RE:What's up..Dfly, You ever study composite functions in math? A function is a rule. Like y = 2x is a rule. You have input "x", say 2 and produce an output of 2 x 2 = 4. Then you take 4 as an input into another function like y = sin x or ln x or whatever. You produce another output that you use as input into yet another function.
That's how I think of sp and the economy in general. You continually map inputs onto outputs using those outputs as inputs in order to produce more outputs. If the rules stay constant then you can predict what a future output will be by noting how the output changes with the input for each particular rule using differential calculus specifically "the chain rule".
But what happens if the rules themselves change? I think that's where we're at. Our entire economic model is based on the rule that there will always be enough of everything to sustain us all. It's implicit in the fact that people count on a rate of return. Receiving more money back than they invest. It implies that more can always be made available with the right deployment of capital. Like turning seed corn into orders of magnitude more corn kernals.
Personally I think that we've reached the limit (math lingo where beyond which the function becomes undefined and invalid) or in layman's terms; we've hit the wall on this planet being able to sustain 8.5 billion of us.
Bloomberg reports that total global debt (government, corporate, personal) is $330 trillion dollars. For our economic system to remain viable interest on that debt demands that we continually have to grow output to infinity or debt gets defaulted on. It simply gets written off. Inflation is a way to write off debt because you're returning less buying power (output) than the buying power that was input. The planet is at max on output. It cannot produce more. In fact, it's producing less right now because of unprecedented droughts all over. So my guess is that inflation will only increase until about $100 trillion or so of buying power is written off. That's my own personal new rule that I apply.
But before we reach that point scarcity will trigger civil strife and wars, Covid will kill the vulnerable, starvation will kill many. Billions will die, debt will be written off by outright default. The great reset is in the works right now.
So what to do? Go lease about 100 hectares of farmable land from the Guyana government in a country rich with resources, fertile soil, lots of water and sun and only 700,000 people. Stay away from the beast. It eats everybody in sight.