I Will Ask You Questions - Now with MORE fantasy ecology!

"Hit me", Credit says as he downs another suspicious glass. The bartender complies and puts it on his tab, which doesn't exist.

How would modern human civilization be different if, rather than developing into sedentary societies around river valleys to harvest grain, we instead discovered a reliable source of food that was naturally best suited to growing in mountainous regions?

the incan empire (and to lesser extent other andean cultures), based on mountainous cultivation of many types of potatoes and llama herding, formed what are called vertical archipelagos at various heights including the high-up altiplano (and supporting it with maize at lower altitudes). I thought it was really neat when I read about it in this book which also has lots of other neat stuff You Never Heard About In School about the 'new world' before it got wiped clean with smallpox

_{(it is estimated by new scholarship that the pre-contact americas had ~75-100 million people in it; lack of immunity to smallpox and other european diseases, when mixed with lower genotype diversity of amerindians, resulted in possibly a 90% to 95% rate of population loss over the years from disease and the societal collapse that comes with most people around you dying). Also a lot about potatoes comes from the sequel.}

Imagine that you are a wealthy, self-interested politician, whose primary value is preserving his comfort. You place value on political theories based only upon their ability to accurately predict the future so that you can take the actions that will better your long term self interest. What theories do you rely upon to determine the course of your actions?