It cannot be produced by economy and excreted beyond its borders. It can be made by individuals, but why? Because they are part of economy.

When the cow gets incorporated into economy, it suddenly turns into a cash cow. The only purpose of  the cow’s existence (measure of its stability, we can say) is no more its sense of being alive, breeding, well fed, happy, and pampered. It is economic performance, which depends not even on the cow owner’s view of life and sense of being happy, but on the economy as a whole, which is outside the reach of human will, let alone the cow’s.

This is where a god enters the picture of the world that is not ruled by individual human will and where the King (or Warren E. Buffett) is the closest human figure to the god. In Antiquity, the god of economy was the multifaceted and multitalented Hermes of the Greeks. In Rome it was the more focused Mercury. This is probably the ultimate reason for the current world resurgence of religious irrationality. People want somebody to own and take care of them. Even those who already have it all may look up to Heavenshire Getaway Inc. All the more, those who have a half of it all.

The corrected elephant of economy is shown in Figure 11.  Money is made and exchanged inside its body.

 

Figure 11. The almost right elephant. It needs only a few buckets of water.

To follow this direction of thought, gold is the only kind of waste that is as good as money.

Another encouraging idea is that although economy based on mineral fuel is not to last, doing without oil and coal is quite possible. Elephants do not eat coal. Neither do they drink oil. True, they need water.

Water and information are two things  missing from Figures 7, 8, 10, and 11.  I do not want to complicate the Figures because neither water, nor information—in the form of DNA for the elephant and know-how for economy—are photogenic. The beauty of water is in the things that it reflects or in the surface ruffled up by the wind. DNA is boring, too. It is more economical to present them in words.

Water (fluid) is the universal substrate and condition of life. The removal of water makes dry food (fruit, sea biscuit) last indefinitely. But water (fluidity) is also an ideogram for the intrinsic chaos in various systems without which no change, desirable or harmful, is possible.

Computer is an example of extremely dry system: nothing is supposed to happen in the computer unless initiated by the operator. Judging by the behavior of my computer, however, there is still some water from all the coffee spilled on the keyboards at Microsoft.  

Abstract temperature is a measure of fluidity for all dynamic systems, i.e., systems with change. I am not sure Microsoft is hot anymore. Neither Microsoft, nor Google, nor even Apple is driven by human will. Long past that initial creative phase, they are driven by economy. The sure sign of that is involvement in cell phone business.

From the point of view of a chemist,  information plays the role of catalyst: it makes happen what could happen on its own, at least for the time of eternity, but much faster and selectively. Temperature speeds up everything. Catalysis speeds up only a particular transformation of its substrate, and in both directions, if it is reversible. Thus, Microsoft Word, part of Microsoft Office 2000, which I hold in high regard, follows my will well, probably, because economy has not had any power over it since 2000. 

As for ideograms, human hands are an ideogram for catalysis.

The three conditions of  Evolving Complex Systems, therefore, are: hardware, software, and waterware (chaos). 

Now we can approach the most intimate chemical mechanisms of making money.

          COUPLING

The rounded rectangle in Figure 12  may signify a cell of a simple organism or the animal organism itself, however complex.

                                
                    Figure 12. Machinery of life

Food is slowly “burned” in a kind of molecular power station and the energy drives the inequality pump that turns ADP (adenosine diphosphate) into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) by adding another unit of phosphate (P), which requires a lot of energy. ATP is transported to the “equality pump” that works like a watermill coupled with a manufacturing mill that makes all kinds of things, such as assembly of monomers into polymers, which also needs some energy to make it efficient. Of course, the monomers could snap to each other on their own, but we would wait for a significant  time for that to happen and they would fall apart easier than they are formed, only to be pulled together again. Imagine clothes that need to be repaired every day. Moreover, imagine predatory clothes that hunt for other clothes to incorporate their fabric into themselves. Life is industrious, after all.

My examples with mills are not accidental. They are my tribute to Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc started with a textile mill, as well as to my state of Rhode Island, where the water-driven textile Slater Mill started the Industrial Revolution in America around 1790. Some other mills that would become the seeds of  Berkshire Hathaway Inc followed later in Rhode Island and nearby. 

My opinion of Warren Buffett, one of the most benevolent gods of business, is: his brilliant idea was to focus on investors who do not need their investments for everyday life. Those who do not need money make most of it.  Which can be amended in my personal philosophy, inspired by Buddhism and the Greeks: those who do not need money feel like those who make most of it.

Figure 12 looks complex, but is in fact a great simplification of the biochemical reality. I simplified the reality in order to put both biochemical and economic complexity under the same pattern of the basic balance sheet.

