Backstop resources theory states that as a heavily used limited resource becomes expensive, alternative resources will become cheap by comparison, therefore making the alternatives economically viable options. In the long term, the theory implies faith that technological progress will allow backstop resources to be essentially unlimited (see also Cornucopian), and that need will cause the development of new technologies to become cost effective. This idea is supported by economist Robert Solow who claimed that four-fifths of US economic growth could be attributed to technological development (the other fifth being accounted for by expansion of labor and capital).
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Famous quotes containing the word resources:
“Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has—the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge—infinitely precious, time- resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)