Compound Rates of Interest: A Four-Thousand Year Overview by Dr. Michael Hudson

The Mathematical Economics of Compound Rates of Interest: A Four-Thousand Year Overview by Dr. Michael Hudson, ISLET ©

part1
“Whoever enters here must know mathematics.” That was the motto of Plato’s Academy. Emphasizing such abstract ratios as the Pythagorean proportions of musical temperament and the calendrical regularities of the sun, moon and planets, its philosophy used the mathematics of nature to reveal an underlying harmony and order in the universe and hence, in an ideal society. But there was little quantitative analysis of economic relations. Although the Greek and Roman economies were increasingly wracked by debt, there was no measurement of this phenomenon, or of overall production, distribution and other macroeconomic measures....
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part 2
The past century’s economic schoolbooks have described a universe running down from entropy. Production is assumed to be plagued by diminishing returns, so that each additional unit of input produces less and less output. Even if technology were recognized to raise the productivity of labor, capital and land over time, neoclassical models hold that each additional unit of consumption or wealth yields diminishing psychological utility. Not only will economies grow less rapidly, they will feel poorer....
http://www.michael-hudson.com/articles/debt/CompoundInterest2.html