23 currency to finance centralization and the related military expenses, could fundamental economics result in sudden shifts in megacity economics? What happens to the capital city if the provinces grow independent and the hunger games are cancelled? My guess is that this is unlikely, given the patterns of disaster capitalism operating around the world today. The centralized powers are able to deliver dramatic force, which is likely to be the controlling variable. The High-IQ Trap: We see tremendous variation in population-level IQs in various nations throughout the world and in IQs within any given population. There is no doubt that cities attract talent, particularly where they have the central bank and sovereign government as partners to direct talent. They can attract a lot of high-IQ people. Indeed, I believe this is an intentional part of our current immigration policies—the ones we are implementing, as opposed to the ones we are describing publicly. In my article, The 2016 Presidential Elec- tion: The Productivity Backlash, I talked about the fact that people in the rural areas who have had to function in difficult local market econo- mies may have lower IQs but they are, in fact, infinitely smarter than people with IQs of 150 who have been working in Silicon Valley and have no clue what a market is because they are so richly subsidized and don’t realize it. There is nothing more frightening to watch than a highly confident, very wealthy person with a high IQ who is completely clueless about how the covert side of the economy works. They have been encouraged to carry out a limited function, and their success in that limited func- tion confirms their worldview. They don’t know what they don’t know. They cannot fathom that they are simply another one of Mr. Global’s pat- sies. This kind of ignorance in powerful hands can become very cruel and dangerous. We risk the possibility of having centers in megacities populated with extraordinarily high- IQ people who are ingesting invisible entrain- ment and mind control and don’t know what they don’t know. Be on the lookout for this as an element of the creep factor in cities—espe- cially when some of these groups get squeezed by AI applications and inflation. This alone should provide every urban mayor with an incentive to add as many green spaces as possible—parks, lakes, trees, and exercise and bicycle paths—within their city, while rebuild- ing robust personal and professional networks with people and businesses in the rural areas surrounding the city. I used to have a partner on Wall Street who explained the world as a place divided between the heavy sleepers and the light sleepers. The light sleepers would hear the lion coming in the night and sound the alarm. The heavy sleepers would ensure that someone was sufficiently rest- ed to rid the cave of the lion. He would end his explanation by emphasizing that we need each other. Some things, it seems, never change. Transhumanism: My biggest concern when it comes to megacities (or any big city) is trans- humanism. I think that the bigger the city, the more likely that urban populations will be target markets for prototyping and promoting trans- humanism. I discussed this with Dr. Farrell in News, Trends & Stories in this Wrap Up. We made a little “Just a Taste” video about Gender X. https://www.youtube.com/embed/BK- K0Id3BmVg To introduce robots and use robots for labor will require a legal and financial system for robots. This could take many decades and be very expensive. However, if existing legal and financial systems—including taxation systems