Yet to Experience a Crisis

Was—and maybe is—the 2020 COVID period a crisis? It feels like a global pandemic should’ve been a crisis. At the microcosm of a family or business that suffered, it was. But I don’t smell the dire desperation of crisis in the air. 

This isn’t to play down the difficulty many small business owners have gone through—and are going through. But it’s clear that swift government intervention in various parts of the world has played a major role in curbing a domino effect of peril. Does that mean the true crisis is yet to come as governments spend in the hopes of delaying the inevitable? 

I’m not trying to sound the doom and gloom alarm. Crisis and euphoria come and go like tides on the beach. I don’t think there is any way to accurately forecast when shifts will happen either. But it’s worth trying to recognize where we might be at this particular point in time. 

That’s to say, the fact I see articles mentioning a concept called “The Great Resignation” cites that we are not in a crisis. To me, a crisis has occurred when every young person dreams of jobs with perceived stability like accounting or government. I say this as someone who graduated high school after the 2008 recession scarred the entire working class. The narrative around me was “Bankers will fuck you and tech blows up.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think risk-taking early in one’s career, going on adventures, etc… is the way to do it. But this thought, no matter how rational I think it is, goes against basic human desires for stability and certainty. Such risk-taking paths are worth it because it includes the steps of going against the norm and having to fight the inertia of conformity and certainty—all valuable skills to learn early in life. But not all are wired to embrace such risk-taking.

I think the point of equilibrium is when a handful of individuals seek to take risks because it is a rare thing amongst people. Yet, when I see such risk-taking behaviour as a norm, I err towards thinking we are out of equilibrium to one extreme. That’s the kind of extreme where people are building Youtube businesses teaching people how to make a living off of selling trading cards. It’s the “pay me to teach you how to be rich” kind of idea. 

Now, I might be out of touch with this new reality. But I am skeptical on a belief that trading cards will go up 50% year after year because it has gone up 50% in prior years. It sounds awfully close to the beanie babies phenomena from the ‘90s. 

If we had gone through a crisis in 2020, I don’t think there would be talk of young people leaving stable jobs to pursue new, exciting opportunities. The rise of new technological spheres like NFTs, blockchains, cryptocurrencies—areas I know close to nothing about—spell excitement for the novel and unproven. It’s hard to look at how much attention—in capital and talent—these areas are getting and think we came out of a crisis. 

We still find ourselves in the realms of prosperity. The financial systems have yet to crash down from the global spending spree the governments went on. Most of the Western countries seem to be in privileged positions where blaming governments or capitalists for “not doing a better job” is the daily hymn. Unless the government actually committed genocide, I think a time of crisis will lead to support for governments and conglomerates as everyday people fight in quiet desperation. 

Maybe times have changed. Maybe this is a secular shift and the young will no longer default to getting stable jobs. Maybe I’m mistaken in thinking these new technology ventures aren’t safe havens akin to the clerical work at a government agency. 

It could very well be the case that we are in another wind up for another economic spring upwards. The music could continue going for decades before the inevitable fall. Maybe I’ll live through the most glorious economic progression in human history where we will see property for 50 years without any major crisis since 2008. It seems unlikely but it is a possibility. 

This is all to say, I don’t think 2020 was a crisis. It might be the start of something but I don’t think we’ve experienced it yet. Maybe we got a small taste in a different way.

The one thing about crises are that they’ll come in ways we can’t predict. But these events will undo the fragility created in our systems. Like the flow of water, it will reveal all the holes in our armour. I don’t know when or how the next crisis will come. I just think we haven’t gone through one since 2008.