Nick Szabo  🔑

.@NickSzabo4 Hi, I’m reading your articles about Malthusian economics and the development of agriculture. I have a question:

In a society that’s at the “southeastern-most” point of the malthusian isocline (ie with the highest achievable population density living with the lowest biologically possible calories/person), the net capital creation must be zero, right?

Because all available labor is consumed by ever more marginal food production (and thus can’t be used creating capital), and all the capital (livestock or seeds) beyond the level needed to sustain the population is consumed?

And any capital creation caused by random events (eg a very good harvest) (because the extra grain allows some labor to be freed over the next few harvests and this labor can be used in capital creation) will be balanced by capital depletion due to random events (eg bad harvest)?

for the curious, the articles I'm reading are: https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2010/10/malthus-and-capital.html … https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2010/12/some-conjectures-and-facts-regarding.html … https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/06/trotting-ahead-of-malthus.html … Brilliant stuff!