For more than a decade now, the almost-poetic tonalities of "The Promise Economy" have resonated in my head, as I've watched that economy evolve.
"The Promise Economy," as I see it, is the economy of the predictable, promise-worthy future; the economy of fundamentally continuous 3%/year growth; the economy of both Wal-Mart and Wall Street, consumer and corporation, advertiser and audience. It's the economy we currently live in, in which stocks are bought by institutional investors, retirement funds, and even daytraders, presuming that tomorrow will be like today, only a bit better.
The Promise Economy has as its premise the status quo, plus-plus. Incremental, inevitable growth in GDP, purchasing power, and availability of luxury. Cheap food, cheap crap from China, and a widening gap between the superrich and the rest of us.
The Promise Economy has been the belle of the ball for a century, clothed in the gaudy gossamer of expectations and certainty, with everyone at the ball believing that cloth into existence. Dance after dance, there were the clothes.
Alas, a few realities may disrupt those promises, which could have dramatic consequences both economically and politically. Not to mention showing our belle to be naked.
One obvious spanner in the works is Climate Chaos. The evidence is in, quite independent of quibbles or leaked emails. But the evidence is currently still being insistently ignored by the status quorum. If acknowledged, then it would be obvious that outrageous future costs are almost certain to be arriving in the next couple of decades -- incredible insurance claims, property devastation as coasts erode or submerge, astonishing famine, weather extremes, floods and droughts and wildfires, and much worse... these are not the underpinnings of a predictable, profitable economy.
Another spanner is Biology Breach. We have made our world awash in novel toxins, plastic particulates, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, fertilizers, flame retardants, and much more. Most are persistent evils that will remain in our ecosystem for three to five generations. Most of those are bioaccumulators, increasing up the food chain till predators -- or humans -- collapse. There's evidence that we are reaching tipping points on many of these toxins, and little evidence of changing our habits.
Another spanner is Resource Depletion. Yeah, peak oil, but also peak phosphorus, peak aquifer, peak lithium, peak biodiversity, peak ocean. For example, "peak fish" happened a long time ago -- but the economy still acts like the ocean is an endless producer, even as it falls below 10% of its 1850 levels. Anyone looking on decadal timescales (instead of the here-and-now) would recognize the inevitable result of overfishing on a global scale, and the problems therein.
Any of the above (not to mention Species Collapse, or Infectious Disease) will spell the end of the Promise Economy. Because if, for example, the ocean is clearly collapsing, then worldwide economic growth will first stall, and then gradually retract.
If the climate is certain to go crazy over the next two decades, then the economy of those decades will also go crazy. Crazy markets don't work right. Instability creates busts.
If the health impacts of our spewn toxins affect all organic life, then we will see, over the next few decades, an inevitably dramatic decline in ecosystem fertility, health, resilience, and stability. This kind of systemic decline is simply not in the calculus of the Promise Economy.
There are a few long-term bears out there, and others who are trying to figure out what a reality-based economy might look like. One based on stability and resilience, perhaps?
Hmm... not so much profit in that. There's so many more bucks to be made on the promise of likely future profit, than on disaster prevention (or even mitigation), or on the promise of economic steady-state stability.
So what we'll see, for the next three or more years, are more promises based on a false future of incremental improvement. It's likely that an increasing number of us will become certain of the inevitability of disruption -- serious, fundamental, irremediable disruption. And gradually we'll develop a political momentum for changing the status quo.
But the engines of commerce won't be easily denied -- and so they'll continue to construct imaginary, gossamer clothing for a naked future.
Those who believe -- or pretend to believe -- in the Promise Economy will continue to profit during the next few years, by pretending (along with the pundits and prognosticators and corporations bent on maintaining their stock evaluation) that the status quo is stable.
Unfortunately, that'll also mean we will likely dither away the prospect of a rational, affordable recovery from what we humans have wrought upon the world.
Instead, we'll likely reel from emergency to emergency, reacting instead of acting, and squandering the only true wealth: Time.