>...if we want to understand the economic geography and political paths and political stability of a country, we need to understand what commodities they started out with. What this led me to do, and how I got started on the path of studying war, actually, is by realizing that some commodities are just hugely volatile in price for various circumstances, and some are not.

>So, if we wanted to understand long-term paths of development and why some places weren’t prosperous, it’s because they lost the commodity lottery, and they got a volatile commodity rather than a stable one.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/chris-blattman-w...

When I heard this, I immediately thought: "Why don't countries selling volatile commodities just hedge?" I wonder if "commodity hedging for the masses" could be one of those things like mobile money which has a transformative effect on the global poor.

(Of course, you could also imagine the government of a country that exports something volatile hedge that commodity and buy the production of its people in lean times in order to keep things stable)