Shoe Event Horizon
Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities,
shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities
there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary.
And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing.
It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation,
for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and
the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to
wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the
shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I
believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer
economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result -
collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who
had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed
their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it
again.
Excerpted from
Restaurant at the End of the Universe
by Douglas Adams
