I have been watching the US economy unravel before my eyes for the past few weeks and the question that keeps coming up is:
What is the worst that can happen?
Sadly nobody knows. Those in power were not on the scene during the Great Depression and even if they were a new calamity seldom behaves like the last one. What does an economic crash look like when the economy is no longer primarily agricultural? What does a fully networked populace do when companies start falling like dominoes? In the 1920's one could raise chickens and grow food to survive the hard times but a suburban and urban America several generations removed from that kind of self-reliance will have an entirely different response. What might that response look like? I hope we never have to find out.
What is the worst that can happen?
Sadly nobody knows. Those in power were not on the scene during the Great Depression and even if they were a new calamity seldom behaves like the last one. What does an economic crash look like when the economy is no longer primarily agricultural? What does a fully networked populace do when companies start falling like dominoes? In the 1920's one could raise chickens and grow food to survive the hard times but a suburban and urban America several generations removed from that kind of self-reliance will have an entirely different response. What might that response look like? I hope we never have to find out.
