> There I will have to disagree. The three examples you provided are modern (post Enlightenment) economic systems. I am sure there are more examples along the w

> There I will have to disagree. The three examples you provided are modern (post Enlightenment) economic systems. I am sure there are more examples along the world history, but it is far fetched to say it is common to all systems. I'd like to know a few examples of that. You know, a long time ago I visited one of the interior countries in Africa, and got an up-close experience of what's probably the closest thing to original human settlements I'm going to see in my lifetime. They know about the modern world, and they've got some kids that left for the city and learned French. So you can talk to them. When you look at these people, you would swear that "laid back lifestyle" doesn't quite cover it. They do the bare minimum necessary to survive, and a little bit to get comfortable. As the locals say, they will never amount to anything. And, frankly, these people are right. They will never build (granted, maybe not never ever, but ...). So you might think. No economy ... no pressure, right ? Wrong. You see, they are acutely aware of the land's carrying capacity. So they have a choice : 1) don't have kids (or not more than their group can take). Result : neighbouring tribe that didn't see the light comes over, kills all the men, and uses the women and children to expand. Besides, you may have noticed, sex is fun. Kids are fun. And I guarantee that any argument for abstinence will fall on deaf ears. 2) Have kids, and while they don't know the math behind it, they are aware that they'll exceed the carrying capacity of their land in a matter of time (incidentally, you may want to avoid visiting tribes that are close to this limit, don't worry, they'll place markers at the edge of their territory and tell you. Don't ignore them, and if you suddenly see a number of people appear on a ridge, turn fucking back). BTW: the problem with option 2 is that destructive behaviour can delay the point where they do run out of resources, at a great cost. You see, when the land can't normally support them anymore, they can burn it, which gives them access to a great amount of meat. It's simple : you burn a piece of forest (surprisingly, doing this well takes a surprising amount of skill). You have archers cover the sides of it. Animals who are normally unreachable either try to escape, taking their chances with the archers, or they burn. In both cases : Food ! Of course, at some point, everything is burned. The next step : war (if successful : the tribe splits up, because social structures don't last when groups are 50+ kilometres apart, if unsuccessful, well, we all know what happens in that case). So truth be told, that system is absolutely trying to maximize productivity and consumption. > Strongly disagree. Every instance of rapid growth in nature either finds a balance with the larger ecosystem or self destroys (by causing severe, though not necessarily terminal, damage to the larger ecosystem). Think cancer. Think the introduction of exotic species into isolated ecosystems. Think the depopulation of the Americas during the XV and XVI century due to European diseases. This is not true. You forget how natural selection works. There's lots of different tactics. Take rabbits for example. No biologist ever is going to call any rabbit population anywhere on the planet balanced. And you do have a point, rabbit populations breed themselves into extinction daily. Cats do the same. In theory the whole thing should end in a "natural balance", somehow it never does. The way life survives is simple. Natural selection : 1) multiply, and use it to try a million new things 2) 99.99% of them die off 3) use the remaining 0.01% to GOTO 1 So the purpose of natural selection most definitely is to use bubbles to their maximum advantage. Yes, some species have a slowdown factor built in, but not a very big one. The reason nature uses bubbles ? If you don't someone else will. And then, you get to deal with all the after effects of strip-mining the bubble, yet you did not get the advantages during the strip-mining that could have allowed you to expand into areas that aren't so heavily effected by the after-effects of the bubble.