While these are just games, they are also mathematical algorithms that determine what happens. The economy is also governed by these mathematical algorithms, and while the algorithms that govern the economy are more complex then the typical computer game, they are part of the same class of mathematical algorithms, and thus exhibit the same effects. At some point this type of rapid growth and speculation becomes unsustainable and the economy becomes subject to a class of equations referred to as the equations “population dynamics”. These class of equations get their name from the fact that they were originally developed to study population dynamics (obviously).

Because the economy had unsustainable exponential growth it only recently reached a point where the growth began to be constrained by reality, and thus suffered a “population collapse” which is typical for unsustainable exponential growth.