What Debts Make Decay?

Debt, if not repaid, accumulates. If not countered by something growing faster, a larger debt becomes harder to repay, and so results in decay. And enough decay causes systems to shrink, die, or at least be greatly damaged.

The core example is financial debt, which accumulates at a real interest rate, usually higher than average feasible growth rates. It can cause bankruptcy of the debtor, which often leads to death for orgs.

Animals can acquire sleep debt, which degrades their function until enough sleep repays it. Without enough sleep, animals can die. Human workers often accumulate recreation and rest debts, which degrades their productivity in the absence of sufficient breaks and vacations.

Machines and buildings that are not sufficiently maintained accumulate maintenance debts that degrade their performance, and increase the cost of repair.

Organizations that fail to train new workers to replace aging or departing workers accumulate a training debt. Those that fail to innovate enough to stay competitive with alternatives acquire an innovation debt.

Software systems which are changed in response to changing conditions tend to rot, a rot which can be reduced by regular refactoring and rewriting of code. Failure to do so accumulates a “technical debt”.

Organisms and orgs consistently decay even when all known debts are amply repaid, suggesting that for these units there are kinds of debts of which we are unaware, or unable to repay. Perhaps we will come to understand these debts, and how to repay them, allowing immortality for organisms and orgs.

Civilizations also seem to consistently decay, in ways we don’t fully understand. Maybe if we better understood the debts that civilizations accumulate, we could better repay them, and make civilizations immortal.

I suggest that cultural drift seems a key process of civ decay, though alas it seems to be a debt that is quite hard to repay.