Ask HN: What do you think the world would be in 6 months – 1 year How do you think the world would evolve in the mid-term: economy, globalization and debt; state of the pandemic with vaccines and variants, mass surveillance and social tensions, etc. |
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
- From The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
So, I am not encouraged by trends - populism, protectionism, increasing divide between haves and have-nots, climate problems, resource competition (such as for water), and suchlike - but I would not expect a tipping point for a while.
I am not in a position to predict anything, I lack the expertise/data, and my record for, say, trying to predict markets (this property boom can't last, this stock-price boom can't last, etc ad nauseam) is abysmal.
That being said, I can't imagine that 50 to 100 years out that push will not have come to shove and societal collapse will, at the very least, have pretty much ended aspirational notions of or for a global society progressing towards better and better outcomes for all.
The good news: I've always been wrong before :-)
I just want to see the panel of ideas people can have, from their own eyes, own background and current situation.
I don't know the answer, but things will have shifted in six months. Hope that the shifts are gradual.
For masks, I see people making no effort while wearing them. At the start, we need "1" or "2 meter" distance between people. Now they have the mask, 30cm away is perfectly fine. I wonder which option is the best.
I think that corporate profits and people with high-value job skills or their own profitable companies or farms will be in fine shape.
For the middle class and poor: inflation will get a lot worse and hurt these people. In the USA, it seems like neither political party is supporting small businesses, and why should they? Mega corporations fund both parties, not individuals and small businesses.
I support your point of view that low-skilled jobs would be the most impacted. Being part of a large company, we are in a very safe position.
With automation, companies are in a grey zone. Do they add more robots, so it improves the quality of life of workers while firing some/most of them, or do they prefer "social workers", doing repetitive tasks with no added value ? Which one is the most ethical ? Japan made the first choice, thanks to ageing population and absence of immigration to compensate.
I don't know the detail in USA, but the lack of social net / government-grants for unemployement does not help to secure a little bit. In France, the social net is not the answer, as it has many problems. Small businesses are closing because 1. They don't find employees (that converted to other jobs or prefer social grants or are completely unqualified), 2. Business is not restarting while government grants are shutting down, 3. They are sick of uncertaincy to open / close / protocols / etc.
Long term consequences of Covid continue to gain mindshare, damage already done with a "new normal" for far to many, like myself.
I don't know if it is real "incompetence" or impossibility to make a good choice, i.e. there is no good option whatever. There are many states, with many different regimes, parliament from right to left, but everyone seems stuck with the same problem. Though, the number of tested options is very small. Contact tracing didn't work because people didn't trust the apps. Lockdown is a mess because it destroys the mind of people. Vaccination with the variants is still under test, and after that, I don't really see what have been seriously done abroad.
Long-term consequences, for sure. But we still don't know what would be the "new normal", and this uncertaincy is hurting a lot of people, for planing whatever. It is hard to plan even the next month even for simple stuff.
war will increase online and there will be a rise of a new terror cell likely in so called response to the increased lockdowns around the world when the world has now begun to reopen as they will now have mobility again.
this will be used for all agendas alongside the health reasons and together they will be restrictions on particular countries and more sanctions.
technology will likely continue to be improved and money will continue to flow to the the companies which invest in automation
Not sure what impact this will have in the 6mo-1yr timeframe, but we can expect the relationship to deteriorate.
The recent issue of Foreign Affairs (a bellwether publication for the Washington consensus) is about this decline in the relationship between the two countries.
Among the different civilization that collapsed, it often start with one event triggering the others. Today we have covid, next what do we have ? Collapsology allows to list all possible directions. My initial question was more "what are the week signals and what do you think it would transform into".
I don't see new lockdowns unless we get a variant that can reliably breakthrough the vaccines. The reason is simple: lockdowns were barely accepted before, they won't be when it is percived to be peoples on fault.
On the downside: we are now seeing the effects of global warming, and the hurricane season has only barely started. No this doesn't mean we will do anything about it, but it does mean that it could get ugly, especially if the US gets hit with several large hurricanes.
Of course all of this assumes China won't do anything momentarily stupid, like trying to take Taiwan. Then everything is up in the air.
The only changes I see coming in the next 6 to 12 months in the U.S. are:
1. A very slight increase in the cost of tangible goods (grocery store JIT food [produce, dairy, and meat], gasoline/diesel, tech-based devices, and branded alcohol)
2. A similarly small increase in subscription and per-unit fees for internet-based services
3. Significantly more political and media focus on a common enemy to accommodate humanity's innate desire for conflict (currently I assume "white supremacy" as the boogeyman will continue)
4. A significant increase in usury rates across all spectra
5. At least one violent reaction to forced acceptance of non-heterosexuality (see also #3)
6. A slight, non-violent but socially widespread backlash against local government overreach, leading to increased centralization of legislative and/or judicial control
7. At least one more coronavirus strain/variant that will have very little scientific evidence for its difference but extremely vehement and vocal proponents both for and against any actions related to it, which may tie into #1, #3, #4, and definitely into #6
City properties prices to go up and rural properties prices to drop slightly
Food prices and other cost of goods increases
Businesses (mainly service) raising prices to outset additional covid costs and to make up for the year of hell.
The Vietam variant becoming the dominant covid strain
China not buying as many US bonds/dollars as economic war heats up.
Social causes fighting each other for the spotlight
People becoming more jaded and self centered
Vaccines are not a medicine. They are not drugs altering body chemistry, or designed to otherwise interfere with some specific body function.
A vaccine is designed to teach the immune system about a specific, non lethal pathogen, so that when it encounters said pathogen it is more prepared.
This concept of vaccine has been around for a Long time and is well understood.
