Babylonian scribal students were trained already c. 2000 BC in the mathematics of compound interest. Their school exercises asked them to calculate how long it took a debt at interest of 1/60th per month to double. The answer is 60 months: five years. How long to quadruple? /1
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Ten years. How long to multiply 64 times? Thirty years. It must have been obvious that no economy can grow in keeping with this rate of increase. /2
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Babylonian training exercises grasped that herds and production grow in S-curves, tapering off -- while debts mount up, ever growing at interest. This tendency for debts to accrue faster than the economy can grow is missing from today's academic curriculum. /fin
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perhaps it SHOULD be missing from the modern curriculum, as our economy has been growing exponentially for several centuries there may be an S curve, but if so, we're not at the flattening out point yet
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