For the analogy to work with energy and still be true to the physicist's argument, we would also have to imagine that all exchange of goods and services requires new platinum -- and that there's a hard physical limit on the platinum mining rate.
Perhaps a world where platinum jewelry is all that is bought and sold. Jewelers improve in skill and the jewelrt becomes ever more intricate and elaborate, such that its value grows ever higher than the raw platinum it's made from.
In such a world, there might be no limit on the jeweler's craft, but could the price of platinum really become arbitrarily small? As time goes on, first the world's greatest jeweler could afford the whole supply, but then even a second rate jeweler, and then eventually anybody could perhaps afford to buy all the raw platinum.
A: Platinum is an example, there are hundreds of other such resources.
B: Platinum is much easier to corner than energy would be, since platinum mining is limited to a very few number of active minutes. Energy production is quite distributed.
Perhaps a world where platinum jewelry is all that is bought and sold. Jewelers improve in skill and the jewelrt becomes ever more intricate and elaborate, such that its value grows ever higher than the raw platinum it's made from.
In such a world, there might be no limit on the jeweler's craft, but could the price of platinum really become arbitrarily small? As time goes on, first the world's greatest jeweler could afford the whole supply, but then even a second rate jeweler, and then eventually anybody could perhaps afford to buy all the raw platinum.