Chris Blattman: prediction

Transcript context

…The Nazis come, Stalin. We do wonderful, heroic things. We cooperate with the British, the French, even the Soviets, actually with Stalin, and then that sticks for a while. We’re all committed to the UN, the World Bank, the IMF. But now, my goodness, things have been so good for so long and pretty peaceful; those are all going to decay. The richer we are, which we’re much richer, and the more costly war is, and war is now much more costly — I think those stronger . . . the incentive we have not to have war. It makes it much less likely. If war happens, then it’s going to be that much more catastrophic, which is maybe a pattern we’ve seen over the past century. But it comes back to this calculus of not feeling like there’s some equilibrium level of violence that just happens because violence happens, but that this is something that is often strenuously avoided because it just pulls people so far back. Back to economic development. What, in your view, is the most underrated national development story that people should pay more attention to? Which country or region?…

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