Chapter 1.pdf

The concept of the "doubling game" refers to the idea that continuous growth can last forever, but it is unsustainable in a non-frontier global world. This trend is rooted in the early seeds of capitalism and has become a leitmotif of modern economic thinking, driven by greed. The doubling game has its origins in ancient India and has been exemplified in various modern examples, including the 1929 stock market crash, the 2009 credit crisis, and pyramid scams like those of Bernie Madoff. The game is based on geometric progression, where the number of outcomes doubles with each iteration, but it is limited by physical constraints, such as the number of sides on a die or the size of a piece of paper. Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population illustrates the problem of unsustainable growth, where the world's population doubles geometrically while the food supply increases only linearly, leading to disaster. The doubling game is also seen in government pensions and continuous bond issues, which postpone a future reckoning. A fable about a courtier who asks an Indian king for a grain of rice doubled every day for each square on a chessboard highlights the mathematics of the doubling game and its impossibility of being sustained.