We don't recognize that ALL resources are finite.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

There are perhaps ten companies that sell library automation software. The libraries which can afford to automate have done so. The creation of new libraries is very uncommon, so the companies are feeding on each other's customers (it's called "migration" in the trade). Some offer a newly designed product -- not an upgrade, but a new product -- and when some of their customers move from the old to the new they call it "migration." No new customers are coming in, the companies aren't adapting the software for different uses (inventory control, for instance). With a finite number of libraries being courted by a finite number of vendors, you can figure the outcome without a lot of mental effort.

Same thing for everything else. Petroleum stocks will run out --and there are a LOT of things we make from petroleum, some of them far more necessary than gasoline and plastic bags. Water is already a valuable commodity, a "fightin' reason", in some parts of the world.

I see people here, in a drought-stricken high desert region, watering their lawns during the day! Yes! When most of the water will evaporate! And they use those sprinklers that throw the water into the air, instead of keeping it sensibly low. (I think that this will change this summer, because I think mandatory water rules are coming.)

Robert Heinlein wrote that Malthus was right, that starvation is always right around the corner. He was right -- and not just about food.