Youth

"Why, yes. Oh, I see, you are joking. And yet-perhaps the joke is not far off. You are less solvent than your father and he was less solvent than his father. Perhaps your son will no longer be solvent. It becomes too troublesome for the planet to support even the industries that still exist, though they are toothpicks to the oak trees of Beforethewars. We will be back to village economy and then to what? The caves?""And the infusion of fresh technological knowledge will be the changing of all that?"