My verbal description of Figure 12 was miserably simplistic, but I needed it only as introduction to the question: how can the molecular watermill bring into motion the molecular production mill? More exactly, how can ATP snap together monomers such as amino acids, for example? I hope the answers will lead us to the secrets of money mills, while the history of the Slater Mill is open to everybody at its museum in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

This is a chemical question and I cannot simplify it. I can only omit some aspects and details which can be easily found in abundance on the Web.

Biopolymers (proteins, nucleic acids) form by the chemical reaction of condensation which removes water from two parts to be linked together.

            
Or, simpler, but still acceptable: 

The equilibrium of  this reaction is shifted to the left, which means that the left state of the system is somewhat more stable than the right one.

ADP, (or APP) which I present as A-O-PO₂-O-PO₂-OH , adds another phosphate unit  P,

H-O-PO₂-OH ,  and becomes triphosphate, ATP (or APPP)

Or, simpler, but still acceptable:

The equilibrium of this reaction is strongly shifted to the left, which means that the left state is much more stable than the right one. Since the transformation is reversible, we can flip it:

Now it is shifted to the right.

When we combine the two reversible systems by adding their equations (water on both sides can be omitted) as in Figure 13,  the resulting state of equilibrium will be shifted toward AB because the  interaction of APPP with water leads to more stable state than the subtraction of water from A and B (condensation)  in separate reactions. This sounds ugly to chemical ears, but it might tell something to an economist about what dynamic equilibrium means in chemistry.

In equilibrium all possible transformations go back and forth all the time, so that no bond remains stable for long, but the statistical picture remains static. This is something that rarely, if ever, happens to the market, and only for a short time. Moreover, market and life in general have nothing to do with equilibrium: the right word is steady state or stable state of flux.

In even more primitive language,  APPP (i.e., ATP), has a higher affinity to water than condensed monomers AB and this is how the high energy ATP “sucks water” out of A and B, making them stick together.

The word affinity has its rich history in chemistry. It meant decrease in free energy before the very term free energy had been invented. High affinity to a change means that the final result is more stable (Gibbs energy decreases) than the initial state.

How do we arrive at the final state does not matter,

but it matters a lot for how fast we arrive at it.

This is the main message of econochemistry because it is the main message of chemistry itself. I hope Pattern Theory will someday develop its Kinetic Pattern Theory subdivision (NOTE: See INTRODUCTION TO PATTERN CHEMISTRY and THE DIARY OF A FERRIS WHEEL RIDER).

Figure 13 portrays what is called thermodynamic coupling of two chemical reactions, which is how ATP supplies energy to changes in chemical bonds in living cells.  The coupling of two reactions occurs through a molecule which is common for both, like the common shaft of the turbine and electrical generator in power stations. Obviously, such system requires a constant supply of ATP or, in more general terms, energy in order to remain in a steady state (not in equilibrium, ladies and gentlemen!).

        Figure 13. Thermodynamic coupling  of condensation and ATP hydrolysis

After all that verbal contortions I can say with relief that this is the same pattern as in coupling the heat engine with the generator, water turbine with a pump, and watermill with cotton mill.

Coupling could be the key word to economy itself.

Let us look at the biochemical coupling from a business perspective, which is by necessity anthropomorphic.

The monomers transfer water to ATP. Water is a very material thing. Thales of Miletus, the very first great simplificator of complexity, regarded water as the primary substance of all things. Instead, the monomers get the energy necessary for their long awaited union. To look into the other end of the telescope, ATP finally satisfies its eternal thirst with a gulp of water, for which it pays with almost all its wealth of energy, and dissolves in pleasure, until it wakes up to the fresh morning air restoring its energy in the world famous Mitochondrion Resort.

To me it looks very much like buying a bottle of water with cash and drinking it up. No water, no cash. The seller of water can make another bottle. I have to sell myself to earn money. A strange kind of equality. Is this disequality?

             SELLERS AND BUYERS OF THE WORLD,
                                                         UNITE!

There are two major participants in the act of market exchange: manufacturer-seller (SELLER, for short) and BUYER.

                                        Figure 14. Creation and dissipation.

The example with water (it could be house, airplane, company, scientific research) assigns to the buyer the function of dissolving in pleasure. The pure fluid merchandise dissipates until the sun resurrects it in the form of rain. The buyer loses part of his ability to buy water or many other different things he needs for life,  really or in imagination.  Figure 14 illustrates my point.

The seller uses the buyer’s money to make more identical bottles of water and sell them to different customers, stashing part of the money for himself in the role of buyer. 

