Who doesn’t love a good dystopian scenario? Bloomberg presents eight of them and the view from 2028 if each of them actually happens. Their scenarios are:
- Trump Wins Second Term
- Fake News Kills Facebook
- Bitcoin Replaces the Banks
- North Korea Launches an Attack
- Corbyn Makes Socialism Great Again
- Generational Warfare Destroys Europe
- China Begins a Trade War
- Electric Cars End the Oil Era
Maybe I’m just not imaginative enough but I don’t see any of those other than Scenario #4 as particularly dystopian and I can think of one scenario more awful to contemplate than any of them: bioterrorism.
Indeed, I think that all that really needs to happen for 2028 to be pretty miserable is for present trends to continue. How’s that for pessimism?
I believe I can trust my readers to come up with some additional scenarios for 2028 that are pretty awful. What were the authors of the article too optimistic to see? Please avoid low probability scenarios.
BTW I thought the page showed a pretty creative use of Javascript and CSS.
The link is missing.
1) Some state completely privatizes education.
2) We start to see privatized police forces along with privatized jails.
3) Race war skirmishes.
Slightly OT, but maybe all too on topic, anything that further diminishes loss of trust in our institutions likely has negative economic repercussions. Cannot find the original World Bank report, but guy at link excerpts from it. The US has not been the world leader for so long because our tax rates were better, it has been the intangible stuff that mattered.
https://angrybearblog.com/2017/12/attention-republicansblue-dog-democrats-tax-cuts-as-stimulus-work-against-your-goal.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Hzoh+%28angrybearblog.com%29
Steve
I was assured that the election of Donald J. Trump would cause the destruction of the planet, but I guess a second term could cause the destroyed Earth to be doubly destroyed.
What exactly does this mean? This is stupid beyond belief. If every existing vehicle became electric over-night, the petrochemical industry not disappear – plastic, chemicals.
I was assured that with the election of Donald Trump everything would be great again! (Two can play at this game. Playing straw man can be fun, but it is mostly boring.)
Steve
Fixed the link. As noted in the body of the post, I kind of like how the page works although it’s cumbersome to go back to the top.
I don’t think that their list reflects optimism or pessimism so much as naïveté. The authors just don’t know enough.
IMO the extreme polarization of this country, heightened by the irrational hatred of the “opposition,” will make any real or theorical crisis more difficult to either circumvent or counter. Consequently, I look at attitudes on the left holding the greatest danger to the country’s well being, or perhaps even survival, during events that would require them to make their political interests/gamesmenship secondary to the well being of everyone.
World Wide Economic Depression and credit crunch. The 2008 scenario, without the bailouts to prop up the institutions.
We’ve done very little to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 crash, and there’s an angrier mood in our country. Just because the global financial sector is too big to fail, doesn’t mean we won’t let them fail anyway.
The result is that small and medium sized companies are wiped out in the US and Europe, and emerging economies stop emerging. Famine and war are likely, and the mass migrations of refugees is bound to result in at least some genocide.
How about the collapse of Saudi Arabia?
It would be like Syria but about a 1000 times worse.
1) Trumpian stagflation
2) War in which Iran sinks an aircraft carrier.
3) Explicit anti-American Chinese-Iranian-Russian alliance.
4) Saudi and/or Pakistani collapse to extreme elements.
I recall a wargame a few years back in which the side playing the U. S. Navy were very surprised when that’s exactly what happened. I commented on it at the time. I should check my archives.
I find that extremely unlikely. They’re practical enough that they’ll work together when the occasion warrants but the bottom line is that they’re natural enemies. A formal alliance would mean we had made some very serious errors.
To my eye that’s already happening.
There seems to be an internal purge occurring in Saudi Arabia, or perhaps only a generational transfer of power. I hope Jared has this in hand, a positive outcome would be stability, and marginalization, if not elimination, of the Wahhabi sect.
As for Pakistan, it’s hard to see what holds it together at all.
My favorite comment about Pakistan contrasts it with Somalia. Somalia is a country without a government; Pakistan is a government without a country.
At this point three quarters of the territory or more isn’t actually under the authority of the central government.
As for KSA I think that what’s going on right now is a shakedown. Oil revenues have decreased and the ruling clique needs to preserve their lifestyle somehow so they’re rounding up the out group of the royal family and shaking them down for cash. If they weren’t so effete there’d be an actual civil war.