Almost no human being alive today lives with stuff only manufactured in their home country. But a thousand years ago, only the richest of the rich could benefit from the Silk Road. Still, trade isn't new, and while it's tempting to say that the types of goods being traded – pharmaceuticals, computers, software, financial services – represent something wholly new, you could just as easily see this as part of the evolution of trade itself. At some point, silk was seen as a new trade good. As tastes change and consumers become more affluent, the things they want to buy change. So is anything really different, or is it all just accelerated? Well, some historians argue that an economically interdependent world is much less likely to go to war.