Re: entrenched industry...
Limited resource economies can not mix with capitalism or variable populations. You can have one or the other, but not both.
For the sake of argument we'll just leave the population factor out. Capitalism 'works' because a valued resource is taken from one person and given to another. Someone must lose for another to gain.
It is inevitable that those who gain will continue to gain at a progressively faster rate due to their increased trade capacity. In a limited resource economy there must come a point at which all of the limited resources will be spoken for and no further trading can take place as there is no more to gain. At that point you have three options:
- Devalue the resource to stimulate trade by forcing people to scramble to regain lost value.
- Add value to another resource to stimulate trade by forcing people to gain as yet unallocated resources.
- Eliminate value based trade and each receives as is needed.
The last option didn't work too well and the first is what we are doing today with 'the dollar' except the resource really isn't limited and more people can participate in trade. Instead of a few dozen 'kings' who have all the resources we have a system where everyone can participate. Nothing wrong with that, the alternative isn't pretty. I'll get to that.
The second option is what Bitcoin is trying to be. It may gain some traction but it has no value beyond what a very small group of people ascribe to it. It still has to be converted into a dollar to have value.
The end of limited resource economies was forecast in 17th century Italy as people weren't dying fast enough to keep currency moving through the system at a useful rate or quantity. Depending on mass scale epidemics and warfare to free up resources is pretty fucked up and unreliable as well. The problem bounced around until the Great Depression at which point everybody was so fucked that a more workable system could be put in place. Even those who had the huge quantities of the limited resource knew it had to change or their holdings would be deemed worthless.
Going back now is completely pointless as the sheer scale of humanity requires a trade unit without a quantity cap. Certainly you aren't suggesting we kill off 2/3 of humanity; are you? I suppose we could just let them starve and that way we could blame nature, but that seems like overkill.