I don't have the citation handy, and I'm sure the proof was tied to a particular topology, but the take home for me was that it was possible for mesh network advocates and skeptics to both be correct; that mesh networks can be a way to continually increase network capacity cooperatively without centralized authority, but that doesn't mean such capacity increases would be meaningful.
The same might apply here: yes, the rate of increase in N may approach 0 such that at some point it becomes an irrelevant factor to economic growth. OTOH, in the absence of alternative drivers even a tiny rate of increase is something, and removing it could lead to accelerating reductions in global wealth.
But we just don't know. The relevant questions and answers are more empirical than theoretical. My point was just that the growth narrative isn't predicated on a pyramid scheme, it's just the safest and possibly only known reliable strategy we understand. But an end to population growth seems inevitable in the next couple of generations (barring space colonization), so I suppose we'll find some answers rather soon.
Complex systems need a large number of people. We will have to create some version of the missing billions. Perhaps robots or AI personalities or mash ups.
As a casual example..a personal story: I recently had this revelation when I met someone from a small western country with a population of about 5 million. This person was incredibly smart, highly accomplished, well travelled and older than me.
But I still found that he was somewhat oblivious to what I call ‘nuances of human nature’. I have never considered myself a particularly perceptive person or highly tuned into human personality, but because of the accident of birth in a country that has over 1.3 billion people now, I was exposed to a wide circle of different people..and even though this other person was far ahead of me in every way, his exposure was limited to a smaller cocktail of human natures.
Did it make me smarter? I don’t know. But I sure was exposed to so much variety that I could at least detect differences and variabilities..even minute ones. I think my view of life is richer, more colorful and interesting.
To bring up another example: a larger population is like being a native speaker of Cantonese with its eight tones vs being someone who can speak a language with exactly 100 words. Entirely different worlds and one is vastly richer than the other.
So to combat this, we just have to create artificial people and virtual world when we finally achieve the carrying capacity of about one billion people(the population of the planet in 1600)
> An analogy: To a first approximation, the more neurons you have (population), and the more interconnected they are ("free market"), the more capable and potentially intelligent the network.
A good analogy but every system has a "sweet spot" regime; outside that zone various advantages stop being (evolutionary, in this case) advantageous, else our brains would be eve larger.