Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today's policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield "substantial control of the world." And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day.

Futuring Principle 1>> The future will be some unknown combination of continuity and change.

No historical event has ever occurred without antecedents and long chains of cause-and-effect relationships. Nor was there ever a time when decision makers did not have choices, including the simple option to do nothing. Yet, in the present moment, one can never be certain which chains of events will play out. While there are continuities in the past and the present, there are also changes, many of which cannot be anticipated. Sometimes these changes are extreme, resulting from high-impact, low-probability events known as “wild cards.”

Thus, the future always has been and most likely always will be an unknown combination of both trend continuities and discontinuities. Figuring out the precise combination is extremely difficult. Therefore, we must study the trends but not blindly project them into the future—we have to consider historical trends, present conditions, and imagined changes, both great and small, over time. You might say that trend analysis is “necessary but not sufficient” for futuring; the same goes for imagined changes, too.

Futuring Principle 2>> Although the future cannot be predicted with precision, it can be anticipated with varying degrees of uncertainty, depending upon conditions. Forecasts and plans are expectations for the future, and they are always conditional...

Futuring Principle 3>> Futuring and visioning offer different perspectives of the future—and these perspectives must complement one another...

Futuring Principle 4>>

All forecasts and plans should be well-considered expectations for the future, grounded in rigorous analysis.

Futuring methods fall into three broad, fundamental categories: trend analysis, expert judgment, and scenarios (also known as multi-optional or alternative futures). Historical research methods and criticism play well in all three categories.

Futuring Principle 5>>

There is no such thing as an immutable forecast or a plan for a future that is set in stone.

About the Author

Stephen M. Millett is the president of Futuring Associates LLC,

While the study of history has been rich in philosophy, it has lacked theories such as those found in the natural and social sciences. Most historians have not pursued such theories, because they see each period of history as being unique and as having little or no practical applications for problem solving today. Futuring as applied history, however, needs basic principles upon which to build forecasts that can be used for long-term decision making.

Chance Favors the Concentration of More Wealth in Fewer Hands

Wealth accumulation might be due to a number of factors: hard work, intelligence, lack of ethics, or all of the above. Wealthconcentration, on the other hand, is determined primarily by chance and the effect of compounding returns, according to a study published in the journal PLoS One.

The distribution of wealth is far more uneven than popular economic models would suggest, report researchers Joseph E. Fargione, Clarence Lehman, and Stephen Polasky. Given a situation where "all individuals have equal talent and begin with the same amount of capital," an increasingly smaller number of investors accumulated an ever larger share of wealth at the expense of the other investors.

The researchers also found that larger concentrations of wealth decrease diversity within the economy, which decreases the amount of additional wealth that economy is able to create.

A separate report from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies found that, of the 100 highest paid American CEOs of 2010, 22 made more in compensation and benefits than their companies paid in taxes.

Sources: “Entrepreneurs, Chance, and the Deterministic Concentration of Wealth” by Joseph E. Fargione, Clarence Lehman, and Stephen Polasky, PLoS One, PubMed Central.