The stakes had never been so great: U.S. Intelligence captured images revealing Soviet nukes in Cuba. This was unequivocally unacceptable to the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. He summoned his advisors in search of a solution. “Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.” — J.F.K., presidential inauguration His military advisors recommended the immediate bombing and invasion of the island, but this wasn’t the first time his advisors recommended invading Cuba.  18 months prior, a newly inaugurated John F. Kennedy took their advice by supplying weapons and transportation to Cuban rebels. The C.I.A. believed once the rebels landed on the island they would be greeted with hugs, but instead they were greeted with hand-grenades. The rebels were captured, and the fiasco was known as the Bay of Pigs.  The Bay of Pigs hurt the young president’s reputation, but with this new Cuban situation the stakes were far greater because one wrong move could mean the end of the world. So this time Kennedy was more cautious in taking his military’s advice and didn’t assume that simply because “intelligence” was in the job description of the Central Intelligence Agency that they had a monopoly on it.  J.F.K. got advice from a wide variety of sources.  And ultimately, as a great president does, he made the best possible decision with all the information available to him.   He decided to blockade the island (although he technically called it a quarantine because a blockade would have been considered an act of war), and then behind-the-scenes he offered concessions to the Soviet Union. Ultimately J.F.K.’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis is considered one of the crowning achievements of his presidency because when the world was staring into the abyss he found a ray of light. One of the things that made President Kennedy so extraordinary is that your ordinary person would have simply taken the advice of the “experts” and bombed the island. This is because your ordinary person believes credentials matter more than ideas.  I think there are two main culprits for this bias… “The human mind is our fundamental resource.” — John F. Kennedy Now we all are ignorant and insecure about some things. People get second and third opinions for their body, but not for the body politic. An appreciation for different opinions leads to less hate in the heart. I think every citizen has a moral responsibility to create their own metaphorical advisory board.  For me in college this meant subscribing to 3 magazines: The American Prospect (liberal-le ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro8tqxS5haM

There are four stages of the demographic transition… Stage 1: Pre-transition: High birth rates and high death rates. Stage 2: Early transition: Death rate begins to fall, as birth rates remain high. Stage 3: Late transition: Birth rates start to decline. Stage 4: Post-transition: Low birth and low death rates. Population growth is negligible, or even enters a decline. As a nation modernizes it's population growth rate declines… And as the world modernizes we can expect a similar result… Therefore the problem isn’t overpopulation, but underdevelopment! But in perceiving the future we must do so with a degree of humility because traditionally the experts have been wrong in their population growth predictions. For example, in the 1900s the experts thought New York City would be overrun by death and disease due to the growing piles of horse poop, but then the car was invented. Population growth is determined by incentives and incentives are determined by innovation and the future of innovation is hard to determine by the very fact it doesn't exist yet. If you asked a person in 1819 to imagine 2019 they probably would have imagined a world of faster horses and better ploughs. With that said, let me play the role of a humble futurist and imagine what innovations may come about that could bring on the dawn of a new transitionary stage. But before we go forward in time let us go back... In stages 1 and 2 parents were incentivized to have more children because they could put the kids to work at an early age on the farm or in a factory and because so many children died before adulthood it also made sense to have a lot of them this way a few of them would still be around to take care of their aging parents since there wasn't as much of a social safety net to do so. In Stage 4 we see a drop in the population growth rate because children become more of an economic drain. Your average middle class child doesn’t become a productive member of society well into their 20s and even then the parents still see little to no economic benefit. In the future though Anthony Galli believes the economic and social incentives will change again which could bring about a 5th stage. Some have suggested that if there is a 5th stage it would best be represented by an ever declining population such as Germany is starting to show… But in a few decades I believe we may start to see growth again in Germany and around the world! In the future, material wealth will likely be more abundant. Everyone will be rich according to today's standards just as everyone today is rich according to historical standards. In this super-rich society the driving procreation incentive will therefore not be "money", but "want". The central question is... will the rich of tomor ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX7LZ_WluCs