...And all the weapons would just rust.

Many years ago, I had a wonderful professor in college named John Dumitru. He taught anthropology with a zest and enthusiasm that made all of us students curious about other cultures. He was also my faculty advisor when I was working on a special research project about, what we called transients then, now called the homeless. He encouraged me to get up close to them, talk to them, become one of them for a time, experience how they live, what it feels like. And he made it seem, not only ok, but safe, fun, and cool to do it. Not that being cold, hungry and dirty was safe, fun, or cool, but the complete immersion experience gave me a great deal of understanding I couldn't get any other way.

The reason I'm thinking of Mr. Dumitru today is that I came across a fascinating bit of recent research that reminded me of him. Mr. Dumitru had shared a hypothesis in his class one day that there is a correlation between war and affluence in a society. The thought was (in a very loose paraphrase) that when a very basic society is barely subsisting, there simply aren't the resources to risk on the venture of taking your neighbors goods. But as you get a little grain in your shack to come back to if you were to lose, then you are more willing to set out on a venture of conquest. Then as you become increasingly affluent, you lose the motivation to go taking the other guys things, because you have much more than enough. So the end game was that, if all societies just had enough stuff, they would stop fighting each other. And the direct quote I remember so vividly from a couple of decades ago was, "...and all the weapons would just rust."

As a 19 year old, I found that line of reasoning, and the vision, very compelling. And growing up in what would become Silicon Valley, the place where fortunes are created and dreams come true, it seemed just possible that I could work to create greater wealth for everyone, and they would all just get along.

Now there is a recent study from Harvard, that indicates that the correlation between terrorism isn't to poverty, but to liberty. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05-terror.html. Associate Professor Alberto Abadie looked at the world with the assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, and when he tested that, found it wasn't so. Instead, he found a continuum similar to the one described by John Dumitru, but linked to the amount of freedom in a society. So when a society is totalitarian, there isn't sufficient freedom to commit a terrorist act. As more freedom is permitted, then there is the ability. And then when there is enough freedom, there isn't the motivation. I'm sure that's a gross over-simplification of Professor Abadie's work, but I hope I'm capturing the gist of it.

As compelling as Mr. Dumitru's vision was, I also questioned it's validity, since we do seem to be living in extremely affluent times. For a fun romp through just what strides have been made in providing material goods to the world, I highly recommend the first few chapters of Gregg Easterbrook's The Progress Paradox. It's a great mood lifter.

In the meantime, here's to a world with enough stuff, and the freedom to enjoy it.