Random Thoughts – 08

If things are so bad, why are they so good?

There’s no sugar-coating the inflation picture, and it’s hitting certain sectors harder than others, so the suffering is unevenly shared.  There’s much more to the economic picture, of course.

There is positive growth in corporate profits, supply chains are coming unblocked, and unemployment rates in Canada and the US are at historic lows.  Just about everyone who wants a job either has one or can easily get one.

Capitalism and a growing society need a certain amount of creative destruction.  We have cars, not horse-drawn buggies, and frequent rocket launches over rare space shuttle journeys.  Advancing technologies are making our health so much better – so many cancers are survivable, eye surgeries have become commonplace, and joint replacements are keeping seniors mobile longer than ever.  I have no desire to return to the 60’s or 70’s.  We can focus on the destruction or the much greater creations that also come.

The number of coal miners is shrinking while engineer and service technician numbers are growing.  That’s a good thing.  We finally had a fusion reaction that created more energy that it consumed, proving the concept, and now the race is on to make it viable for mass use.  It could be far into the future, but should we laugh off discovering the wheel because it took six thousand years to get to the bicycle?  (I still can’t believe it took so long to discover we could put wheels on suitcases…).

I’m also confident that the children of today have a better vision of the future than my generation did.  We looked for ways to enjoy and exploit the world around us with less regard for preserving it, while the current crop of teens/millennials are looking to restore and conserve the environment.  Use your search engine to look up The Great Bubble Barrier, as an example.

As the perpetual Cynical Optimist (should I trademark that?), I see there are always short-term reasons to feel concerned, however many long-term reasons to act confidently.  The world is definitely a better place than it was a decade ago, and that can be said in every decade prior.  I’m so excited to see what’s in store for us in the future, while also cautious about the risks. 

Alain Quennec

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