Climate change is a relatively slow moving threat o humanity compared with some of the other things that could move a whole lot faster. The federal government is both larger and much less nimble than it was, and its performance in handling crises seems to have got worse. A i is clearly being used right now by the chinese government to build a totalitarian system far more intrusive and comprehensive than anything george orwell ever imagined.
Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises, and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. In this episode, Michael Shermer speaks with one of the world’s most renowned historians, Niall Ferguson, who explains why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are making us worse, not better, at handling disasters.