Yes, I can too. I made the following predictions in my journal on July 27th 2019:
- Supply chain interruptions and shortages due to geographic concentrations of critical components.
- Growing economic divide with increased homelessness and crime.
- Capital flight out of populous areas.
- Out of control disease/infections affecting the economy and overburdening health care workers (even used the word “pandemic”, though not correctly).
- Shortage of available truck drivers and freight capacity (again, missed the exact reason a bit, but still on the money)
- Problems with fuel supplies and utilities.
Apparently I can see into the near future pretty well. I admit I guessed some of the cause and effect items wrong, but on the whole I nailed it.
Here’s my actual entry:
I believe we are facing a series of trends that will combine to make our lives less stable, and our support/infrastructure less robust. Concentrations in manufacturing are removing most geographical distribution in the things we need. It is entirely possible that one day the only place in the world that makes insulin is destroyed by a hurricane. Or one of an ever smaller number of refineries falls victim to a flood. We in the west are like an army at the end of a very fragile and unguarded supply line. Any upset could result in empty pharmacies, dry gas tanks, or bare grocery shelves. Here in the North Texas area a few years ago, a fuel scare resulting from Hurricane Harvey caused everyone to fill up at once. The result was no gas for a few days, and those didn’t rush out to buy were faced with empty tanks. It corrected in about a week, but imagine a month long scenario.
In addition, the growing economic divide along with increasing automation will continue to push more and more people out the bottom of the economy. Many are destined to fall into homelessness and crime. We have friends in Seattle dealing with this on a daily basis, not just the aggravation of trying to navigate a sidewalk, but the very real and frequent destruction and pilfering from their property due to a nearby encampment. This isn’t an outlier, but a bellwether. IMO, it’s the future, coming to a neighborhood near you. When your car window is smashed, or your house is broken into, it’s not a minor crime. It’s very time consuming and costly to repair, especially over and over again. Protip: The police aren’t going to help.
Thirdly, the overwhelming and frightening level of public debt is not going away. The politics can be argued elsewhere, but the fact is a huge number of retiring boomers are either not getting promised pensions, or facing penury due to their own meager savings. When 30-40 million people stop spending, this will have noticeable effect on the economy. Add to this those who will fall into public safety nets and it becomes an even bigger problem, which could ultimately see high earning residents fleeing some states. And this could result in a feedback loop with no end in sight.
Finally, the increasing numbers of antibiotic resistant microbes. Even if not a pandemic, local outbreaks of typhus, or other formerly vanquished diseases could have a large local effect on economics and supply. To be really doom-and-gloom, what happens if Ebola starts racing through Skid Row? Will police show up to work? Will health workers be willing to go in? Will truckers continue delivering food and supplies to the city at the normal pace? What if the water or electric utility is located nearby… will residents even have electricity and water?
.