The paradox of development is constantly at work, confronting people with hard choices. Often people fail to rise to its challenges, and social development stagnates or even declines. At other times, though, sloth, fear, and greed combine to push some people to take risks, innovating to change the rules of the game. If at least a few of them succeed and if most people then adopt the successful innovations, a society might push through the resource bottleneck and social development will keep rising.
