Paradigm shifts don’t happen every other year. They are slow, because even when a new insight is right — dazzlingly right in hindsight — vested interests and other forms of inertia resist its adoption. The same is true for big political discontinuities. They just don’t happen that often. There are six slow-acting drivers of historical change in our time, as in most of recorded history. A common error is to focus on only one. They are: 1. Technological innovation; 2. The spread of ideas and institutions; 3. The tendency of even good political systems to degenerate; 4. Demographics; 5. Supplies of essential commodities; 6. Climate change. The hardest question to … Continue reading Niall Ferguson