David B. Shemano wrote: But imagine an entrepeneurial diver who thinks "I can find a lot more pearls, and make a lot more money, if I buy a boat, oxygen tanks, etc."
I'll continue that analogy... loosely: He becomes wealthier due to his financed technological advantage. Next: The pearls, albeit a 'renewable resource' slowly become scarcer because he needs to repay the external financing or show increased profitablity, dividends... etc, He begins to over-extract the resources that are providing his income. Yet he becomes weathier still, due to scarcity of pearls, a scarcity which depresses demand, causing the 'pearl market' to stabilize... for a while, and stalls off 'peak pearls'. Finally, inevitably... again, due to the neccesity of ameliorating those external financial demands, the pearls are all gone... and, hopefully for the diver, the investment in his venture paid off. But the pearls are all gone! For the financier, and the diver by extension at some point in this saga, (probably around "Yet he becomes weathier still...") it was all about the money anyway... not the pearls If he were a pearl lover, he would most likely have cashed out instead of 'fishing out' the pearls.. But greed over-rode his judgment. . . . . .
