The economy can be understood as a self-replicating system, a characterization that has applied for thousands of years.

“is sort of focused on the relationship between the parts of the existing economy and like the prices going up and down and supply and demand and so forth but if you sort of zoom out the economy as a whole is a self-replicating system and it always has been you know thousands of years ago it was a relatively small and simple self-replicating system of like some villages of people they would farm and then they would have babies and then they would found new villages and then they would farm and have new babies and so forth and like”

“it would grow exponentially over time,”

“but at a very slow rate.”

“Now it's a much more complicated self-replicating system that involves trucks and carrying equipment back and forth and factories and mines and so forth.”

“But still at a high level,”

“it's a self-replicating system where we have people,”