Maintaining order and fighting entropy is hard, but also planned obsolescence is a good thing for systemic resilience.
You have to regularly clear out the old for at least two reasons...
a) keep the process of creating new things well exercised. "We can't build that anymore. We don't know how." A factory that builds things that last too long eventually goes out of business.
b) prevent old things from monopolizing resources due to more time to compound interest. Otherwise, you end up with Saturn devouring his son.
because of the immortality of financial accounts and such, it's basically what's happened to the economy. ancient 100, 200-year-old trusts choking the viability of laborers doing anything and so on. especially bad in europe.
A tree experiences compounding interest. The longer it lives, the more ground it owns and the more its tall branches and leaves blot out the sun below, making it extremely difficult for any juvenile of its species to take root and mature beneath it.
This is why some conifers have pine cones that only release seeds when burned in a fire. For these species, evolution has determined it's not even worth trying to germinate unless it's likely a fire killed its parents and made space for them to grow. This is part of how we discovered wildfires are a critical part of some region's ecology. We managed to halt most forest fires and it ruined the natural rhythm of life there.
anonporridge · · focus · HN ↗
Maintaining order and fighting entropy is hard, but also planned obsolescence is a good thing for systemic resilience.
You have to regularly clear out the old for at least two reasons...
a) keep the process of creating new things well exercised. "We can't build that anymore. We don't know how." A factory that builds things that last too long eventually goes out of business.
b) prevent old things from monopolizing resources due to more time to compound interest. Otherwise, you end up with Saturn devouring his son.
butlike · · focus · HN ↗
curuinor · · focus · HN ↗
anonporridge · · focus · HN ↗
A tree experiences compounding interest. The longer it lives, the more ground it owns and the more its tall branches and leaves blot out the sun below, making it extremely difficult for any juvenile of its species to take root and mature beneath it.
This is why some conifers have pine cones that only release seeds when burned in a fire. For these species, evolution has determined it's not even worth trying to germinate unless it's likely a fire killed its parents and made space for them to grow. This is part of how we discovered wildfires are a critical part of some region's ecology. We managed to halt most forest fires and it ruined the natural rhythm of life there.
coolThingsFirst · · focus · HN ↗
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
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