so, thinking about global pandemics, I wonder how resilient US first world economy is. We lost a bit under 1% of the population in the Spanish Flu c. 1918, and it didn't much hurt us. Lincoln killed off 3% of the US population, and while it quite hurt the economy in CSA >
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12/ One thing to think about is that technology level in 1960 wasn't merely defined by "what we've discovered / invented by 1960", but also "what the economies of scale of the 1960 customer base allowed". Look at action movies or video games. US population in 1960 was 180 M.
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13/ So a movie would have to cover its budget by selling tickets to ~ 180 M people, max. Today an action movie sells to US, EU, China, India. So the same movie can sell tickets to ~1.5 B people. 7x the market means 7x the budget.
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14/ and at that budget you can afford things that you couldn't afford at all at the smaller budget. So one tool (among many) to think about such things is to look at what tech level we supported at various population levels. We would, I think, partially retract that path.
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Can we keep the lights on with a death toll of 40%?
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Yes, that is what my thread is about
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