With any vaccine it is tested primarily for effecacy (how good is it at preparing the body) and reaction (what effects does the body have to it) and as such it is short-term side effects which are of concern.
The two things that slow down vaccine research are disease prevalence (ie a big enough control group) and willingness to experiment (ie a big enough group of volunteers). It may come as no surprise that getting sufficient numbers for this study was not a huge hurdle. (there's a reason no-one signed up for trials of a new rabies vaccine, but there were thousands who signed on to covid vaccines.)
Could long term effects happen in vaccinated people? Yes, in the same way someone might be hit with a meteor. It's possible, but unlikely. On the other hand the possibility of getting covid is high, with about 15% suffering from long-covid and possible long term side effects.
We are often poor at evaluating relative risk - and we tend to favour the known (no matter how risky) compared to the unknown.
In this case though there is more data on hand than pretty much any vaccine in history, so feel free to do the math.
Lastly, yes there will be varients forever. People will likely catch covid, and die forever, just like the flu is with us now. You can't stop the dice from rolling, but you can substantially change the odds.
Debt (assuming you mean public debt) is a longer-term concern. Personally I doubt we'll see world leaders looking to address debt levels for another 5-10 years.
The pandemic will probably be in mostly the same place in 6 months. Infections may pick up a little into the winter months, especially if there are new variants that are more resistant to the current vaccines. However, my guess is we'll have another round of vaccines coming which will keep deaths at manageable levels without having to fully lock down again. That said, fear will remain high enough that politicians can continue to push through their surveillance agendas and continue to erode personal freedoms as they see fit.
Globalisation will become continue to be challenged as tensions between the US and China continue to escalate. Again, this is a longer-term concern, but I'm sure we'll see some notable progressions in that direction over the coming year.
My guess is that social tensions will continue to worsen. I personally believe that multi-culturalism will fail long-term, but in the short-term we'll continue to see problems like racial tensions escalate in the West. We'll also continue to see unrest as the divide between rich and poor continues to grow, but luckily for the rich the media and political class will be more focused on dividing us by race so a unified voice for working class voters will be impossible -- poor white voters will continue to vote republican and poor minority voters will continue to vote democrat, neither have an incentive to do anything but pander to their racially divided electorates.
Long-term we're done for. I suspect there are too many technological advancements coming and too many geopolitical risks for us not to screw something up. My guess is that the West will eventually enter a cold-war with China while social unrest will continue to rise. Politicians will respond to these threats by revoking more and more of our freedoms. Eventually something will break whether that's civil war (unlikely IMO), a hot war with China (more likely, but at least a decade or two out) or some technological disaster (genetically engineered viruses, AI, autonomous weaponry, etc).
My advice to everyone is to enjoy this period of history. I think these next few decades are going to test us more than we've ever been tested before as a species.
I'm not sure what your question is getting at, the world will most likely be similar to how it is now in a year.
There will be scandals over some of the big tech. Some more revelations around privacy. Government interference etc.
Vaccinations will do their thing. Another strain will appear.
China will continue stirring the pot and there will be a realisation about how deep their influence inside US tech and science really is. The US will gain fresh new but old opinions as they realise that oil is the least of their worries.
Water/food will become more noticeable as something worth fighting for.
And there will be a rock that will raise a lot of drama.
Other than that, people will complain about some show involving a man cheating on some woman while she is secretly cheating on him.
(1) a swift global economic crash and slow recovery (2) the intermittent breakdown or stoppage of global supply chains (3) the sending of non-vaccinated persons to quarantine work camps (4) unprecedented global mass migrations of peoples due to famines, pestilences, and war (5) The global economic impact of nuclear war across East Asia and South Asia. For example, EMP damage to infrastructure across the People's Republic of China, Republic of China, Japan, Republic of the Philippines, Republic of Korea, the Republic of India would gravely affect global markets.
For the moment, I see it as a new way to speculate. Here, we are asked to declare it for our tax income. In other countries, the use is forbidden. So, in any case, the state tries to keep control on it, which limits usability and adoption.
I think it could be a protection against inflation or deflation, (even if it has its own volatility), as it is not indexed on a specific money providing a form of local stability.
However, PoS or PoW, it is almost the same. Big/rich have the capability to invest / buy machines while poor cannot. So one or the other option seems equivalent.
Pandemic: Stop and go behavioral cycles will persist for some time to come. While the death rates are fading wherever vaccine deployment has taken hold, my initial thought that it would feel "over" for me when everyone I knew was vaccinated has not come to pass, because I realized that I don't want a "mild" case of Delta, but neither do I want to stay home. So I go out places still masking and have invested in new fashion masks, and this is probably going to be a generational shift.
Social/Culture: One of the biggest things happening right now is the loosening of the Boomer generation's grip on power and culture. It was going to happen anyway, but the shock of the pandemic gave it a kickstart as more people decided to make their life change now and not wait. In every town people want to be in, there's been turnover, and that is a resetting of the narrative, a opportunity for a new social life. If we take Stauss-Howe's generational theories as true, it's the shift from 4T to 1T - the ongoing resolution of a slowly unfolding crisis resulting in new societal baselines. Nobody I have met in person since reopening, when visiting bars etc., has wanted to connect online or asked "so what do you do" (which was seemingly ubiquitous in the US not so long ago) - cautious interaction, self-rediscovery, resetting of beliefs seems to be the trend. This is going to come with some fallout to "losing" group affiliations - anyone who senses their old group is falling apart, which many of them are(political groups, economic alignments, etc.), gets frantic and reactive. For a historical example, the Turner Diaries is a prime example of the kind of screed written by someone who feels their world has been "lost", framing it as an incoherent apocalypse in which the worst actions are justified as good and sensible. Expect a continuation of mass shootings and the like from people who think that the government has had a Commie takeover or somesuch.