It’s axiomatic that in order to grow Bermuda’s stunted economy we will have to grow the population.

It’s also axiomatic that any repetition of the unconstrained growth Bermuda experienced during the first decade of the 21st century will lead to an immediate increase in the recession-fuelled social friction the Island has been experiencing in recent years rather than its reduction.

Expanding the economy after six years of relentless contraction is obviously the top priority of both Government and the Island’s business leaders.

A combination of external factors — a worldwide recession unprecedented in length and severity since the Great Depression — combined with the Bermuda Government’s own mismanagement has taken an punishing toll: an economy once viewed as the supercharged Rolls-Royce engine of micro-jurisdictions remains in a genuinely parlous state.

Bermuda’s Gross Domestic Product, representing the total dollar value of goods and services produced by the local economy on an annual basis, has declined by fully 15 percent over the last six years.

The job market has dwindled equally dramatically. Unemployment and underemployment, the root causes of many of the Island’s social ills, remain undesirably high.

Not only do local companies continue to shed positions (or shut their doors) but the offshore financial services sector and its satellite industries have been relocating jobs and outsourcing entire divisions because of both costs associated with doing business here and a number of ill-considered immigration policies.

A growing number of young Bermudian professionals, those most needed to stimulate economic growth because of their qualifications, entrepreneurial spirit and initiative, are opting not to return home because they see only limited opportunities here for the foreseeable future.

And there has also been a quiet but steady outflow of older Bermudians, packing up and moving on for the selfsame reason.

Both logic and necessity dictate Bermuda has no option but to attract new people along with new industries and new investments in order to kick-start its chronically underperforming economy.

However, it would be prudent to always bear the lessons of the recent past in mind as we explore our options.

The law of unintended consequences being what it is, there was a marked downside to the historically unprecedented boom Bermuda experienced in the early 21st century.

The economic impact of that influx of money and people cannot be overestimated.

But neither can the degree of unforeseen stress experienced by both Bermuda’s physical and social infrastructures.

Two major international events were responsible for the dramatic change in Bermuda’s economic fortunes — namely, the 9/11 al-Quada attacks on the United States and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, both of which drove the demand for fresh capital in the international insurer industry.

With the catastrophe re/insurance sector growing here since the late 1980s, Bermuda was well placed to help meet this need.

At least ten new Bermuda insurers were established in the immediate post-9/11 period and another wave of start-up firms were incorporated following the calamitous 2004-2005 hurricane seasons.

The knock-on effects were immediate, pronounced and not a little unsettling.

Service industries like the law and accountancy firms underwent dizzying, once unimaginable growth spurts to keep pace with the re/insurance sector’s expansion.

So did the construction sector and other local enterprises as Bermuda attempted to shoehorn ever more people into a finite amount of space.

That economic high tide certainly lifted all yachts but it also swamped more than a few smaller craft.

The reality is that the boom caused a classic internal inflationary cycle in Bermuda: too much money in pursuit of too few resources.

Everything from fantastical spikes in rents to the demand for private school places entirely outstripping supply left many Bermudians feeling marginalised, resentful and increasingly alienated in their own country.

Such extraordinary circumstances are never likely to be repeated, of course, and abundance is always preferable to scarcity.

But many Bermudians first began to experience what seems to have become an ongoing socio-economic squeeze in the shadow of plenty, not at the onset of the recession.

Those attempting to re-engineer and reinvigorate the economy would do well to remember this and factor it into their planning because Bermuda’s social environment is actually as delicately balanced as its physical environment.