"Not all of these situations involved limited natural resources..."...well, no, and seeing as how I was describing the behavior of the FMC algorithm at the boundary conditions produced by limited natural resources, I guess none of those examples was particularly relevant. Just because an algorithm works most of the time doesn't mean that it won't fail disastrously under edge conditions, so I think I can forgive myself for not being unduly focused on the algorithm's routine successes in the center of its range. They're not the point.

And then "the great Horse and Buggy Collapse of the early 1900s, maybe?" suggests you might be confused at a fundamental level. It wasn't the case that we ran out of horses and under the threat of imminent economic collapse developed automobiles as a replacement. You need to, uh, put the horse before the cart, as it were. What actually happened was that the equine transportation industry, based on vehicles and fuel that were both sustainable and biodegradable, was destroyed by the invention of the automobile, based on an unsustainable fuel and using disintinctly non-biodegradable vehicles requiring a vast manufacturing infrastructure.

You've said before that you have faith that technology will always rescue us in the nick of time, and your post seems to be suggesting that faith again as you describe technological advancements, especially those that result in reduced energy consumption. But it's dangerous to make plans based on the arrival of a techno ex machina at the last moment, each and every time we paint ourselves into some corner. The first time that our opposable thumbs fail us may well be the last time.