My generation has come to power.

>it is doing a tiny amount of work by staying intact while rotating, because its outer parts have to keep changing direction

Really? This is kindof mind-blowing if true. Work is force dot displacement, so if there's no displacement in the radial direction, then there's no work done. If the body can be considered rigid then there is no radial displacement. Even in a flexible body, there would only be a short transient period of radial displacement as it stretches out from the rotational forces.

Yeah but think about how foul society was as it was forming. Population density without medical technology was what was so dangerous. Would be a good approach to look at tribal infant mortality (50% sounds high to me).