Free energy is more obviously absurd, but almost-free is also equally absurd.

Take a starving person from a developing nation and get them working construction in America where they can shop at Walmart and they might tell you they are "infinitely rich".

Similarly, compared to wood burning, petroleum is "almost free energy" yet you still hold bitcoin because you actually do know that it is an ill-posed concept.

Has absolutely nothing to do with government. There is always a cost. When you deviate from that understanding, you sound like the people who talk about a "post-money society."

The wealth of the world is very much related to energy, so it's not unreasonable to think 1 bitcoin may have several billion of today's dollars worth of effective purchasing power in a century... and yet, if you want that several billion 2023 USD equivalent of joules, you will still need to pay up that entire bitcoin!

A bitcoin does not know what a joule is and a joule does not know what a bitcoin is... there is no amount that is sensibly "almost zero", there is just a shifting exchange rate.