U Thant, the Burmese politician who served as secretary-general of the United Nations in the 1960s, was stunned. “The truth, the central stupendous truth, about developed economies is that they can have—in anything but the shortest run—the kind and scale of resources they decide to have,” he marveled. “It is no longer resources that limit decisions. It is the decisions that make the resources. This is the fundamental, revolutionary change—perhaps the most revolutionary mankind has ever known.”
