Boy, I hesitate to jump into this thread! But as for the “Third Industrial Revolution,” I prefer Harry Stine’s version: get into space and put your resource extraction and manufacturing out there. Fusion will make that a lot cheaper.
Will it stop war? Not forever. But will it make war more expensive than just going to a different asteroid? Maybe. The resources of the solar system are so enormous that conflict over them will be nonsensical for quite a while. I guess we might still fight over prime beachfront property Earthside, but those sorts of conflicts don’t tend to escalate to violence.
We don’t have to hope for altruistic leaders. Selfish bastards will do fine, if peace is most profitable.
