While economists debate the speed and depth of recovery from the worst economic recession in seventy years, contrarian Gregg Easterbrook predicts a worldwide economic boom, and soon. His latest book is based on the premise that “when some crisis interrupts a larger trend, when that crisis fades, the larger trend continues.” But it’s not all good news. The global forces that will affect our daily lives will make a lot of us crazy and make us less secure, he says.
The book, Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mac Speed, is not rosy reading for individuals, but it’s optimistic for the planet as a whole. Job anxiety will get worse, he says, cultures more homogenous, but knowledge will increase, goods and services will be higher in quality and lower in cost across the world. Because of technology, worldwide trends will accelerate, such as improvements in education, the spread of democracy, availability of goods and services, and global communications.
“Globalization has only started,” he says, and expects these larger trends to resume rapid growth, following the current disruption of the economy.
“New networks of brains all working on the same problems will proliferate and even human relationships will improve. The larger trend is toward tolerance, he says. The reduced prejudice is required in social and economic networks between people on different continents.
Even our current wars, he says, are an exception in the over all trend toward decreased superpower conflicts and individual deaths in combat. Conflicts are more economic now that militaristic, with countries more interested in gaining market share than territory.
The coming “sonic boom” will be loud, dissonant, will drive us all crazy, as the world becomes simultaneously more harmonious and, because of the pace of change, and more anxiety producing and zany.
He points out that China’s halting march toward freedom, has lifted nearly the equivalent of the whole population of the US out of poverty in just one generation. Yes, the United States has 4% of the population and uses 20% of the energy resources, he says, but we won’t necessarily use less in total, just in the percentage. They will use more while ours will become cleaner.
Easterbrook is not predicting specific events, just the trends. It’s hard to read the book and know what to do on an individual level other than hang on!
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