I suspect that the relation between SELLER  and BUYER is a kind of coupling. Money, which is a form of energy analogous to ATP, is exchanged for a merchandise that cannot be found under your feet. It should be made, which requires energy in the form of money. For coupling, however, two systems should have a common component that participates in the balance sheet. Figure 15 summarizes my point that the common component, the turbine-generator shaft, so to speak, of the coupling is the identity of the buyer and seller: they are the same. Unless you have something to sell, your labor, for example, you cannot buy anything and unless you buy what you need for life and work, you cannot make anything for sale, even yourself. 

Figure 16 illustrates the asymmetry between modern production and consumption. Mass production is  more regular than consumption. It requires less energy for overcoming the uncertainty of choice, but makes the existence of  seller less predictable. I believe this is the other side of the asymmetry between buyer and seller that I refer to in Essay 55.

                    Figure 16 .  Mass production (A) and individual consumption (B)

The seller, therefore, makes money by positioning himself or herself upstream on the flow of energy from the sun and the mineral fuel  to the junk yard.  Then the advantages of mass production, advertisement, and  growth could be fully exploited while the mineral fuel lasts. It is my intuitive impression, which I cannot substantiate by numbers—but economists could try—that  the oil producing countries (Saudi Arabia) and those that supply raw  unskilled cheap labor to world economy (China) accumulate huge wealth because they keep hand on the tap from either mineral energy or from the energy of sun. The sunlight, accumulated in the starch of Chinese rice, assembles toys for spoiled American children, young and adult. Naturally, whoever keeps hand on the tap of energy in monetary form, keeps the change having sold his beer. The difference is that oil is in very few hands, Chinese labor is controlled by even fewer, but a lot of people compete for money kegs.  

How the large sellers (and, therefore, large buyers) driven by the powerful instinct of growth, comparable only with sex, crowd out the small fish down the energy river is a subject of economics proper, as well as econophysics, but not of econochemistry. One thing is obvious: it results in inequality, no ethical strings attached.

Finally, Figure 17 illustrates the essence of money in addition to Essay 55. A chemist may be tempted (as I was) to present a market exchange as a chemical reaction of exchange.

                        Figure 17.  Quasi-chemical reaction of exchange. Its chemistry is wrong.

The chemical reaction, however, is a rearrangement of bonds between material objects, to which money does not belong.  The question, however, remains open about information, art, and, probably, software. In what way information and art are similar to money is yet another intriguing topic.

In the original marketplace people exchanged goods at the same place and time, exactly like molecules exchange energy. The barter deal was, from the point of view of physics, a collision. But exchange of matter does not require the exact identity of atoms and molecular fragments, and a copy, always in abundance, is as good as any other copy. All civilizations were built on the use of human beings as interchangeable objects by a few individuals. All civilizations were built on the use of interchangeable objects and a few unique ones.

The molecule of water transfered in chemical coupling from condensing molecules is not the same  as  the one  that  splits  ATP into ADP and  phosphate: ATP, ADP, water, and two reagents participate in a marketplace  where zillions of water molecules are in play. Without the excess of water there would not be equilibrium. In the eyes of a sentimental chemist like myself, the first coins in ancient economies were the droplets of rain that fell on the dry dusty barter place and turned it into fluid economy that could flood the world and drown it with only the spires of cathedrals sticking out. 

Chemistry is as much the science of everything as modern economics is. There are many other parallels between economy and biochemistry—after all, humans are live beings—but I feel compelled to apply constraints to myself in order to have any chance of performing useful work. My last cry from my heart is: in modern economy humans are as much things and things are as much alive as cows are animals and cellphones are things.  Humans and things of the world, stay apart!

              WHAT IS ECONOCHEMISTRY

Even though I cannot lose money by mental experiments with it, I cannot make it, either. I feel free to at least take a break and look back.

I hope I have managed to illustrate in Essays 53 to 56 , as well as throughout spirospero.net,  nothing more than a direction of thought which is potentially complementary to econophysics: econochemistry.  Its core consists of four points applicable to all exystems (Evolving Complex Systems).

1. A lot of understanding how exystems work can be obtained from comparison of two stable states separated by an unstable transition state.

2. Given the initial stable state, the next stable state is the result of a few fastest changes.

3. The speed of change is determined by the stability of transition state: the higher stability, the faster change.

4. For exystems, the change in stability of a state is roughly a sum of local increments participating in the change.

The essence of chemistry is the representation of complexity in terms of simple atomic entities. In this sense, Pattern Theory (Ulf Grenander), in which configuration corresponds to state, is generalization of chemistry by building on atomism, one of the oldest scientific ideas of humankind.

