Tools
And
Utilities

Suckage Equilibria

Here’s a really great quasi-philosophical post.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=349&bpid=23992

For those unfamiliar with the Malthusian trap, it’s the phenomenon that (at least in pre-industrial times, and possibly for us again eventually) humans can reproduce more than fast enough to suck up any additional resources in our economic system.

In Malthus’ day, improvements in agriculture would add N previously non-existent calories to the community foodstock, but as soon as those calories were available, people would reproduce in greater numbers, producing new people who required at least N×c additional calories, where c is significantly larger than 1. The cycle was severe enough that people starved, or were so malnourished they fell prey to childbirth or minor blood loss or the common cold. So, life sucked because everyone had to spend all their time and energy growing food — it’s simply the equilibrium state of the system. That is, it was … until the Black Death gave us our modern economy and rising standards of living.