Although each generation degrades the value of the earth?s resources
(by mining them) all modern generations have bequeathed to their
descendant generations all their intellectual property (you can't take
it with you!).  And that turns out to be worth so much more than the
small bit of resource thievery going on that it doesn't bear mention.
It's amazing to me how rarely this gets mentioned in debates on
intergenerational equity - and what it's implications are.

I want to be referred to empirical work trying to quantify the two
contrasting economic effects of

1a) Economic cost of resource depletion from mining

2a) The economic value of all the intellectual property - broadly
considered to include improved business techniques etc that cannot be
subject to intellectual property protection ? that is passed on by
each generation to the next.

It is unlikely that such numbers can be precise.  Provided they are
from respectable sources, indicative estimates of orders of magnitude
would be acceptable.

I would also be interested to see similar comparisons of subsets of
the same kind of question.  For instance, what is the economic cost of
soil degradation compared with the economic value of soil improvement.
 To be most use this would be a global measure.

The information will be used in a newspaper column and so any other
interesting anecdotes or facts would also be appreciated.