During covid times I heard many interesting conspiracy predictions such as the value is money will fall to zero, the whole society will collapse, the vaccine will kill 99% of the population etc. None of those things have happened yet, but can you add some other predicitons to the list?
Actually, long before covid hit, there were all sorts of predictions floating around. You know, things like the 2008 recession will cause the whole economy to collapse and then we’ll go straight to Mad Max style post-apocalyptic nightmare or 9/11 was supposed to start WW3. I can’t even remember all the predictions I’ve heard over the years, but I’m sure you can help me out. Oh, just remembered that someone said that paper and metal money will disappear completely by year xyz. At the time that date was like only a few years away, but now it’s more like 10 years ago or something. Still waiting for that one to come true…
Economic doomsayers have predicted ten out of the last three recessions.
I mean, we never fixed the problems which caused 2008. Covid didn’t exactly help with anything.
I’m also constantly suprised the world goes by like we aren’t facing the biggest economic reality check ever.
To be clear: Doomsayers always say there’s a recession about to happen, and are only sometimes correct. If you always bet on doom, you’ll be wrong most of the time.
But their version of recession is a total economic collapse. Normally, it involves stuff like money becoming useless, the entire society collapsing, widespread famine, return to bartering etc.
It’s not so sexy if you predict that exporting stuff will slow down instead of stopping completely. In reality, some people will loose their job during a recession, while these predictions usually talk about everyone becoming unemployed and starving in the streets.
It’s like they don’t notice economic inequality.
A depression, or economic doom, is not evenly distributed.
Some people are already living in doom today. Some people aren’t in doom. Some people used to be in doom, but aren’t now. Some are sliding into doom; some are climbing further from doom.
It is unlikely that everyone goes to doom all at once, because some people today are much further from doom than others. Most increases in doom will affect those who had already been dipping into doom on a biweekly basis much more than they affect people who have had years of non-doom to secure themselves against doom.
A lot of people can go to doom before much effect on the least-doomed person.
I’m gonna sing the doom song now.
But who cares about the doomsayers.
Predicting total collapse by any means is easily debunked. Unless a giant meteor hits Earth, the see rises, or the crops fail hard, we will stay the course. Which is sad and unnerving, but true nonetheless.
But in those cases where doom happens they can always say “told you so”
It’s almost like we have institutions printing money.
That’s a brilliant sentence, I had to reread it to get what you were saying
It’s honestly more surprising that they didn’t predict them rather than predicting them.
Our economic system is based on bullshit theories that the rich make up to support their system, crashes are inevitable and they’re increasingly more destructive each time.
Hopefully we dump them before climate change forces us to do so.
When a prediction is wrong, that means something about the predictor’s model of the world was incorrect. If we want to think clearly about the world, we have to actually notice when predictions fail.
If a commentator predicts an economic downturn every year, but most years do not have an economic downturn, that means the commentator’s predictions were based on an incorrect model: incorrect beliefs or assumptions, bad or incomplete data, or some other source of error.
(Climate forecasts have a much better track record than economic commentators.)