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• a genetic correlate (Score:1)

  by mr_bean (3802)

  This reminds me of a phenomenon in genetics I was reading about in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift [wikipedia.org]
  
  "In population genetics, genetic drift is the statistical effect that results from the influence that chance has on the survival of alleles (variants of a gene). The effect may cause an allele and the biological trait that it confers to become more common or more rare over successive generations. Ultimately, the drift may either remove the allele from the gene pool or r
• The customer is always useful. (Score:1)

  by educated_foo (3106)

  Well, in a natural ecosystem everyone (or every gene) is just trying to survive long enough to reproduce a lot. Why do we start decaying at 30? Because we're past our reproductive years at that point, and therefore useless. On the other hand, in an economic system, whoever dies with the most toys wins, so there's no such thing as "enough money."

  As an aside, I think this touches on the biggest mistake people make about large-scale, first-world markets: that they are driven by some sort of diverse consum
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by Ron Savage (5224)

    > so there's no such thing as "enough money."
    
    Yes. This has been spelled out in the fascinating book:
    Adam's Curse
    Bryan Sykes
    0 552 14989 6
    Eg: Top of page 295
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by educated_foo (3106)

      Thanks for the reference. I will give it a read.
• The Evolution of Cooperation (Score:2)

  by ajt (2546)

  In Axelrod's book The Evolution of Cooperation [wikipedia.org] it's made quite clear than even companies/organisations that hate each other will tend towards a cartel/duopoly and finally monopolies. There is nothing within the mechanism of the market that will stop this from happening it's an automatic output from the mathematics. To prevent monopolies you need something external to destabilise the system, which could be the right kind of government legislation (the book contains examples that make things worse) or a new e

  --
  -- "It's not magic, it's work..."