What Were They Thinking? 2040's Ideas and Innovations Newsletter, Issue 101

Issue 101, March 30, 2023

Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, asked a profound question referring to the ancients in Easter Island. When they cut down the last tree on the island, what were they thinking? Seriously, what sane society would make a valuable natural resource extinct with one final hatchet job? Which in turn made their people extinct? Or how about a more complicated social problem replacing the US draft with an all-volunteer military, ultimately making war-related collateral damage and death for troops a problem principally for lower socioeconomic groups, not college grads from more affluent families for whom war is no longer personal.

But we could ask so many of the same questions., Here are just a few — in no particular order. What were they thinking?

• Succession by the US southern states

• The Romans using lead water pipes

• Making Ron John…