I recall feeling sorry for New Yorkers immediately after 9/11. I assumed that New York would be seen as a future target of terrorists, and thus a less desirable place to live. I wondered if people would want to work in tall buildings. In those (paranoid) days many worried about terrorists getting their hands on a nuke. Hmm, which city would they target? (Today, we probably worry too little about that risk.)
How wrong I was! New York’s real estate market went into a huge boom after 9/11, extending a boom that began around 1980. (Indeed if the 1970s you gave an individual tens of millions of free dollars to invest in NYC real estate, it would have been very difficult not to become rich. Ahem. . . .)
Not only were people still willing to work in tall buildings, but in the 2000s it suddenly became trendy for billionaires (who could live anywhere) to buy penthouses 100 floors up in impossibly slim skyscrapers, which looked like they’d topple over in the slightest breeze.
The lesson here is don’t make predictions, especially about the future. But you wouldn’t be reading this unless you expected some sort of prediction. So I’ll make the least bad prediction that one can make after a very traumatic experience like 9/11 or Covid-19; nothing will change after the epidemic is over.
We’ll go back to eating in restaurants and flying to Italy on vacation. Cruise lines will start up again. We’ll go back to working in offices and learning in classrooms. We’ll get on crowded subways and sit in crowded basketball arenas. We’ll still buy our cheap manufactured goods from China.
Of course trends that were occurring before Covid-19 will continue to occur. More online shopping, more Netflix films, and so on. But a continuation of a trend is not a change caused by Covid-19, indeed it’s evidence of no effect.
Now for two more predictions:
1. I predict that my prediction in this post will end up being wrong.
2. I predict that my prediction will be less wrong than most of the grand sweeping predictions that you see on the internet, from pundits who are much smarter than I am. And that’s because no matter how smart you are, the future’s almost impossible to predict. That’s why someone who predicts tomorrow’s stock prices will be similar to today’s stock prices is usually more accurate than the prediction of a much smarter investor who goes out on a limb and predicts sharply higher or lower stock prices tomorrow.
That’s not to say these highly speculative predictions are useless; perhaps they have some value in thinking about what we need to do next. Just don’t take them as the most likely outcome. The most likely outcome is the same as what happened after 9/11; no change in the way we live in America. (Iraq is another story.) And the most likely outcome is the outcome that occurred in America in 1920 after a far worse epidemic; no change in the way we live in America.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Apr 6 2020 at 7:59pm
Scott – this was a good post with the appropriate dose of humility.
Market Fiscalist
Apr 6 2020 at 8:38pm
My prediction is that your prediction is correct and that at some point in the future you will link back to it as proof that you are good at predictions !
Scott Sumner
Apr 7 2020 at 1:59pm
I would never brag like that. 🙂
Mark Brophy
Apr 6 2020 at 9:21pm
Our government debt is so enormous that it can never be repaid so I predict that our country will suffer the same fate as every other socialist country that incurred massive government debt that can’t be repaid. Further, I predict that the $2.3 trillion bill that the Senate passed 96-0 and the House passed without a recorded vote will be entirely spent using printed money.
Mark Z
Apr 7 2020 at 1:45am
Recent prediction pieces, including the Newsweek one you linked, follow a similar pattern: writers predicting that this crisis will cause the things which they’ve already been predicting (or praying for, at least) for decades. And the prognostications – including John Gray’s – tend to be predictably vague enough to make it impossible to definitively declare them wrong in ten years. If he predicted that in 2040 that international trade as a % of the global economy will be < x, it would be more worth taking seriously.
Anyway, I think you’re right, and I’d make a more general prediction – or rather assert a law of human psychology – that in the middle of a crisis, it almost always seems like things will change much more than they actually will. This seems like something people who’ve been alive for a few decades should know.
Scott Sumner
Apr 7 2020 at 2:01pm
Yes, people making predictions have “agendas”. They are often predicting that, “the future will show that I was right all along.”
ChrisA
Apr 7 2020 at 2:12am
I agree with your prediction. I believe that in 10 years we will see this as a small bump in the road that caused some minor changes to the way society works but nothing fundamental. Like all the other traumatic incidents which happened in the past it seems unendurable and likely to change everything while it is happening, but that emotional state cannot be maintained after the event has past.
One potential good change might be more consideration of others when you have a cold or flu. People will be more willing I think to wear masks, and self isolate. Colds and flue bring a fair amount of misery to peoples lives, and if this causes say a 50% reduction in them it will be one compensation from all this.
MarkW
Apr 7 2020 at 1:41pm
I agree that the best prediction is ‘very little will change’. But you don’t gain any prognosticator points for that — you only score when you predict a low-probability event and turn out to be right/get lucky. Which is why pundits and experts make particularly bad predictions — they’re always swinging for the fences.
One prediction that seems safe — we will have better preparations for the next pandemic (that probably never arrives), though this preparedness effect will eventually wear off.
I’m not even sure whether this will be a boon for remote working and schooling. A lot of people and organizations will have gained experience with it, but it will be the most unplanned, haphazard version and remote work may end up being permanently tainted by association with the pandemic. On the other hand, if distancing extends for many more months (and into the next school year), people and organizations may really get up to speed, and perhaps the changes will persist.
Similarly, I’m also not sure whether or not this will ultimately increase or decrease the taste for high-density urban living. I’m tempted to predict that central cities will lose population — they’ve been much harder hit and are more affected by the shutdowns (there’s very little to do in an urban environment when all the bars, restaurants, night-spots, and parks are closed, and social distancing is almost impossible in a high-rise apartment building where everybody has to share the same hallways, elevators, stairs and sidewalks). But who knows, maybe people — having developed a newfound appreciation — will be particularly eager to rush in and enjoy the crowds once this is over.
Scott Sumner
Apr 7 2020 at 2:03pm
I could also have mentioned the 1906 SF earthquake and the Great Chicago fire, which did nothing to slow the boom of those two cities.
Fred_in_PA
Apr 8 2020 at 12:27am
Mark W.;
You say, “One prediction that seems safe — we will have better preparations for the next pandemic (that probably never arrives), though this preparedness effect will eventually wear off.”
I suspect CoViD-19 will be back next winter, and I suspect (and certainly hope) you’re correct in projecting that we’ll be better prepared for it.
But I’ll disagree about being better prepared for the next pandemic. I suspect that, once again, we’ll find that we’re well prepared to fight the last war. But that our situation is new. For examples; suppose the next pandemic is an especially deadly form of cholera. Or a highly contagious and treatment resistant form of leprosy. Or a crop or animal disease that severely reduces global food supplies. (Or just that the locusts adapt to cooler climes and move from Africa into the temperate breadbaskets.) Or impending collision with a wayward asteroid. Or (to borrow from old science fiction) termites that attack steel. Or (from the climate change folks) a collapse of the Gulf Stream or Japanese current. Or an especially furtive & destructive computer malware attack.
Our stockpile of, and ability to deploy, ventilators won’t be of much use.
Isn’t the problem structural? Any problem we’ve learned how to handle won’t become a disaster. The next disaster will be a disaster precisely because it will be something we don’t yet know how to control.
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