January 7, 2009

The Next Future: Money in Both Doom and Boom

In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of endings and beginnings. The god –his namesake is the month of January – had two faces, one figuratively looking toward the past, one to the future.

Unless you happen to write popular histories or own a chunk of The History Channel, you won’t make much money on the past.

The future, however, is another matter. The future is big business.

Doom makes money. The doom end of the future business – both imminent doom and eventual doom – blossomed when first radio then television programmers discovered that sensational, scary stories riveted an audience.

Biblical prophets predicting doom faced stones thrown by mobs. Contemporary prophets predicting doom face network cameras. Stones hurt. Network cameras sell books. Pity Jeremiah – he was born too soon.

Bright, positive futures (“bloom and boom futures”) are a tougher sell than doom, unless you’re in the cosmetic business and can eliminate wrinkles in six weeks. Fad diets and a host of other slick promotions ranging from quick self-improvement programs to messianic presidential campaigns work the same niche – playing on hopes, promising change.

Everyone, however, is in the future business. Whether deliberate, improvised or utterly impulsive, everyone has plans – and plans anticipate future conditions and future developments. Individual and organizational planning “time horizons” may vary widely. The 5-year-old wants his chocolate bar right now. When a football team’s offensive unit heads for the line of scrimmage, the future time horizon for the play called in the huddle is roughly 20 seconds – the time it takes to execute the play and determine the result. In the late 1970s, China began an economic modernization program that arguably has a five-decade time horizon.

Current conditions and past performance certainly inform economic decisions, but investment and its alter-ego, divestment, are fundamentally driven by assessments of the future.

Defense departments rely on secret and open-source data and intelligence analysis to estimate a variety of futures, like the effectiveness of technologies and potential (future) threats.

Historical examples abound. The Chinese invested in a Great Wall to thwart anticipated barbarian assaults. Machiavelli devoted the better part of a chapter in “The Prince” to an ancient general who spent his free time asking his lieutenants “what if” questions about potential enemy actions. The general was exploring “alternative futures,” an exercise that challenged his lieutenants’ imaginations. Creative solutions to imaginary conditions would become the basis of real world operations if the “real future” became a desperate present with conditions resembling the general’s “what ifs.”

Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, however, serves as an entertaining example of the limits of prognostication. Tomorrowland (a 1950-ish dream of the future) is now quaintly dated, its freeways and rockets entertaining fossil futures. Disney’s spiffy techno-bliss, however, proved to be more correct than Paul Ehrlich’s moneymaking and utterly hysteric doom scenarios (e.g., 1968’s “The Population Bomb”) that predicted mass starvation by the 1980s.

Economics, security concerns, hope for boom, fear of doom – these drive the industry now called “future studies” run by “futurists.” Future studies programs attempt to identify and analyze key trends and, from those analyses, anticipate crises. It’s a 21st century version of Machiavelli’s general posing “what ifs.” The idea is to craft better policy. Intelligence, diplomatic, financial and security capabilities, if timely applied, may resolve or mitigate the problems.

For example, a recent defense study by Joint Forces Command (JFC) examined “trends influencing world security” in the following areas: demographics, globalization, economics, energy, food, water, climate change and natural disasters, pandemics, implications of cyber (computer) space, and outer space.

Why of course, the critic sneers, it’s irrefutable: The future will occur in all of those areas. That criticism, however, is a bit unfair. The JFC study says trend analysis is “fragile,” but it serves very serious purposes. For example, jumbo jets linking New Guinea and Paris have made the threat of rapidly spreading epidemics too immediate. Recognizing that connection between globalization and pandemic, and thinking about how to mitigate the threat, is quite useful. The critic, of course, points out that we already recognize the problem.

The future’s devil, however, is in the details – and it is those surprising and unanticipated details, often “unknown unknowns,” that are the real test of social, political and technological creativity.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC. 

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.