Futarchy is a political system where elected representatives are responsible for deciding policy goals and then prediction markets decide what policy is implemented by estimating which option best achieves that goal.

A prediction market is a betting-style market where people buy and sell contracts that pay out based on what actually happens, so the price acts like a crowd-sourced probability forecast.

“What I am going to say is not a dogma of faith but my own personal view. I like to think of hell as empty, I hope it is”
 - Pope Francis

According to the “prisoners of geography” view, differences across countries in economic, political, and social development are primarily explained by their geography. In particular, the view holds that temperate-zone countries, especially in Eurasia, became richer and more powerful mainly because their physical geography and ecology generated early cumulative advantages, and that these early advantages persist in the modern world.

The Lok Sabha is the lower house of the Parliament of India. The number of Lok Sabha seats for each state has been frozen since 1971. As a result, northern states, which have had higher population growth, are underrepresented relative to population; and southern states, which implemented family planning directives more effectively and have had lower population growth, are overrepresented relative to population.

Mercosur is a trade bloc consisting of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The EU–Mercosur Partnership Agreement is a free trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, under which most import duties will be eliminated. The deal will also allow increased access to the European market for Mercosur’s agricultural goods (e.g., Brazilian poultry and rainforest beef, sugar, ethanol).