I’m not sure I would have titled Alex Tabarrok’s TED talk How ideas trump crises, but I think he makes some simple-but-deep points:
Just before the six-minute mark he succinctly makes a particularly simple-but-deep point about the spread of prosperity and its benefits to us:
If China and India were as rich as the United States is now the market for cancer drugs would be eight times larger.
A drug market that’s eight times larger justifies R&D budgets that are eight times larger.
Some of the comments paint Tabarrok’s talk as Panglossian in its optimism, since we all know the world is going to collapse as we run out of natural resources.
(Hat tip to Arnold Kling.)