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by axegon_ 2280 days ago
> I've heard economic forecasters predict that the economy will spring back once the crisis is over. Their reasoning is that the crisis is an external issue, not a problem with the economy itself, as with the housing crisis. Once it becomes more contained and controlled, there will be work for people to do, and people available to do that work, and the economy will just start humming along again.

Though I'm by no means an economist, I'm with this. What's more I have the feeling the economy might come out even stronger here is my reasoning:

A lot of young people are confined to their homes at the moment. I'm talking about anyone in the 25-36-7-8-9 range(being a representative myself). Fair enough, take away the people who have families and children out of that group and you have a substantial number of people. And in that group are the most active members of society, which in normal circumstances, have plenty of entertainment in their lives outside their homes and work environment(contrary to popular belief). Yes, many spend too much time on social media, but plenty do not. In the additional spare time we have (at the expense of time spent at bars, restaurants, cinemas, shopping centers, etc.), many are occupying themselves however they can. Myself including - I'm almost out of books to read. I've enrolled at several online courses, I'm working on personal projects, including writing a book(which I intend to open source once complete).

My point is that in that additional time, plenty of people will have time to work on current and potentially future problems and open markets that currently do not exist. Sure, many will fail, as usual, but some will succeed. The truth is that multi-billion corporations started as black swans. Stephen King has a brilliant essay called "On being 19". I don't remember the exact quote but it went something along the lines of "When you are 19, you believe that the whole world is at your mercy and no one should mess with you". Which is rarely the case. Companies and entire industries around them(Facebook, Google) might have been started by 19 year olds but they are the Black Swans. The truth is when you are 19, regardless of how smart you are, you lack experience and by implications, adequate amounts of knowledge. Most people have tried multiple times when they were in that age group and 99.99999% have failed. Now people with experience have the time and nothing better to do then use it to the maximum. I'm not looking at it as a Black Swan phenomenon but the next step: Antifragility. If anything, I believe that now is the time to pay close attention and use your resources, knowledge and experience to capitalize on it.

1 comments

building anything takes years. this may plant some seeds but they will take a long time to mature.