Resources

Ecology is sometimes defined as the Resource and Reproductive strategies of a specie. It's a bit more complicated than that for humans. Still, what remains unchanged is that humans must have the resources available to survive and to raise the next generation so that they too can survive. (This is an initial draft.)

Really, for any species it would be expected that the discussion would start with resources. For that matter, predation would almost certainly be a major initial topic. In humans it is different. We don't have any important predators, though disease may have increased importance. Humans are amazingly generalist For most species, resources can be listed fairly easily. Humans though use just about any and all resources that can sustain life. Omnivore only begins to describe humans. At the same time, resources used by one population may not be used at all by a nearby population. So perhaps the simplest description would be a list of requirements that resources would be used for instead of a list of resources used.


It is simplest to start with Food, Clothing and Shelter.
Education is a basic requirement now and is an investment. Machines will help with that.
Medical care is a significant "expense" that is also an investment.
Entertainment and Leisure. To paraphrase W. Churchill, "if not, what are we doing this for". According to a couple premises, this is not just a luxury, but will be important to long term survival
Retirement is now a major resource consideration and also illustrates a new moral issue. Animals do not consider this, though supporting the elder is a part of tribal morality.

Current and developing human resource strategies are qualitatively different from animal or even tribal resource strategies. Some animals store food for winter. Some later human tribes did carry on trade. Still, what modern humans do is different including the distribution of billions of tons of resources over long distances, organized as an economic system with abstractions of resources called "money". An early civilization could sustain about twenty times the population size in an area that the tribal strategies could. It's hard to say what a civilization in the future will support. Civilization has specialization of function of its members that is basically unique. Resource utilization is far higher than any other species. The really novel thing though is that technology is creating more and more resources to the point that in practical terms humans will not be resource limited. With sufficient energy, all the consumable resources humans need such as food, water and basically anything else, can be produced. The development of energy technology as well as other technologies to produce resources are progressing amazingly fast.