Which End, if Any, Is Near?
By Robert Higgs • Saturday June 12, 2010 1:37 PM PDT • 21 Comments
Some people have always occupied themselves in crying out that the end is near. This sort of thing has been going on for millennia. But lately, it seems to me, the volume of such doom-saying has risen markedly. Websites that feature apocalyptic forecasts have grown like weeds on the Web, and at least one well-known libertarian site has shifted from more analytical material to heavy doses of gloom-and-doom. An odd aspect of this increasing tendency toward Chicken-Little-ism is that it now comes for the most part in two completely different versions. Let’s call them the Left Version and the Right Version.
The Left Version, of course, has been bombarding us for the past forty or fifty years mainly as a warning of imminent environmental catastrophe ― of near-term exhaustion of natural resources, terminal ruin of a hyper-polluted physical environment and, most recently, overheating of the earth’s atmosphere with countless attendant climatic disasters. Leftists who peddle this terrifying prospect seek to allay the threat by ceding totalitarian powers to government officials who in their copious wisdom will save the day, if only narrowly and at the cost of our liberties and our modern standard of living.
The Right Version has resided for decades more in the shadows cast by millenarians, goldbugs, and self-anointed financial gurus than in the bright media glow that has illuminated the leftists’ prophecies. Recently, however, many more people seem to have concluded that the only sane course is to forsake all hope for the continuation of socio-economic life as we have known it, and hence that preparation for a complete social and economic meltdown ― Greater-than-Great Depression, hyperinflation, dollar collapse ― obliges us to stock up on guns, ammo, gold, and a larder full of dried beans and other survivalist goodies.
It is interesting that although many people take an ominous forecast more or less seriously, they have embraced dramatically different conceptions of the nature of the impending doom. Are those who foresee the future so differently living in the same world? If so, how can they have come to such clashing conclusions about the events to come?
The answer, I believe, has to do with ideology, which I have long defined as a somewhat coherent, rather comprehensive belief system about social relations, noting that each such system has four distinct aspects: cognitive, moral, programmatic, and solidary. Ideologies permit people to understand, evaluate, and cope with a social world otherwise too vast and complicated to comprehend. If two persons embrace starkly different ideologies, they can easily arrive at starkly different visions of future developments, even when presented with the same information.
Can objective facts and established scientific theories cut through all of this ideological noise, substituting the pure, harmonious tones of truth for the cacophony of wild-eyed, mutually inconsistent ideologies? No, they cannot. In the determination of human beliefs, ideological outlooks and propensities have the power to override virtually any kind of inconsistent information or knowledge. Decades may pass, yet the Club of Rome remains as convinced as ever that environmental and natural-resource disasters are imminent. Stock markets may soar by multiples while confirmed “bears” never lose their faith that selling short is the road to financial paradise ― hedge-fund manager Michael Berger defrauded a multitude of trusting investors, not to mention tricking the government regulators, and drove his firm Manhattan Capital into bankruptcy because he could not surrender his bearish convictions even during a prolonged run-up in stock prices in the late 1990s.
So, the answer to my previous question is, yes, different sets of people in effect do live in different worlds, notwithstanding their physical coexistence on planet earth during extended time spans. And therefore you’ll have a devil of a time disabusing any of them of their cherished visions. Strange to say, many people fall in love even with their preferred brand of apocalypse. Doomster Paul Erlich might have lost his famous bet with Julian Simon, but he never “cried uncle.” As Ed Regis wrote in Wired:
A more perfect resolution of the Ehrlich-Simon debate could not be imagined. All of the former’s grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events. Ehrlich was wrong about higher natural resource prices, about “famines of unbelievable proportions” occurring by 1975, about “hundreds of millions of people starving to death” in the 1970s and ’80s, about the world “entering a genuine age of scarcity.”
In 1990, for his having promoted “greater public understanding of environmental problems,” Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award.
And so it goes.
If you want to load up on gold, who am I to tell you that you’re making a bad bet? I don’t know what the price of gold, or anything else, will be in the future. (I also happen to believe that nobody else knows, or can know. Someone who knew the course of future prices could easily and quickly acquire the wealth of Croesus simply by making appropriate transactions in the futures markets.)
