The logic behind Policy Prescription 1—Take your bitter medicine early—was that discontent and hatred would, as time goes by, more powerfully translate into lethal terrorism. In other words, x number of alienated, frustrated, hateful people will lead to more deaths in 20 years than now. So, if there are any long-run salutary societal transitions that will in the short run create x number of alienated, frustrated, hateful people, it's better to get them over with—better to create those x people now than later.

The proposition I'm advancing now is that when we talk about the number of people alienated by economic modernization, we may be talking about an extremely rate-sensitive function. That is, the number of people intensely alienated may be much greater—not just per year but in total—when the modernization happens fast than when it happens more gradually.

This is obviously a fairly conjectural proposition. Evidence for it is anecdotal (such as the fact that places like England, where industrialization began early, suffered fewer subsequent convulsions at the political level than some states in central and eastern Europe that underwent industrialization later and hence more rapidly). But even if it's wrong, I'd still say that transnational governance is the way to go, for the reasons I outline in this installment of the series. In particular: One way or another, globalization's temporary victims will probably find a way to slow globalization down. Of all the ways they might do that, transnational governance seems the most wholesome.