A Gift from Earth Author:Larry Niven Mount Lookitthat had a stable population. It had to have. For it was a small plateau, unreachable except from space, it could support just so many lives. — Of course the lives of the rulers, descendants of the Crew, were most important---more important than anyone else's. In a way it was remarkable that they were even descendants. For they could ... more »be kept alive for so very long, using the live parts supplied by the Colonists.
Then there were the Implementation police, more numerous than the Crew of course, and therefore needing more parts from the Colonists.
All in all, it was an equitable system. Because it did keep the population stable...« less