What I do know is that for thousands of years, some people have been telling their fellows that the end is near, and although some terrible things did happen from time to time, hardly ever did they prove to be as catastrophic as the prophets’ most foreboding warnings had foretold. The sky never rained blood, the oceans never boiled, the ground never rose up to crush squealing humanity between heaven and earth. Of course, as David Hume has taught us, this history is no guarantee that such an apocalypse won’t happen. Nevertheless, I am inclined to make my bets on the basis of a somewhat more temperate outlook.
Tags: Culture, Economics, Environment, Global Warming 
I am in your camp that disasters will occur but we shall survive it and move on.
However, the counterpoint is that riots like the initial ones in Greece could turn violent and cause a lot of problems. This scenario definitely seems to get more likely as the problems we have get bigger.
Brent | Jun 13, 2010 | Reply
There was an era when ideologies were either less virulent or less powerful. Then came the 20th century when governments killed approximately 260 million of their own people [1], not to mention the wars they inflicted on each other. People are not afraid of environmental disasters or financial collapse per se, but of what they could unleash in the murderous ideologies of fascism and socialism (right and left, respectively). Human extermination, somehow, still pervades.
[1] http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM
aden | Jun 13, 2010 | Reply
Or disasters do happen but they don’t take out progress as a whole? Sure heaps died in wars and disasters of the 20th century but the world population grew the fastest ever. Sure parts of Africa have been and still are incredibly violent but we in the West aren’t affected by it. The British Empire collapsed yet Britain is still around and part of the First World. And even if all modern technology comes to grief and everyone goes back to the organic family farms and the world population collapses to 500 million or so then the 20th century was a mere aberration when most people in history died young after a short, brutish life.
Gil | Jun 14, 2010 | Reply
Consult THE book for what is going to happen, then note what did not happen , for the past thousands of years. But the book is still widely used to predict the future.
richard | Jun 14, 2010 | Reply
In the future, every single person who is now alive will be dead. That’s my prediction and I’m sticking to it.
Tom Blanton | Jun 14, 2010 | Reply
aden referred to:
. . . the murderous ideologies of fascism and socialism (right and left, respectively.
Fascism is not right wing.
The left-right axis, properly viewed, places all forms of collectivism — which, politically, means statism in all its forms, including socialism, fascism and communism — on the left with individualism — which, politically, means capitalism — residing on the right.
Michael Smith | Jun 15, 2010 | Reply
I certainly agree that there is and always has been an abundance of doom-saying in our culture. That said, on the economic side of things, I would count myself nervous. No one can know the future of course and looking to the past as a guide is fraught will many problems. But in so many ways (debt, currency, etc.) we seem to be moving into some uncharted territory.
Have I bought into the apocalyptic forecasts? Maybe. I wish I could be more optimistic than I am right now. Sadly our illustrious “leaders” (in Washington, et al) give me little reason for such optimism. Apocalyptic? I don’t know about that, but I suspect if we continue down the path we’re going things are likely to get worse (possibly much) before they get better. Right now my best guess for the US is another 1970′s (economically) or like Japan’s “lost decade.” Not totally apocalyptic for sure, but Obama seems quite unpredictable and quite inclined to continue trying to “fix” things which seems destined to make things go even further off track.
C | Jun 15, 2010 | Reply
Crisis and Leviathan is the best guide to our dystopic future that I know!
Zach C | Jun 15, 2010 | Reply
Dr. Higgs (or anyone else in the know): is there anywhere on the ‘net that Dr. Higgs has elaborated on his analysis of ideology per se?
Bo Zimmerman | Jun 15, 2010 | Reply
I take it that Dr. Higgs probably doesn’t sympathize with Niall Ferguson’s somewhat Hayekian take that the global economy is a complex system that can’t be predicted with much certainty, whether the predictions are for prosperity and calm or for ruinous disaster?
I have zero patience for “left” apocalyptic theories, and don’t especially think that the “right” apocalyptic scenarios are the modal outcome, but surely one has to recognize that the global dominance of nation states has significantly escalated the probability of cascading societal failures and quasi-apocalyptic scenarios.
Matthew | Jun 15, 2010 | Reply
This is a good article. But I think that it may portray some ‘apocalyptic’ scenarios that have been mentioned recently as too apocalyptic. I do not think that many are actually predicting and preparing for an end of the world, only the kinds of disasters that have happened repeatedly through history.