The reason why I am so much intrigued by economics, the subject alien to me, is that economics is undergoing a transformation into a science of evolving complex systems comprising society in all its manifestations and its impacts on life, culture, climate, nature, and the very fate of the planet. Economics does it by putting a price tag—or at least a number—on everything. However sacrilegious this may seem to older generation, including myself, this trend follows the traditional roadway of science: for a start, put a number on the object of study.

 More on econochemistry: INTRODUCTION INTO PATTERN CHEMISTRY and  DIARY OF A FERRIS WHEEL RIDER.

  THE FUTURE OF  INEQUALITY 

Essay is an emphatically personal genre. To conclude, I want to look at the future of inequality from my personal place in the world.

Inequality, partitions, ladders, and gradients are necessary conditions of life and economy. They are not supposed to exist in the physical world where everything is subject to mixing, attrition, and collapse. The inflow of energy and the very design (software) of exystems ensure the constant repair and renovation of the systemic hardware.
The waterware—chaos—guarantees that something always happens, unless the water is frozen.  

I limit myself only to one main point: the future of inequality depends on the balance in the struggle between individualism and globalism.

I am personally terrified by the prospect of the humankind returning to its biblical origin as the new Noah’s Arc: a single, however giant, ship for all humans and their pet creatures, with its saints and sinners, predators and prey, masters and slaves, dictators and their jubilant subjects. I instinctively foresee the loss of freedom under strict maritime rules, impenetrable partitions between the decks and passenger classes, the shrinkage of the ship menus, the tags on the sleeves, and the super-monotheistic ultra-orthodox religious service without attending which the dinner will not be served. I am afraid that all passengers will ultimately become the crew. I am afraid of the global economy in which everybody will be equal as a cell of a giant Leviathan's body or, even worse, of its corporate organ. My imagination balks at the prospect of energy crisis that will lead to the over-board proscription lists.

I am even more terrified by the human invasion into human mind, also driven by economy, as all modern science. I enjoyed reading Eric Kandel’s “In Search of Memory,” but the Bigfoot of Business left a faintly unpleasant odor in one of last chapters. Here is its imprint, easily found in the annals of economy, still fresh and warm:

Yes, I know, it all is for the sake of humanity and for treating terrible illnesses… Good intentions, etc., etc.  It is not the economy, stupid, etc., etc.

I am afraid of both inequality and equality, but I see that the future of equality is coupled with the future of inequality. I understand that money sustains the inequality and, literally, liquidity of human existence. In a very old-fashion way, as somebody who has read a lot of books written by dead white men, I also understand that neither money nor gods come even close to the power of ATP in human brain.

    DO WE NEED TO FEAR THE FEAR ITSELF?

What do I fear? I see globalization as the third phase of Industrial Revolution. The second phase has been the Information Revolution. If it all seems like too long for a revolution, I still would call it  revolution because two or even three hundred years is a short time as compared with the previous history of humankind.  I see the Industrial Revolution as a global fire in which carbon and hydrogen are burning  into water and carbon dioxide at an accelerating speed. It would take a lot of  time and pain to turn all that back into carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen and to come to a sustainable steady state.  

I am afraid that the traditional social acceptance and even celebration of inequality dressed in the robe of equal opportunities may end up one day. When society is in too much pain, those who suffer most may notice the wounds of unequal suffering on the body of society and call the disease Disequalitis morbis. Then they can turn to a savior of the nation, as the Germans once did and people in Venezuela seem to have done recently. They might decide that to have just one king for a nation is better than to have five hundred uncrowned princes. Some could turn to The Communist Manifesto, others to Mein Kampf , Darwin will be burned in stoves made of empty oil barrels, the eggheads smashed, and Out of Many, One will be taken literally.

In the era of the Internet, cell phones, dumbing media, and  mixing religion with politics, it is easy to imagine  the  global waves of instability, psychosis, and violence, especially because money is the true world religion.  As any religion, it is as capable to unite people as set them against each other. In rich America  it unites, in poor Gaza  it divides.

So what? Isn't history given to us for healing all wounds?

In global economy ONE means really, really, really one. Only those who lived in totalitarian Russia, Romania , or North Korea know what ONE means. You can emigrate from the global ONE to the moon, only to start a new oppressive Puritan colony.

I believe in the creative productivity of fear which makes us ultimate winners. If we do not fear, “it” will quietly engulf us and digest alive, singing a lullaby.

The buyer and the seller inside me are not on the same shaft.  Pessimist and optimist are.
 

THE BOTTOM LINE:  $ 0.55. I started with one cent. Not bad!