100 people produce 100 units of resources (1 per person). For every 10 units of resources, they’re able to create 1 more duplicate (this is just capturing the idea that duplicates are “costly” to create). And the 100 people have 5 new ideas, leading to 5% productivity growth.
Here’s year 2:
Now each person produces 1.05 widgets instead of 1, thanks to the productivity growth. And there’s another 5% productivity growth.
This dynamic takes some time to “take off,” but take off it does:
The #NUM!’s at the bottom signify Google Sheets choking on the large numbers.
My spreadsheet includes a version with simply exponentially increasing population; that one goes on for ~1000 years without challenging Google Sheets. So the population dynamic is key here.
10. We’ll start with this economy:
100 people produce 100 units of resources (1 per person). For every 10 units of resources, they’re able to create 1 more duplicate (this is just capturing the idea that duplicates are “costly” to create). And the 100 people have 5 new ideas, leading to 5% productivity growth.
Here’s year 2:
Now each person produces 1.05 widgets instead of 1, thanks to the productivity growth. And there’s another 5% productivity growth.
This dynamic takes some time to “take off,” but take off it does:
The #NUM!’s at the bottom signify Google Sheets choking on the large numbers.
My spreadsheet includes a version with simply exponentially increasing population; that one goes on for ~1000 years without challenging Google Sheets. So the population dynamic is key here.