Close Enough to Touch: On where value gathers, from the river to the stars; with Reach, a working framework

Value gathers at whatever cannot move. This paper follows that one rule from the river valleys of the first farmers to the edge of the observable universe, through coal, oil, the wire, the city, the weightless product and the sun, and asks what happens to the arrangement of economic value as the reach of its parts grows. The answer is a glass: order up close, none at a distance, at every scale. A second part, Reach, states the rule as a working framework with one primitive (the ratio of the cost of a connection to its value), three laws (placement, capture, control) and five quantities, tests the placement law against plants whose sites are known, closes with one dated prediction, and sets out six experiments anyone can run.