Writing from Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations (about four lifespans ago), the author asks what will last until 2250 and bets on culture—Mozart, Shakespeare, and some of today’s artists—plus religions (Christianity mainly among the less educated) and astronomy that still does not “find God.”

He sketches abundance: fusion from seawater, huge crop yields, moon mining, unmanned probes 150 years out, some people living to 200 and bored by it. Keynesian demand management stays; austerity is discarded; “limits to growth” fade. He does not think AI will “take us over” because of self-preservation.

Tyrants from Stalin to Trump, he hopes, go in the dustbin; nationalism withers with education and mixed marriage; theocracies soften; non-violent Buddhism spreads. He ends by asking whether this is idealism, quoting Browning: reach must exceed grasp. It is a personal utopia, not a forecast.

In 1776, Adam Smith published his “The Wealth of Nations”, which has guided economists and political thinkers ever since. It marks the start of the Industrial Revolution that began in England and then spread throughout most of the world. That was 246 years ago.

It is not that long ago—only 4 life-spans or so, the time of your great-great-great-grandparents. Where will we be 246 years hence? Presumably just as today we listen to Mozart, born 270years ago, and watch or read Shakespeare, born 462 years ago—they have survived all changing tastes and spread well outside their original orbit of European........

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