Terrible wars have happened before. If you look at history, periods of peace and stability are rare. Mass murder by governments have happened before in countries that were believed to be civilized. Massive taxation and expropriation of property (e.g. communist revolutions) have taken place before and even quite recently. Fiat money has gone to zero before. Governments have bankrupted themselves. This things have all happened contrary to expectations at the time (and even because of those expectations since people were complacent). Empires that seemed to be invincible have fallen. At any given time, if a situation has been stable for even only a few decades (such as now) people have a tendency to believe that it will not change.
So, how do you prepare for the hopefully unlikely events of war (which can be in your own country), high taxes, expropriation of property and mass murder? Many of the survivalist techniques would help. The question is when do you act on your fears and how? Don’t you think that many Jews that fled central Europe early enough to escape Nazism felt conflicted and even a little silly to abandon their property, friends and homeland because of something that only might happen with an uncertain likelihood?
I agree that history will continue. Both good things and bad things will happen. The world will probably not come to an end.
Gunnlaugur Jónsson | Jun 16, 2010 | Reply
The probability of social/economic catastrophe is much higher than zero—and it should not be dismissed because we are “helpless” to predict it. We can forecast the future with probabilities, (not certainty) and make decisions based on those probabilities.
The probability of economic collapse today is many times higher than the probability was a generation ago (1960-1990), and we can make risk-based decisions with that knowledge. During the 1930′s the probability of economic catastrophe was high, but averted with a grotesque war. Contrarily, the probability of environmental catastrophe today is much lower than it was a generation ago. Also the probability of environmental catastrophe relative to economic/social collapse is much, much lower. These are important distinctions, and a long distance from being helpless. Embrace probabilities—not an unequivocal stance against prediction.
scott | Jun 16, 2010 | Reply
Mr. Zimmerman,
My meatiest analysis of ideology appears in my book Crisis and Leviathan (1987), chap. 3, which unfortunately cannot be accessed online. A substantial recent followup article, originally published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology in 2008, is available online here.
Robert Higgs | Jun 16, 2010 | Reply
Bob,
I’m glad you continue to write on this topic. Doom&Gloomery has become a cottage industry among many whom I consider to be intellectual allies (and I think we all know which “well-known libertarian site” you mean).
There once was a time when one would be contrarian to predict a collapse in the economic and social order of the USA, but by now such talk is mainstream, as you suggest in your blog. Ironically, the self-professed contrarians among us may now themselves be the social signal against which we should place our bets. Contra the Contrarians!
MikeL | Jun 16, 2010 | Reply
While I agree the USA and the western world will eventually overcome this recession, the aftermath (aka recovery)will be very different from previous. For many reasons, the US is now and will be henceforth economically vulnerable, which may well mean socially vulnerable. The cost of a high standard living will become higher, and may increase the disparity between the haves and have-nots. At some point, the piper must be paid, and the cost of the wars and debts will be staggering economically and socially. I see not an end of the USA, but I do see grim times ahead.
alzurzin | Jun 20, 2010 | Reply
VERY interesting article, and interesting posts – Gunnlaugur’s in particular. Me, I rely on history. No nation in history EVER abandoned hard money and had their currency survive. We had ours fail twice in our short history (the Continental and the Green-back). Add to that the fact that basic math tells us that we cannot make trillions out of thin air and not have hyper-inflation. Does that mean doomsday? Heck no. We will survive, we always will. What will the new “replacement” for the dollar be? I don’t know, but I do know that we will need something of “value” with which to “buy” it. Take that for what it is worth. But as others have said, just because there are thousands like me saying that you should prepare and “get your house in order” does not mean that we think that the world is coming to an end, quite the contrary. However, we are saying that the dollar will come to an end, and the time in between the dollar crashing and what ever replaces it becoming the “standard”, while tumultuous, will by no means be the “end of the world.” Those prepared will actually prosper, and those who do not… well… won’t
As for running out of natural resources… doesn’t make much sense to me since we still have every drop of water on the earth that has ever been on the earth, plants and animals reproduce, and should we actually run out of oil, we will simply replace it with something else (remember what happened to our dependence on wale oil?). I guess that makes me a “right” version chicken-little.
joe4liberty | Jun 21, 2010 | Reply