The rate of interest, which is the price of money in the future, is officially zero. What this means is there is no cost to dipping into the future to bailout the present. Image: istock
During the first great agricultural revolution , when humans moved from being hunter-gatherers to farmers, settling in small villages and ultimately towns, the world human population is estimated to have increased from four million to five million. In the next 5,000 years, from 5,000 BC to the birth of Christ, the human population is thought to have increased from five million to 100 million. In this second 5,000-year period, the human population increased approximately 25 times whereas in the first 5,000-year period, the increase was marginal. The reason for this disparity is that the earlier five millennia of domestication were the most lethal years in human history.