Comment Asimov in 1951 - Buena de Mesquita in 1980s (Score 1) 2
See ScienceNews.org: Mathematical Fortune-Telling
Buena de Mesquita offers his services through Mesquita and Roundell, a company he founded that uses his model to advise businesses and governments. "It's pretty exciting when you sit down with a client," he says, "and you know that they're making decisions involving life and death questions or billions of dollars, and at the end of the day they are relying on a body of equations."
Still, at the end of the day, the client has to be capable of removing all of their existing biases and prejudices to appreciate the forecasts, and then be able to decide to take optimal political action to drive desired results. Many clients are immobilized by the fear of political forces beyond the scope of individual rational actions.
Hence, Shell Oil's recent public forecast of $5 dollar a gallon gasoline in the US before the Fall of 2012 - suggesting a likely collapsing US national economy in a Presidential election campaign year. The potential public backlash forebodes civil disturbances in major metropolitan cities and intermittent to permanent disruptions of energy and food distribution networks.
Check out the DVD "Collapse" featuring author Michael Ruppert.