Unfortunately, the Iron Axe landed at the feet of our other character, clueless Ralph.

Ralph has been using a stone axe for centuries and Ralph's culture has unwittingly stumbled upon the concept of equilibrium. But they are clueless, incapable of inventing the Iron Axe themselves, but certainly capable of using the causually discarded Technology invited by Sam.

In an instant, Ralph discards the Stone Axe, and picks up the Iron Axe, forever committing the tree-based economy to end up like this:

And so Aesop , what is the moral? Well no moral here just some lingering questions:

• Are we the culture of Ralph's destined to someday look at the world and wonder what happened?
• Can we acquire the wisdom of Fred?
• Did we once have that wisdom and have now lost it?
• Is it possible that the only way that you can join the club of galactic intelligence is by never inventing the means of establishing non-equilbrium growth in the first place?
• Is morality-based decision making more important than economic based decision making?

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The Electronic Universe Project

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