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> The reasoning was that more horses are needed to remove the manure, and these horses produce more manure.

i think that even then, that's not a problem, as one horse drawn cart can remove a lot more manure than it produces, i.e. a small number of extra horses can remove the excess manure of all horses and the overhead the extra horses introduce is mimimal.

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If the footprint of the city is large enough, eventually transporting a cart of manure from the center to the edge consumes as many "manure-miles" as it produces. Though that is probably comically large, because as you say: a cart is a pretty big compared to its own horse's output.

You don't have to remove to the edge, you have to remove to the closest railway terminal or water port. No city could grow large without one or both of those.

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