The Odds on America’s Collapse

jdiamond1Jared Dia­mond became a house­hold name with his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book Guns, Germs & Steel (2003). Lat­er, the UCLA geo­g­ra­ph­er climbed the charts again with Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed (2005). Now, based on this last book, he’s putting odds on whether the Unit­ed States will sur­vive this cri­sis, and he’s putting them only at 51–49. Not too great. And he goes on to say that our best chance of sur­viv­ing is if Amer­i­ca’s wealthy elite suf­fers far more than it already has. For more, lis­ten here.

via Big Think’s Twit­ter Feed. Get our Twit­ter Feed here.


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  • Jared Dia­mond makes the point that for a soci­ety to be resilient the incen­tives of elites ( The rich and the Polit­i­cal Class) should be aligned. It sounds very obvi­ous, I can see the par­al­lel every­where. The pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem in India and else­where is bro­ken because the elites do no send their kids to these school.

  • kasia says:

    And we encour­age reli­gious seg­re­ga­tion. There should be no reli­gion, just good sci­en­tif­ic edu­ca­tion with lots of room for arts and sports.

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