Collapse, the book

[judith_s]

We had an opportunity to see Jared Diamond (of Guns, Germs & Steel and Collapse) speak today. He is very clearly a professor (40 years at UCLA), in his manner of speaking as well as his manner of avoiding answering questions. The speech was interesting and thought provoking. I'll try to do a decent write-up later. For now, the two notes he left us with are: (1) the biggest benefit to globalization is that we can learn what works by observing other cultures that fail(ed) or succeed(ed), regardless of their remoteness in space and/or time; and (2) one of the biggest differentiators between governments that make good decisions and bad is the remoteness or distance between the decision makers & the people affected by those decisions.