How good are experts at predicting the future?
Answer: Horrible.

Beginning in the 1980s, Tetlock examined 27,451 forecasts by 284 academics, pundits and other prognosticators. The study was complex, but the conclusion can be summarized simply: the experts bombed. Not only were they worse than statistical models, they could barely eke out a tie with the proverbial dart-throwing chimps.

NY Times

Will dictators beat democracies?

Will the future be a world of dictatorships? Will central-planning beat free markets?

It looked like this area of questioning was resolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. But
this paper finds that democracies have less than half of the growth variance of non-democracies.

In the long run, the countries with the highest growth will accumulate wealth.